The old guilt trip

A recent survey on working parents around the globe says they spend just half an hour a day with their children. Though this sounds shocking, what8217;s the solution to the work vs stay-at-home debate? There are no easy answers, especially for women who usually bear the brunt of child rearing. Their choices are brutal: Either you hang around the house waiting for your kid to get back from school only to head out for several other classes, while you get increasingly frustrated at the world passing you by. Or you deal with a high-pressure job, deadlines and no time for your kid.

In the 8217;90s, for men in the corporate sector in New York, one of the biggest social symbols of having arrived was a non-working wife. This probably springs from the fact that working mothers have been somewhat vilified, ever since women entered the workforce in large numbers. Yet, another school of thought says it8217;s quality vs quantity. Though half an hour a day certainly can8217;t qualify for quality time, a random survey done in the United States suggests that working parents are more conscious of the fact that they need to balance work and family, so they work their schedules around, as much as they can.

There8217;s no arguing the fact that parental involvement helps kids. For working parents, the guilt is escalated about five times during the summer holidays when kids are at a loose end and look at you expectantly for entertainment, while you8217;re rushing out of the house to work. However, there are solutions to this as well. A 5-year-old I know goes for dance class in the morning, arts and crafts at 12 noon, and tennis in the evening. Her stay-at-home mother scorns the concept of early burnout and feels her young child needs to be gainfully occupied. Other parents are using the two-month long summer vacation to enroll their overweight kids in weight-loss programmes. When were we better off? Cut back to our own childhoods when we had only books to while away simmering summer afternoons. Now kids have several options, even if they8217;re not all fun.