ABSTRACT
Even as the media, research, and real-life experiences prompt people to face the many problems in family life, the notion of “family time” is still idealized in American culture. Musicians sing about it. Ziggy Marley has a whole album titled Family Time (2009). Companies promote it as a marketing hook (Bulik, 2007). Buy a Dodge or Chrysler minivan and you will have a “family room on wheels.” Watch the Parade of Dreams at Disneyland and the Phil Collins lyrics “Welcome to our family time” pace the passing of the characters. People even turn down jobs to spend more time with their families, as did former head coach, Brent Sutter, of the New Jersey Devils hockey team (Allen, 2009 ). The “family thing” is so revered in our society that people have invoked the “more time with family” excuse as a face-saving way to quit a job before getting fi red (Rivenburg, 2002 ). Each year people make resolutions to spend more family time together: to eat dinner together more often, to spend more time talking to their children, to take a family vacation. Why are so many people in the constant pursuit of more family time? What is “family time” anyway? And what really matters? Is it the quantity of time spent interacting with family members and/or the quality and symbolic meaning of the interaction?
