We had a great show today on the SMS discussing spending quality time with the family, although I will admit that I had a personal struggle finding myself in the story. But this view stems entirely from my experiences as a child.

What is quality time spent with family? My parents are on retirement and live in Koforidua. We have not seen in nearly three years but talk periodically over telephone. Is that quality time too? Perhaps it is true that more and more middle-class parents are spending less time with their family, and the possible cause of this situation could be varied.

For me, quality time connotes a certain emotional connect to family. A fondness… an unending desire to be with someone or people you love. As in time spent by a husband with wife, a brother with sister, you with your best friends, or parents with their children. In essence, it is a feeling that is founded on familiarity and a sense of belonging… of being wanted. It is reciprocal. If you follow my drift, the obvious conclusion should be this; that where there is discord there is dissonance. You won’t want to indulge in what you don’t enjoy.

I grew up in the age that ushered-in the Nintendo, Mario, Tetris and color TV. I was there when the chaskele stick gave way to the joy stick. Some of my rich friends spent most of their childhood stuck away in boarding schools. In fact, some started nursery when they were still babies! Their family was friends and teachers at school. And friends and teachers do better at teaching competition and ambition than quality time spending with daddy and mommy. I wonder what “quality time” means to them.

My father was the hardest working man. He almost always came home from work a little too late, was the last to sleep and first to wake up in the morning. Occasionally we will enjoy a ride in his car if he picked us up from school, but he’d immediately rush-off to work to finish some pending business. You see, daddy lost both parents when he was just about four years old, so I would imagine that such luxuries as spending quality time with family was not quite a pressing priority to him.

In a sense, the chickens came home to roost.

My view is that some of the perceived symptoms of this deficiency, such as unbridled ambition, the compulsive drive to hit the career pinnacle, the desk time spent on meeting that deadline, or the excuse of pleasing the boss so one can stay afloat the choppy waters of Ghana’s job market, could really be a way of saying… time chatting and idling with you guys is pretty much a fleeting ideal.

I think that if we want husbands and wives to enjoy making time for, and spending time with family, it should be consciously inculcated into children. The motivation for finishing the homework should be “so we can take a family walk together, or talk”… not so you can play with the computer. I will suggest a book by a renowned psychologist, Dr. Amos Wilson (of blessed memory); The Developmental Psychology of the Black Child. You may find it useful to this subject. It helped me come to terms with my situation.

Author: Sedem Ofori.
(Producer)