With a lot of the threads and posts that I have seen lately, it makes me wonder, are parents today TRYING to spend the least amount of time that they have to spend with their kids? I get the parent who HAS to work to feed the family and must put the kid(s) in daycare. What continues to baffle my mind are the ones who want to run around before or after work and get all their errands done without the kids, go out on the weekend (or every day that they have off of work), take vacations while dumping the kid with relatives, etc. Sure, parents need a break from time to time, but when you add this all up, the actual parents are only spending 30 - 35 waking hours a WEEK with their kids. FYI - there are 168 hours in a week. Even if the kid sleeps for 1/2 that, it still adds up to 84 hours a week (awake). That's not even 1/2 their waking hours or 1/4 of their total hours in a week.

As a provider, I was this so much. Since I was getting paid to watch these children, it didn't bother me to watch them. What bothered me was the pain I knew these children must have had from being separated from mom and dad (especially dad) for so long so much of the time. It really bothered me to see the pain and know there was nothing I could do about it.

On the flip side, it always seemed like the single moms. The 2 parent families tended to spend every moment with their kids that they could. But maybe it was an age thing. The single moms tended to be younger, while the 2 parent families tended to be older (with the exception of 1 young family that was awesome and mature beyond words).

I fear that we may be raising a generation of children not fully connected to the world because the parents were too selfish to be INVOLVED and spent much of their time trying to stay away from their kids. I worry about the ramifications of this tpe of "me first" parenting.

For the record, I am NOT talking about the occasional time away from your kids. Everyone needs a break. I'm talking about the ones that seem to ALWAYS, every week, spend additional ("break time") away from their kids in addition to work / school time away.

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