We played the part of the cavalry last Friday night. You know, charging in at the last moment to save the day. Well, maybe it wasn’t quite that dramatic. But my wife and I provided our tag-team babysitting service to our daughter and son-in-law that evening. Of course, for us, the assignment was anything but a hardship. We revelled in the chance for quality time with our two-year-old granddaughter and nine-month-old grandson. And it turns out that’s exactly what our adult kids needed too.
“It was nice to have some time to ourselves,” our daughter has said on occasions such as that.
As parents of two pre-schoolers, she and her husband maintain a very hectic pace. He’s working fulltime and not ordinary hours. She readily admits that the maternity leave she has taken away from work gives her full access to the kids, but consequently means less than two incomes paying the bills and fulltime attending the needs of the kids. She has no complaints. But it’s also more taxing on them as a family and a couple.
What’s clear too is that my daughter and her husband are not alone. One of those national surveys on everything (i.e. based on Statistics Canada research) was released this week. It says that 20 per cent of the Canadian population has experienced high levels of time pressure. In other words, imagine that a nuclear family consists of four grandparents, two parents and a couple or three kids.
According to the survey, at least three of those nuclear family members are working irregular hours – probably on evenings, nights, on rotating shifts and/or on weekends. And since most of a family’s time is consumed with work, that means less time for family members to participate in social activities, to get out of the house for entertainment or to volunteer in the community.
The basis of the research is something called the Canadian Index of Wellbeing, and the latest report from last year, according to the CIW chair, Roy Romanow, does not paint a rosy picture.
“People are struggling to meet the competing demands of a workplace that can reach out to them 24/7,” he told Canadian News Wire. “As individuals and as a society we are paying a steep price for this time crunch.”
I realize that next to stopping the BP gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, preventing another war on the Korean peninsula and determining the winner of the FIFA World Cup, time pressure on Canadian families is not a huge concern. But, hey, when Roy Romanow speaks, I tend to listen. After all, he’s a human rights expert and a former Saskatchewan premier. And he has chaired federal commissions and inquiries into justice, national security and public health. And Romanow’s worried.
“Not being able to relate to family, to friends, to have time to regenerate intellectually, emotionally, physically,” he said, “we get desensitized.”
I don’t think I’m the first to point this out, but in part I blame the new technologies – the Blackberries and iPhones and wifi workstations. Again, the CIW report reveals that stressed employees are working odd hours. Why? Because people of all ages suddenly feel they have to be connected 24/7. They have to use the smart phone their employer so selflessly gave them. It wasn’t given selflessly; it’s given so the boss can extract more labour from everybody every moment of every day.
Incidentally, I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Canada’s gross domestic has increased lately. In the housing sector, in industry, in job creation, again Statistics Canada says, the economy is on the move … up. I suggest that’s all because Canadians are becoming workaholics and/or are working scared. Look again at that CIW report. Here’s another telltale sign of trouble. It points out that “teenagers 15-17 who had a meal on a typical day with their parents plunged from 64 per cent in 1992, to 35 per cent in 2005,” and that “attendance at arts performances dropped from 15 million in 2001 to 13 million in 2006.”
OK, so kids aren’t sitting around the dining-room table with their moms and dads the way they did 15 years ago. And live theatre and concert promoters are suffering lower box office. So what? Again, I bow to Roy Romanow’s sense of observation:
“We are social beings,” he said, “but unless you put (time and technology) into proper balance, the impact is going to be a less healthy society, one that is less caring and concerned for each other.”
So, for what it’s worth, insisting on the odd Sunday dinner or providing quality time away from the grind to your stressed-out kids may do more for their mental health (and world peace) than we realized.