Quality family time is becoming rare opportunity in our society. This is affecting families more then we realize. In research collected by William J. Doherty, he found that:
- In 1997 conversations amongst the family decreased by one hundred percent.
- Family members were only talking to each other for around forty-five minutes a week.
- In year two thousand a national poll showed that twenty-one percent of teens felt they didn’t spend enough quality time with their parents. (Doherty 2001)
Lack of family time causes:
- Little time for parents to teach, model, and bond with their children.
- It can cause a high increase of risky behavior in adolescents, and children are more likely to have problems in school. (Bianchi et. al., 2010)
- Latchkey children. This refers to children who come home to an empty house because their parents are either at work or just constantly gone throughout the day.
- Children are more likely to fall into peer pressure (such as smoking and drug abuse).
- Strain in relationship between spouses.
children.”(Bianchi et. al., 2010)
Information about programs being implemented:
- A article by Pipper Frog showed that...
- “The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation gave $420,000 in March to the University of California at Berkeley to develop a family-friendly package of policies for tenured faculty members. The plan comprises more family-leave time; more child-care opportunities; temporary modified duties after childbirth or adoption, such as fewer teaching hours; a centralized fund to pay people on leave; extended tenure; and a permanent part-time track, both pre- and post-tenure.” (Pipper 2003)
- Ohio State University has also been striving to help faculty, especially mothers, spend more time at home. They created and implemented a Women’s Place. This program helps give women the support they need and help individuals find information they might be looking for. (Pipper 2003)
- In Norway there is program set into place to help increase time spent together as a family. The program that “paid parents to care for their own young children increased parental time with children and was correlated with increased marital stability of the couple. Government provision of child care increased the pace at which women became first time mothers, at the same time as it increased maternal employment and made it easier for low-wage mothers to meet employers' expectations for additional work hours.” (Bianchi et. al., 2010)
- In the United Sates research is now being done to discover programs that will reduce work family stress by easing the requirements to work long hours. (Bianchi et. al., 2010)
- On a personal aspect- individuals need to find time to set apart for the family. Let this be a family date where the family can go and just have fun with one another. For example let Saturday mornings be a time where you make breakfast for your family and eat together. Another thing we can do is set traditions with our family and get everyone involved.
- The society that we live in should encourage reasonable work hours so that parents can get home to their children earlier. The community should also have activities specifically for families. This could be a family fair all the way to cheaper prices to get into events when with your family.
- The government should implement a family day, just like a service day, only on this day families just get to spend time with one another. This would not be a mandated day to spend time with family, but it can be encouraged.
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