Family time
A busy Canadian lifestyle can pose challenges to one of the foundations that keeps our communities strong: families. With parents dealing with demanding obligations at work and kids managing homework plus busy extracurricular activity schedules, families are under duress.
Between balancing their work life and their family stresses, parents with young children are facing a difficult challenge, says Michele Nowski, director of disability claims and disability management, Desjardins Financial Security. “In the 2008 Desjardins Health Survey, 89 per cent of Canadians said that they feel parents who work fulltime have overloaded family calendars; 88 per cent agree that parents who work full time have difficulty finding time to relax, and, 87 per cent agree that parents are under increasing social pressure when it comes to raising their children. Those three things alone indicate a significant amount of stress for working parents, even outside of the office.”
Perhaps revealing conflicted feelings about parenting and life balance, 71 per cent of parents said they feel they do too much for their children. “You can see that people are really struggling with working full time and being able to provide what they feel are the most important things for their children and for their families. Overwhelmingly, they feel that they have to do more, and so they can’t relax,” says Ms. Nowski.
According to the study, the struggle to balance work and personal demands is not confined to parents. “Adults in the survey reported that they’re spending less and less time with friends and family members. As adults, we all have a responsibility to manage and balance our lives, but somehow or another, we are not finding the time to enjoy simple things like spending time together, walking, talking, reading and enjoying each others’ company without the feeling or the need to be doing or achieving.”
“It’s important that parents take more time for themselves and model for their children that being an adult is fun,” says family psychologist Robin Alter, who says that in psychological assessments, kids are increasingly saying they don’t want to have a family when they grow up because it is too much work. “One of the reasons people have children is because kids are fun, but unfortunately, parents aren’t often taking the time to just enjoy them.”
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