Disconnected, TV Nation
Two articles have recently caught my attention. The first reports on data from a recent study about TV viewing among toddlers and infants. The researchers were surprised to learn that 90% of two-year olds watch some television on a regular basis — most of it “educational” in nature. You can draw your own conclusions about whether this programming is really educational or not and whether it might cause any long-term harm to have your children mesmerized by TV (disclosure: our 2 year-old watches TV and I think she’s developing into a fine human being).
The second article reports on the annual National Travel Monitor published by Yesawich, Pepperdine, Brown & Russell. Of note to parents is this:
Family travel [and that includes grandparents] this year will continue to grow faster than all other forms of leisure travel,” …But in 6 of 10 households, both Mom and Dad work full time. This means they are trying to juggle all of the other commitments in the family’s schedule at the same time, [Peter] Yasewich said. “Booking a vacation becomes a Herculean challenge for them. And that translates into a growing sense of parental guilt — that we don’t spend enough time with our kids”.
I guess it is good that we’re all working hard to enjoy vacations with our families, but somewhat troubling that this activity also produces a fair amount of guilt. Hopefully resources like Parentography can help to make the process of planning vacations and regular outings more enjoyable and less stressful for parents and their families.
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May 8th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
For my family, both of our grandparents are very involved in raising our son. My dad watches and plays with him during the day (while I sleep and mom is at work). And her parents come for weekends to spend time. Or my wife and son will travel to them to spend time. And right now vacations are planned for my wife and son with her parents, because I do not have the privilege of having vacation time at my work.
We all do parts to make time for him, even if it is not always mom and dad together with our son. He gets upset and misses us when we are gone, but he seems to understand, but as in any family sacrifices are sometimes needed. And this is our main sacrifice.