Nineteen minutes.
That’s the amount of time working parents spend with their children each day, according to this UK article.
It seems a paltry amount, pathetically miniscule against the twenty four hours a day gives. But if you minus the ten to twelve hours spent at the office (the five hour average is hardly reflective of the real world), the two hours spent driving to and fro the office (an hour each way, let’s say), the six to seven hours for sleep, the nineteen minutes doesn’t seem so incredible. It just seems sad.
The figure is an average, of course, and it’s an average calculated for working parents in Britain. But I doubt the picture is rosier for us working urbanites in Asia, given tough work demands and our ingrained working habits.
To add to the endless debate of which Moms work harder, Britain’s Office of National Statistics claims that:
A typical working woman gets nearly 40 minutes less sleep every night than a full-time mother who gets more than nine hours sleep every night. This is because she gets up earlier to travel into work every day, or spends time every night doing a long list of domestic chores before going to bed.
Hmmm. I have had the privilege of being a stay at home Mom and am now a full time working Mom. While I hesitate to jump into the stay at home Mom vs working Mom fray, I will say that I do have less time with the children on working days and find myself often too physically and mentally exhausted to play with the kids at the end of a working day. The boost from a great job (and great career prospects) is fantastic and I would not give up my work, but I hold great hopes that companies in this country will follow enlightened ones like Shell, that allow flexibility in working hours and acknowledge the importance of family plus work-life balance among their employees.
Filed under: Newsprint
