It has been a while since we heard about the so-called “quality time" It is a social construct that is usually included in a normally appealing speech addressed to fathers and mothers who have little time to be with their children, whose message comes to say that it does not matter so much the amount of time that parents spend with their children, but the quality of it.
The type of society in which we live and the price of what we consume and where we live makes the majority of families need two salaries to live. There are families that if they didn't have two salaries they wouldn't have what to eat, there are families that if they didn't have two salaries they couldn't pay for the new car, the duplex, the summer vacations or the weekly dinners and there are families with very different realities (almost as many as families), who also need two salaries.
For all these families (99%, I would say) a life system has been created in which child care falls to third parties almost unavoidably. Either they must be cared for by family members (usually grandparents) or by public or private institutions better known as nursery schools or nurseries.
And when they are older, or they stay with their grandparents when they leave class, or go out of school or alone at home (350,000 children between the ages of 6 and 14 find no one at home after returning from school).
All this makes there is very little time for parents to be with their children (As the children of large families told us: How can it be that the children leave school at five in the afternoon and the parents do not arrive home until eight?).
This is the current life model, suitable for all capitalist gears to continue working. Parents, working to earn money, have little free time and therefore live with certain dissatisfactions and desires. They are productive, because they work, and at the same time they are consumers to placate those dissatisfactions. We produce and consume, the perfect wheel.
Where do children get into this gear?
This is the problem, that children enter with shoeshine. We cannot put them to work (produce) because they are too small. We cannot make them consume, because they have no financial resources for it (although we can make them learn to choose what we want them to choose). This means that you have to find them a site.
Many parents, being so, see how their scale of values is redefined and rearranged, feeling the need and desire to be with their children and see them grow in their early years. This causes that, sometimes, one of the parents stops working (usually the mother) or requests some leave or reduction of working hours.
Other families, on the other hand, prefer to continue working to maintain the position, to grow at work, so as not to have to do without some things or because they consider it beneficial for children to go to daycare (and I'm sure I leave some more reason).
The truth is Very few families can cope with a reduction in working hours or lack of a salary at home and that makes the majority of children spend a lot of time with third parties.
Faced with this situation, and with messages that come from science that tell us that the first six years are vital for emotional development, it is common for parents to doubt if what they do is right and to question whether to leave their children with other people will not diminish the father-son or mother-son relationship.
For these dubious parents who, like everyone else, want the best for their children, some authors, true social callers, hold a reassuring speech in which they use quality time as a banner, saying that with 30 minutes a day in the relationship between Parents and children, if time is of quality, it is enough.
What is quality time?
The general perception that we all have when talking about quality time It is the one in which games, smiles, stories and active activities with children are shared. It is a wonderful time to interact with them, to enjoy and to enjoy with us.
The problem with this type of speech is that when talking about quality time, is relegated to "non-quality" other time or activities with children who should also live with parents.
In other words:
Where is the line that divides quality time from time that is not?
If we take into account that people learn by imitation, and children even more, they focus their five senses on absorbing the world around them, we should consider quality time all that time we share with children.
This means that quality time is:
- Go shopping: See you say "good morning", "thank you", "see you soon", "you were wrong with the change", help you put things in the shopping cart, choose green or red apples, ...
The list could become endless. There is no better way to teach a child to live than to allow him to live our life through his eyes and make them partakers of everyday life.. Thus, from our life, they learn to live theirs and, little by little, they take the reins.
The bond increases, the relationship becomes more stable, children learn from us and when they feel close to our experiences they feel full of us, with their emotional and emotional needs covered and more open to dialogue.
We also feel more linked, we rediscover the world through their eyes and their doubts and we feel able to negotiate with them from love and understanding.
Quality time or quantity of time?
The answer is time, neither more nor less. Time and the more the better (and part of it dedicated exclusively to them, of course). The touch makes love and The more you rub, the more honey. Remember when you fell in love with your partner and wanted to spend long hours sharing things with her. Calls, messages, "now I have some time to see you", the tingling and the need to know that person more.
Children become, saving distances, our lovers. They would like to spend 24 hours a day with us and yet we are being told that "calm down, with 30 minutes they will still love you the same".
I'm sorry if I touch sensitive fibers, but they are selling us the motorcycle (and we are buying it).
Photos | Flickr (pudgeefeet), Flickr (fazen), Flickr (James Jordan)
In Babies and more | Suspension in family-work conciliation and its consequences, Approved the Plan Educa 3, to reconcile what ?, To be good parents there are things that can not be missing, Work schedules and loneliness of children
In Peques and more | Quality time
