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Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

economist.com

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Re: Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

#201

Post by fleitz »

yourapostasy wrote: post #194
robertwiblin wrote: post #64

"One of Galinsky's more surprising findings centered around a question she posed to both children and parents: "If you were granted one wish to change the way your mother's/your father's work affects your life, what would that wish be?" Some 56 percent of parents anticipated that their children would want more time with their parents and for their parents to spend less time at work, yet only 10 percent of the childre…

I see this as an indictment of the common business management tactic world-wide to externalize the costs of rising expectations placed upon employees, without compensation, under the "do more with less" rubric. When even the children can see what is plainly in front of them, and express in honest language that their parents are bringing home work responsibilities and concerns, then the economic platform should be re-…

I find one of the most effective ways to do more with less is to ignore work after work, enjoy my life and show up the next day well rested and not stressed.

If it's important you'll get a call. When I do work at a place that prides itself on people being available around the clock, i'll delay send / reply to something right before bed and then plugging in my phone in another room.

Gives the appearance of working the most hours, interrupts other people / ruins their sleep, doesn't really affect my life in any material way.

Re: Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

#202

Post by pbhjpbhj »

teilo wrote: post #121

The amount of time parents spend with their children is certainly a factor in the well-rounded upbringing of a child, but it is a poor metric by itself. Children need parental involvement, parental accountability and discipline, and good parental examples to follow. If the latter two are lacking, the first is largely irrelevant.

Agreed with the proviso that it's not just "with" but "caring for". You can be with them and not engaging in any way. You can be caring for them without being directly engaged with them (eg supervising a playpark visit).

Re: Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

#203

Post by fleitz »

timthelion wrote: post #135
watwut wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is, only angry and negative people voice their opinions and positively minded people don't. If you look at threads about something else, (say economy or politics) there are typically both optimostic and pessimistic people and even some discussions between those groups. When it comes to parenting and children, positive opinions are rarely heard.

Are you angry and negative about the negativity of the opinions expressed on the internet?

^ This.

Re: Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

#204

Post by dexterdog »

DoubleCribble wrote: post #58
junkscience2017 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't get my kids out of the house. I try. All of their friends are on SnapChat and/or Steam games. No one leaves their rooms. It is really depressing. Kids are not getting fresh air anymore.

Mystery power outages that seem to hit only our house have been known to occur in my neighborhood on fine weather days. It's like a ghost in the breaker box or something...

I just shut off the wifi and turn off the data on their phones

Re: Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

#205

Post by fleitz »

rconti wrote: post #196
Consultant32452 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Work demands are higher than ever I suspect you meant this within the context of your own life, but historically that's almost certainly untrue. 50 years ago you likely would've had a job doing much more grueling work in less comfortable conditions. Conversely, your ex-wife would not have had an income producing job at all and after the age of 4-5 would've sent the kid outside for significant portions of the day.

More grueling work, but likely left AT work. No bringing work home with you. Likely less job stress at home as well, though it might be replace by financial stress.

'grueling' is key. Since I don't do any 'real' work I need to go to the gym pretty regularly to keep my mind / body sane.

Re: Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

#207

Post by mod »

valuearb wrote: post #151
mod wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That first one (the only one I read) is such a nightmare. Just wow. I live in the boonies and my kid gets to roam far and wide by himself. There's some risk involved, but it's never crossed my mind that I'm being negligent. I think it would be more negligent to keep him indoors--not that it could qualify as criminally negligent in any sane universe.

When I was 6 years old my mom used to let me ride my bike all over town (a 5 mile jaunt) all day long. When I was 8, me and my friends used to walk 4 miles to school to play basketball, then spend rest of day playing in woods. Eventually when I was around 13 one of my friends lost an eye due to our experiments with explosives, but other than that we all survived. Maybe I should call CPS on my mom. What's the statute…

I used to go to my friend's house when I was 8. It was through the woods, across the railroad tracks, and about 2 miles down a fairly busy residential road with no sidewalks. By 13 I went anywhere I wanted. Even on the city bus or whatever.

Most of my life the rule was "be home by dinner" (6pm)

Also I stayed home alone and watched my little sister after about age 11. I had a single father.

My friends and I also played with explosives--we got into one buddy's father's black powder stash--but the only casualties were one guy's eyebrows. And his pride, once his mother noticed.

Re: Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

#208

Post by mattgreenrocks »

fleitz wrote: post #201
yourapostasy wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this as an indictment of the common business management tactic world-wide to externalize the costs of rising expectations placed upon employees, without compensation, under the "do more with less" rubric. When even the children can see what is plainly in front of them, and express in honest language that their parents are bringing home work responsibilities and concerns, then the economic platform should be re-…

I find one of the most effective ways to do more with less is to ignore work after work, enjoy my life and show up the next day well rested and not stressed. If it's important you'll get a call. When I do work at a place that prides itself on people being available around the clock, i'll delay send / reply to something right before bed and then plugging in my phone in another room. Gives the appearance of working the…

> I find one of the most effective ways to do more with less is to ignore work after work

It's a shame that the concept of "having a life" as we pejoratively said in the 90s seems to have been forgotten.

Re: Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

#209

Post by dragonwriter »

Spooky23 wrote: post #160
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Do you really think most unmarried families have both mother and father in the household, though? Regular contact with the father would be a lot more difficult if he's not around except on weekends.

Poor working class people? Absolutely. It's impossible to get many benefits like WIC, rent assistance, heating assistance, etc if you are married, and it's difficult to afford childcare if mom is working and family cannot chip in, especially when you consider that many industries don't provide full-time jobs or sick time. It's cheaper for mom to stop working due to the child and bridge the gap with public assistance…

> It's impossible to get many benefits like WIC, rent assistance, heating assistance, etc if you are married

Well, more accurately, it's more difficult if you are married to someone who had income because it affects the means test. Of course, for many of those you can't get them unless you identify and secure a child support order against the parent of your children, and then that child support is also treated as income in the means test for the program, so just staying unmarried (with it without cohabiting) doesn't actually solve the problem.

Re: Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago

#210

Post by alkonaut »

Chickenality wrote: post #168
el_benhameen wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to do this, but my one hangup is the lack of a decent camera. I know that I probably don’t need to document my kid’s life as much as I do, but I do like being able to share moments with my own parents, who live a ways away. How did you handle this aspect of the change? Do you carry a dslr or point and shoot, or do you just go without (or have flip phone cameras improved a ton since my last one)?

Maybe just commit to removing the most attention-grabbing apps from your phone? Seems like a good way to keep the aspects of your phone that you value while getting rid of the ones that you don't.

Yeah a time schedule or a really long and cumbersome unlock password for social media and web browser would really help. But then you need that recipe for dinner and you think "this is stupid, I'm an adult, I can handle this" and you remove it.
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