CHICAGO – Free time: Does anyone have enough of it? Well, according to a recent study, some people have more than others – and those people are men.

“On average, men have nearly half an hour more free time per day than women,” report Marybeth J. Mattingly and Suzanne M. Bianchi, co-authors of “Gender Differences in the Quantity and Quality of Free Time: The U.S. Experience.” It was published in Social Forces Journal.

One of the biggest consumers of time, not surprisingly, was parenthood.

Whether you have children, how many you have and their ages have a lot to do with how much down time any working person has. Especially women:

“Parenthood affected the free time of both women and men, but particularly women,” the study shows.

Another and “unexpected” bit of data revealed in the research is that working outside of the home in the paid labor force “increased amounts of free time for men but there was little difference in the free time of employed women.”

One conclusion of the researchers is that “a triple burden is apparent. Women have less free time. The free time they have is often contaminated by other activities or the presence of children, and their free time is not as beneficial to them as men’s in terms of reducing feelings of time pressure.”

This important report is the winner of the annual Rosabeth Moss Kanter award for excellence in work/family research, given by The Center for Families at Purdue University and the Boston College Center for Work and Family.

Be sure to read it – in your free time.

Hit the road

Are you ready to take the plunge and change your life completely?

Are you ready to give it all up, take a break for a while and get away from it all to renew your energy and enthusiasm?

Well, that’s just what David Ryan did – by quitting his corporate job and traveling for two years.

Ryan is the author of “Free & Easy: How to Create Your Own Adventure by Living on the Road” (Pennywhistle Press, $16).

He is the brother of my colleague Nancy Ryan, an assistant editor.

And here’s his advice about how to approach the challenge: “The more you know about yourself, the easier it will be for you to understand whether you can make a break from your current routine.

If it turns out you made a bad decision in choosing change, it will not be the end of the world.

You can always re-enter the work world. … I certainly know that in my situation, most of the people I’ve done contract work for after declaring my independence have looked upon my actions as a positive.”

Carol Kleiman is the author of “Winning the Job Game: The New Rules for Finding and Keeping the Job You Want” (Wiley, $16.95).

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AP-NY-04-05-05 0615EDT