By Arthur Weinreb
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Statistics Canada issued a report earlier this week that says that Canadians spend less time with their families than they did two decades ago. Amongst the findings that have been published in Canadian Social Trends are:
People are spending an average of 45 minutes less per day with their families than they did 20 years ago;
Canadians are working an average of 536 minutes a day compared to 506 minutes back in 1986;
30 per cent of the decrease in family time results from work;
24 per cent of this decrease is as a result of people watching TV alone;
42 per cent of workers eat meals alone when not a work, compared to 28 per cent who did so 20 years ago.
None of this should come as any surprise. The concept of the nuclear family has been eroding during the past 40 years, so much so that it has lost much of its meaning. Today a family can consist of a mother and a father or, as the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled last month, two mothers and a father. It will only be a matter of time before the notion of a family will be totally obliterated to the extent that Statistics Canada won't need to bother compiling how much time "family" members spend with each other.
Part of the reason for the decline of the importance of the family is that too many people are quite happy to be dependent not on members of their family but on the state. From raising children to providing for their every need, there is virtually nothing that cannot and will not be willingly provided by the state. What do you need a family for if the government will always be there?
While a significant part of the study, most of the media reports focused upon the fact that people are working more than they did in the 1980s and seemed to imply that this is a necessity in order to get by. There is obviously some truth to this; after all the same nanny state that has replaced many of the functions that families used to perform comes at a price that has to be paid with higher taxes and the resulting loss in take home pay. And you can't increase your pay because you need more money unless your name happens to be Dalton McGuinty or John Tory.
But the longer work hours cannot be looked at in isolation and the conclusion drawn that the decrease in family time is a result of our evil capitalist system that demands more and more time from what the NDP and their union buddies call "the working people". Perhaps the most interesting and surprising statistic in the report is that almost a quarter (24%) of the decrease in time spent with family comes from people watching television alone.
Many of today's workers came of age in the 1970s and the "me generation". Emphasis was placed upon individual wants rather than family activities. The reason why more people are watching television alone is because it is not uncommon for every member of the household, including small children, to have their own television set. There is no need for the family to gather around the TV in the living room to watch a program together as they once did.
The reason that many people are working more hours is just as likely to be to be able to afford the 52 inch television set, smaller sets for each family member and a car (or more likely an SUV) for every driver.
The Stats Can report should come as no surprise and we can expect to see this trend continue in the future.
Pursuant to Title 17 U.S.C. 107, other copyrighted work is provided for educational purposes, research, critical comment, or debate without profit or payment. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for your own purposes beyond the 'fair use' exception, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. Views are those of authors and not necessarily those of Canada Free Press. Content is Copyright 1997-2024 the individual authors. Site Copyright 1997-2024 Canada Free Press.Com Privacy Statement