By James Chung and Tara May

This article was published in Museum News November/December 2005.

Inside and outside the museum world, organizations that serve families are facing challenging times. What marketers like to call “the family customer base” apparently has stopped expanding. Growth, in fact, has flattened or is dropping. On the surface, there is a simple explanation: There are now fewer families with school-age children than there were when Baby Boomers—people born between 1946 and 1964—were at the peak of their parenting years.

But shrinking numbers are not the real challenge. Today, more than half of parents with children at home are Generation X—i.e., born between 1965 and 1979 and now 26 to 40 years old. In fact, 75 percent of today’s elementary school children have Xer parents. And Xers have very different attitudes and behaviors from those of the Baby Boomers who preceded them.

These shifts in needs and desires among parents have been subtle and have largely gone unnoticed even among organizations that serve families. Many organizations, including museums, still view the customer as the prototypical Baby Boomer: the soccer mom who has overscheduled her kids while running on fumes herself or the dad who squeezes in “quality time” to make up for lost time with the kids. But the reign of the soccer mom and dad is over, and Xer parents are playing by different rules. The organizations that have increased their family customer base have done so in part by adapting and increasing their relevance to the families of Generation X.

Understanding how attitudes and actions shift over the generations was the focus of a recent survey of 3,020 parents nationwide conducted by Reach Advisors, a strategy and research firm that studies shifting consumer behaviors. The resulting data, along with an analysis of census and macroeconomic data, were the foundation of the firm’s 2004 study, Generation X Parents: From Grunge to Grown-Up, which identified generational differences and ways that organizations can reach and serve today’s parents more effectively. Some of the key points taken from this data are discussed below.

Generation X childhoods were not exactly like the Cleavers’

To understand distinctions between Boomer and Xer parents, we should start at the beginning—these two generations had very different childhoods. Baby Boomers grew up in an era with low divorce rates. Mom stayed at home, taking care of the kids. As Generation X grew up, family structures changed dramatically. Divorce rates nearly doubled, and women entered the workforce at unprecedented levels. The phrase “latchkey kids” became part of our daily language. As the first generation in which more than half of the kids didn’t have a stay-at-home mom, Generation Xers tended to develop a sense of independence at an early age and that remains a hallmark of their adult lives as well.

Quality time versus quantity of time

Due in part to their own childhood experiences, Generation Xers are more likely to build a family environment that is different not only from the one in which they grew up but also from that of their older peers in the Baby Boom generation. Stark distinctions emerge in the perception of family time.

Baby Boomers made popular the concept of “quality time,” often a scheduled activity to provide “enrichment” that the parent didn’t have time to provide otherwise, or a grand vacation to make up for lost time.

Generation X parents, however, are less likely to try to shoehorn family into their work schedules and more likely to try to arrange their work around their family life. When they describe the time they spend as a family, it’s not enough for them just to be together physically. They want opportunities to connect with each other and build their family relationships. This constant striving has led to a shift in how parents spend their time and money. They place more emphasis on experiences that provide fun and learning for them and their kids and less on trying to create the best “mini-me” in town. Learning is less of a competitive sport.

To win over parents from Generation X, museums can strive to foster a fun-filled environment that encourages adults and children to learn from and about one another. At the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia, the concept of play as an essential part of the learning process seems to be more popular with Generation X parents than it was with their predecessors. “At our museum, we value the process through which children learn, not just the results they achieve,” says Elaine Wideman-Vaughn, the museum’s vice president of education. “Previously, the only time we would see real interaction between parents and kids was when there was something at stake—a higher score to be attained or a perfect picture to be drawn. Now we see that parents are pleased with the process itself.”

Not just a soccer mom

Generation X women came of age in an era when going to college was the norm rather than the exception. The college-graduation rate for Generation X women (30 percent) is almost twice the rate for Baby Boom women (17 percent). Xer women are far more likely to have professional careers, live in cities away from their hometowns, and have children later than Boomers did. They are less likely to have started adulthood as mothers and more likely to be educated moms with professional backgrounds. As a result, Generation X mothers are likely to be more independent and have their own identity firmly established before assuming the role of “mom.” This is one of the key differences overlooked by organizations serving today’s families.

In addition, in the late 1990s, the long-term trend of steadily increasing employment among mothers started dropping as Generation X women hit their peak childbearing years. Due in part to their education and work history, these women are far more likely to believe that they can leave a job when they have kids and restart their careers when the time is right.

Generation X dads also are more likely to spend more time at home. Compared to Boomer dads, Xer fathers have almost doubled the amount of time they’re spending with their children, at home and at play. The likelihood of two-parent or father-led museum trips is much greater among Generation Xers than among their predecessors.

Family lives are no longer clearly delineated between kids and parents. “We’re hearing more and more that a museum visit has to have something for everyone in the group; it can’t be limited to one or two members of that group,” says Steve Snyder, vice president of exhibit and program development at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. “We always knew that our primary audience is families, but we now know that we need to have programs that will appeal to adults and kids equally.”

According to Snyder, one way that The Franklin Institute has responded is by “bundling” or combining existing and new programs and exhibits to create a more profound experience for everyone. For example, in the past the museum offered public sky watching from its observatory and its planetarium and developed educational programming around the topics of space and space exploration; each activity was offered as a discrete experience. Over the last year, it has chosen instead to bundle these programs to create a deeper set of experiences. Now, instead of trying to attract visitors to a single event such as a planetarium show or a telescope-building workshop, the Franklin offers a Space Day experience consisting of exhibitions, shows, experiments, and programs—with an astronomy focus that engages young and old.

As a result, visitors find a full family experience rather than programs targeted toward one family member. The Franklin Institute’s approach has been very successful, says Snyder, with visitors commenting on the need to come back to see the “rest of the museum” after their positive Space Day experience.

In Staunton, Va., the Frontier Culture Museum has created engaging children’s programs since it was founded in 1982. “We also heard from adults that they, too, wanted learning opportunities,” says Program Operations Manager Lydia Volskis. “So we created a Folk Arts Academy, which is really just a grown-up version of our children’s camp. This summer will be the first time that adults can take courses, from blacksmithing to basket weaving, at our museum. We anticipate a lot of demand even in this first year.”

Generation X parents expect museums to engage more than just their kids. They hope museums will engage all family members in shared experiences. And parents don’t just think of themselves as caregivers. Generation X mothers, in particular, seek more ways to fulfill their roles both as mothers and as educated adults. Museums may be in a better position than any other type of organization to provide those opportunities for Generation X.

Trading off, rather than trading up

While Boomers were more likely to strive for “having it all,” Generation X parents appear more comfortable with the notion of trading off short-term career advancement and the accompanying income increases for more time with the family. They are more concerned with having what they want—just not all at the same time—even if it requires deeper financial tradeoffs. While Generation Xers clearly want for more for their money, they aren’t necessarily looking for the cheapest price. Instead, they want to make sure that every dollar spent delivers value for their families.

At the Strong Museum, for example, the management team decided to focus attention well beyond the content of the exhibits. Not only did they make a major shift in programming—changing the institution’s focus from “decorative arts” to “play”—but they also took extensive measures to overhaul their customer service as a key aspect of the overall museum experience. “We knew that we had to do more than provide an educational opportunity,” says Director G. Rollie Adams. “We had to somehow make their overall experience exceptional.

“We started making a deliberate and significant investment in our hosting services,” he continues. Hosts, who greet guests at the door and provide information throughout the museum, were given the opportunity to attend Disney training programs in an attempt to elevate the level of service for visitors. “During a guest’s visit here, we make every effort to ensure a positive experience,” says Adams. “If they spill ketchup on a shirt, we’ll get them another. If they forgot the baby’s bottle, we’ll round up a substitute. We do all that in an effort to create a worthwhile overall experience rather than merely a place to learn.”

As many museum professionals know, Xer parents don’t necessarily measure the cost of a museum visit against the cost of similar institutions. Instead, they compare the museum’s offerings to the full range of leisure-time options for the household. Museums win when they find ways to “signal” to visitors that they deliver a truly worthwhile family escape that justifies and rewards the time and money invested.

Museums and today’s parents: a strong fit

The desire to fortify family and community life isn’t necessarily new or unique to Generation X. But what does differentiate Xer parents from the previous generation is their willingness to make more aggressive tradeoffs for family. The defining traits of this generation—increased commitment to family, higher educational attainment rates, and financial trade-offs—have an impact on almost every organization that serves families. Our research shows that these parents are less likely to seek their identity in work or in how they spend their dollars, and more likely to find it in how they spend their time with family. Museums have a unique opportunity to increase their share of that time by delivering an experience that connects families through intellectual and personal enlightenment.

James Chung is president of and Tara May is a consultant with Reach Advisors, a strategy and research firm focused on shifting consumer behaviors driven by changes in demographics, life stages, and lifestyles. A summary of the study, Generation X Parents: From Grunge to Grown Up, is available free to museums; contact reach@reachadvisors.com.