Once Upon A Dream

Another Thanksgiving is in the books, and the holiday feast that brings families and friends together (or quite possibly keeps them apart!) is behind us. Leading up to the holiday, like many Americans who celebrate said holiday, I reserved a little time for reflection, as well as forethought, on what I have been and will be thankful for in this life. Certainly, health and good humor (ice cream!), living in an advanced age with many modern conveniences, and definitely friends, loved ones, and family. 

Now that the gathering and feasting has passed, it is the subject of the family that brings me to cast a forward thought in an attempt to answer a question that seems to plague modern, Western families: can a working family, especially the breadwinner, expect to have a quality relationship with their family without spending much quality time (or quantity of time) with the family? 

Two catalysts caused this question to surface, which I will attempt to reconcile in my own way:

1. I like my family. I like spending time with my family, and I want to do that as much as possible. 
2. The pressures of being the breadwinner and being an active part of the working world (see this Harvard Business Review article) make me feel guilty about spending time with my family. 

Let me start by saying that children are not an experiment. For the record, I disagree with Stewart Friedman and his findings. Each person with a soul only gets one chance to go around this world, only so many turns around the sun. The opportunity to be a parent is a once in a lifetime chance. 

My belief, when it comes to parenting a child, is that quality cannot happen without quantity. Harrumphs can be shared in the comment section below. More specifically, quantity is absolutely necessary in today's world where a working parent is expected (demanded?) to feign multitasking. Multitasking is humanly impossible, by the way. Men, especially, come to find that psychological detachment from work is practically infeasible. This is why many wives feel as if their husbands are more devoted to their jobs than their families; men who want to achieve and succeed feel the pressure to remain present at work, not at home. This is the modern, Western belief as to how goals are reached and promotions are won. Again, this is my opinion, so harrumph as you like. 

Let me share an example from my own experience that proves my point about quantity leading to quality. This experience is one that many fathers, as I casually survey friends and colleagues, have found to be true: one evening, I made it home for dinner with my family before 6PM. I had a song stuck in my head the entire day which I could not place. During dinner, I hummed the tune for my wife, who has a great ear for music. She didn't recognize the tune, but my daughter did. Not only did she recognize it, she quoted the song name ("Once Upon a Dream") and movie reference (Disney's Sleeping Beauty), which we had watched during family movie night about one month prior. As a result, my wife and I were astonished at our daughter's knack for knowing a tune. Continued queries since that evening have shown that she has an ear for music. 

Even though I was not purposefully intending to create quality time with my daughter, it happened because of the quantity of time we spent together. Had I not been purposeful in returning home in time for dinner, my wife and I would not have so easily discovered our daughter's talented ear. It was a moment that I would have missed had I succumbed to the work-a-day pressure to stay late, get a little more done, fire off a few emails, and grab dinner after my daughters had gone to sleep. 

Thank God that my daughter recognized a simple tune I was humming, which led to quality time for us as a family. Yes, this is a focus group group of one. Yes, this data point is anecdotal. Nonetheless, it is as true as the day is long. My time with my children is not an experiment. And I will not let the intersection of their lifetimes with mine be so minimal or inconsequential as to be remembered as if "once upon a dream." 

This post originally appeared on dungeblog.