Getting the balance right.

In the Australian Newspaper today there was an article that looked at the modern phenomenon of helicopter parenting or intensive parenting.  Apparently, recent research indicates that mothers today actually spend more time parenting than their mothers and grandmothers did.  This apparently holds true across all income and social groups.  Mothers are sacrificing their own leisure and even sleep time so as to increase the amount of time available to parent and it's not just mothers, fathers too are spending more time in active parenting than ever before.  So at a time with high rates of female workplace participation women are now spending even more time than ever before in child-centred parenting.

I remember when my children were small - approximately 20-25 years ago - the catchphrase was - 'quality time'.  Regardless of the amount of working time that parents spent away from their children and under a huge burden of guilt we would all hurry home and get out the educational toys and settle down for some quality time with our little ones.  This seems to have morphed into today's findings - parents, especially mothers spend more time parenting regardless of income, education or social background and the findings now suggest that this hothouse environment may be detrimental to our children and to families - more and more stress is being placed on young families and on small children.  

I always wondered what happened to all the time we gained through 'labour-saving devices' and the rise in the out-sourcing of the various household tasks, now we have the answer! More time is spent on active parenting in Australia than any other OECD country and this is more than when we had the old-fashioned male breadwinner/female home-maker family type. There is a word of caution however, the research seems to suggest that this leads to added stress on parents and children so perhaps this may not be the best investment of our time - maybe we should invest in more sandpits and less educational toys and let our children get dirty and learn by themselves through experimental play rather than organised activities like little gymnastics and ballet classes for toddlers - may be children would rediscover the wonder of their imaginations and parents might get a chance to put their feet up. Just a thought.