By Nicholas Wansbutter, Esq.
Take time with children. Love – when it comes to loving children, love is spelt T-I-M-E and this stuff about “quality time” are typical modern weasel words. Children couldn’t care less about “quality time” – they will judge how much they are cared for by how much time is spent on them.
Sermon given by His Lordship Bishop Richard Williamson at St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary on 10 March, 2002
Many children today suffer from a sort of benign neglect from their parents. In today’s economy, often both parents are out of the home working long hours. Even in the traditionalist family, women are sometimes forced to work outside the home or the men must work multiple jobs to make ends meet. Yet children need as much contact with their parents as possible, I contend, in order to learn, in order to know that they are loved, and therefore to better understand and accept that which they are taught. I think that this is something fairly self-evident, so rather than arguing why we should spend more time with our children, I’m going to offer some of my ideas on how to make that time:
Plan Ahead
Thinking ahead, and planning from a young age (high school at the latest) is of capital importance, and in my view such long-term thinking is not promoted enough. Young men should not be spending their school years just marking time and “enjoying” childhood, they should be preparing for life. One aspect of this is discerning their vocation and then taking necessary the steps to fulfil their duties in that vocation.
For the young man who’s discerned that he will be a family man, this includes not only working towards a job that pays well enough to support a family without the wife having to work, and holding off courting until he’s attained same – it means working towards a job that will allow him to spend time with his family and fulfil his religious duties. Too many men do not think about such things and find themselves wage slaves to jobs with bad hours (incl. shift work, lots of travel, working on Sundays) and unable to get out of the situation because they have mouths to feed.
It’s important to note that a man must plan for a career that will facilitate his duties as husband as father – not simply something he “enjoys” or finds “fulfilling”. Of course, planning will not guarantee a career that gives the necessarily flexibility and income. But it will certainly help. Lack of planning and foresight will almost certainly be detrimental.
For many of us, it’s too late to employ this principle, but there are others.
Start Early, Leave Early, Don’t Take Breaks
Many jobs today allow for an earlier start time and then and then an earlier end time. I like to get to work around 8:00 so that I can leave around 4. I’m trying to work my way back to a 7:30 start time to so I can leave around 3:30 and beat rush hour both ways saving even more time. The earlier you can get off work, the more time you’ll spend with your children especially once they’re in school as its unlikely they’ll have time before school for you to spend time with them.
Related to the above, most workplaces today also allow you to take your breaks at the end of the day. I always eat my lunch at my desk and take no coffee breaks. Notionally this means I could leave even earlier, around 2:30 pm, but the nature of my work requires that I spend the time saved at my desk so I don’t have to come in on the weekend.
Change Jobs
If your current occupation does not allow for the flexibility to do either of the two above-noted suggestions, start looking for other work. It may take many months or years, but if you aren’t even looking, a new and better job will not fall into your lap.
Toss out the T.V.
Television is the #1 time-waster I’ve encountered. I’ve yet to find a situation where a person’s time was better spent planted in front of the television rather than doing something else. Get rid of it or at least disconnect it from the outside world. I guarantee your children will appreciate you talking with them, reading to them, or playing with them to watching television “with” them. Bishop Williamson said, in the same sermon I quoted above, that “when [children] see dad spending so much time watching miserable sport on that miserable machine, and so little time with them, what do you think they conclude? ‘I’m unimportant. Sport is important and I’m unimportant – to my father’.”
Posted on the Feast of St. Basil the Great, Bishop, Confessor, and Doctor, a.D. MMVIII
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