I think that many people who are old enough that their kids are adults (65+) are underestimating how busy both kids and young parents are these days. In the 1960s, most U.S. homes had a stay-at-home mother, a father who worked a solid middle class job with fairly predictable hours and adult social activities were often club, church or organization based. My impression (I wasn't born until the mid-1980s) is that kids went to school and came home with relatively little to do except homework and household chores. Kids might have been in scouts, 4H or little league, but there were few daily commitments. For some kids, including me, this persisted until the mid or late 1990s.
Today's kids are tired. Kids have much more homework (even as early as in Kindergarten), activities like sports are constant and pressure filled (with year-round involvement and practice multiple nights per week), and good-natured parents (myself included) try to constantly figure out engaging activities or experiences to help them do better in school. Social pressures and the inability to disconnect from their peers only add additional stress.
My kids (6 and 2)aren't old enough to have a severe time crunch yet, but they will be soon and I see its effects in my nieces and nephews. They are in tons of activities and, even when their parents try to limit what they are doing, the kids see that their friends are involved and they want to be too. I hope to pass along my interest in astronomy to some in this youngest generation, but they will never have the massive amounts of free time for it as I did. Astronomy will also have to compete with a bunch of other things (cooking, personal finance, basic home repair, etc.) that I want them to learn in this increasingly small amount of time.
It isn't any better for the parents. Parents, most of whom both work, are busier than ever schlepping their kids around, working nights and weekends to keep up with a 24/7 work culture and are under intense social pressure to not let their kids "fall behind". Thus, young parents in their 20s-40s aren't looking for an astronomy club to join and bring their kids to. I barely get enough time to observe, so I certainly don't have time to drive to a club meeting to hear a talk by another member (who might not even know what they are talking about) on something that I can just as easily learn from CN or Youtube in 20% of the time. The fact that generally clubs and club members are hopelessly out of touch just adds to the general impression that club participation is not a useful way to spend time.
This is why I think astrophotography systems like SeeStar are really the future for the hobby. They allow a large amount of engagement with a minimal investment of time. Some of the people who start out with such a system will probably want to dive in deeper. Learning it the slow way (like I did), as a 12 year old in the yard with a small newt and only Nightwatch to help is mostly gone.