My friend suggested that farm life was the best place for the perfect marriage of quality time and quantity time. All his growing up years, when he was not in school or playing sports, he was working side by side with his father on the farm. He and his dad had lots of time to work together, talk together and truly become best friends. And at lunch and at the end of sunrise to sunset work, they sat together at meals with the rest of the family or played games. My friend had an incredible relationship with his parents, and was already planning on how he might build such a relationship with his children, even though he was planning to be a school teacher and football coach.
As I have thought about, lived and counseled others on the importance of time with family, I have often thought about how times have changed and how, given that relatively few of us now have the family farm experience, we can make our time with our children as high quality as if we had been on the farm.
Quantity Time
The interesting thing about time is that it is the great equalizer. Every person has precisely the same amount of time - 128 hours each week - in which to live life. All of us, however, have to use that time differently. Some fathers work long hours away from home. Of those, some have partners who work outside the home; others have partners who are stay at home moms. Other dads are stay at home dads. Yet others are single fathers and many others are non-custodial fathers who have court-imposed restrictions on the time they have with their children. And other fathers have two families: children who live with a custodial mom and children or step children with a new partner. So while our situations and time commitments are different, every dad wants enough time to create quality relationships with their children and families.The quality time versus quantity time debate is perhaps not as black and white as it once was. As you think about the "all or nothing" dichotomy, you can see quickly that lots of poor quality time is not a good choice, but neither is high quality time that is only minutes a day. So, as most parents have come to understand, finding the balance between quality time and quantity time is the key to success.
