You can’t raise kids in short, scheduled bursts. They need lots of attention, and working parents may be shortchanging them. Despite those carefully scheduled hours of parental attention between dinner and bed, these days, kids are in danger of turning into little brats. It’s not that sitters do a bad job, but sitters don’t raise kids. Parents do.
Parents’ illusion: Now many parents are starting to question whether time devoted to their children really can be efficiently penciled into the day’s calendar like a business appointment. No wonder a growing number of child psychologists and educators would like to get rid of the whole idea of quality time. Children need vast amounts of parental time and attention. It’s an illusion to think they’re going to be on your timetable and that you can say ‘Okay, we’ve got half an hour, let’s get on with it.’ Recent brain research shows that the more actively mothers were involved with their babies, talking and so forth; the better it was for the babies’ cognitive and social development. Babies who spent time with their mother but didn’t get as much of the going and the eye contact did less well. But to be able to have that high quality time, you have to invest a certain amount of pure time. Such nuances quickly dropped away as couples found quality time an immense help in juggling two careers and a potty chair.
Today it’s not even clear what most people mean when they use the term quality time. All we know is that whenever time with kids is in short supply, calling it quality time makes parents feel better.
Quality does mean quantity: Experts say that some of the most important elements in children’s lives, regular routines and domestic rituals, consistency, the sense that their parents know and care about them are exactly what are jettisoned when quality time substitutes for quality time. Experts say that the structure of the day disappears. But the structure, and the availability to one another, provides the safe arena we know as home. And kids do not shed their need for parental time when they become teenagers; the demands on parents don’t disappear; they just change. At this stage, kids may start to engage in drugs, or sex; so monitoring is critical, you will have to monitor their homework, their friends, what they’re really doing in their spare time. There’s a wide acknowledgement of the fact that inconsistency leads to kids being more aggressive, more deviant and more oppositional.
Choices for the parents: Cutting back on work hours and income might seem an impossible dream, but according to a famous psychologist, men and women can change their own lives on the spot. May be, they can move to a cheaper house, or move closer to work to cut their commuting time. Consider these choices.
May be a worker’s utopia does exist. Or maybe the office is just the way real life runs when people acknowledge what’s important to them and live that way.