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Pining for the Kick-Back Weekend

By ALINA TUGEND
Published: April 15, 2006

Parents and players at a children's soccer game in Lakewood, Colo., last Saturday. For many, that was just one item on a crowded weekend calendar.

I WENT to London a few weeks ago for five days and left my husband a multipage schedule for our sons' activities.

The three school days were pretty easy – drag them out of bed, make sure they are wearing clothes that are at least remotely appropriate for the weather outside, down the five-minute breakfast, frantically look for lost folders and backpacks and, with a sigh of relief, drop them off at the school gates.

The weekend was a different story. There were sleepovers, final basketball games, first baseball games and school plays. I wondered how this happened and realized how easy it was to have weekends so jam-packed that Monday came as a relief.

Usually, we aren't the kind of family to race from one activity to another; our sons are limited to one sport a season, not for their sanity, but for ours. Last weekend, as I watched my younger son's baseball coach put down his bat and trot off to coach lacrosse, I felt exhausted.

On an ideal weekend (and these are too rare), we get to sleep in, have a relaxed breakfast and read the newspaper in a leisurely manner, while the boys entertain themselves in a way that hopefully doesn't involve an excess of electronics or killing each other.

My husband's goal this year, which so far has been unattainable, is to take a nap on the couch during daylight hours.

I thought we were just lazy. Who knew we were on the cutting edge of a trend?

It's not a big trend, but here and there, there are murmurs of protest against filled-to-the-brim weekends.

Grassroots nonreligious coalitions like Putting Family First, Balance 4 Success, and Ready, Set, Relax, have sprung up nationwide as some parents and school and religious leaders aim to take back the weekends.

William J. Doherty, author of "The Intentional Family: Simple Rituals to Strengthen Family Ties" (HarperCollins, 1999) is a co-founder of Putting Family First. The seed was planted on his book tour, he said, after he spoke to a group of parents in Wayzata, Minn.

"Three hundred people showed up – it was like a revival meeting," said Professor Doherty, who teaches family social science at the University of Minnesota.

Putting Family First and similar groups plan events including evenings where all other activities cease — no homework, lessons, sports, meetings — and the family simply stays home together. They also spread the word about what research has shown about the value of family time; for example, shared meals.

But in many ways these organizations are support groups for people who feel their lives are out of whack, but everyone around them is telling them the busier they are the better.

"A lot of parents think having kids on three sports teams is the inevitable price of living in the modern world, and it's not," Professor Doherty said.

It is not just parents who face overloaded weekends. A survey by Life magazine last year on weekend habits, conducted with over 1,000 adults, found that more than half (55 percent) spent their weekends doing things they had to do instead of what they wanted to do.

Sixty-seven percent of unmarried parents with children in the household said their weekends were devoted to must-do activities, but even 49 percent of adults with no children living at home said they spent weekends completing obligatory chores and errands.

For parents of younger children it may be the sports, lessons and play dates that fill up the weekends, but there's also the take-home work that can chew up time.

Computers, BlackBerrys and other technological advances mean the line between home and work is increasingly blurred; a friend of mine says she doesn't feel she really has her husband's attention anymore until they are someplace where his BlackBerry doesn't get reception.

In the Life survey, 47 percent of those questioned said they brought work home with them (though 85 percent said their bosses did not call or e-mail them on the weekend).

Even so, it is not necessarily those who work all the time who are thought to be the best employees. Arlie Hochschild, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley and author of "The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work" (Metropolitan/Holt, 1997), found that most top managers said their best people were not workaholics.

"They don't work 9 to 5, but they're not in the office on weekends," Ms. Hochschild said. "They take command of their time."

This brings up an interesting point: overscheduling is often something we impose on ourselves, not a burden that necessarily comes from the outside. Being busy has become a badge of honor.

Listing the insane number of hours you work, the 10 weekend sporting events you've raced to, the crazy schedule you juggle are now "bragging rights," Professor Doherty said.

"It's not how big your house is or how fancy your car is, but how busy your family is," he said.

And it often seems to be something people act as if they have no control over. A mother I know complains how she misses the days of her childhood when she and her friends just played around her neighborhood on weekends — yet she books her children into every possible activity.

The grassroots groups have found that what's needed is a challenge to the way we've come to think of our lives.

On the community level, that may be persuading coaches to ease up a little. Andrea Grazzini Walstrom, a mother of two young children, founded Balance 4 Success in suburban Minneapolis because there were many parents like her who felt their weekends were being swallowed by team sports.

Ms. Walstrom's organization is working to make Sunday a sports-free day, or, at a minimum, request that coaches not punish children who fail to show up for games on Sundays or holidays.

"We're asking them not to bench them because they're having Thanksgiving at Grandma's house," she said.

Other organizations like Take Back Your Time (www.timeday.org) are seeking government help. The group wants to "challenge the epidemic of overwork, overscheduling and time famine that now threatens our health, our families and relationships, our communities and our environment."

Among other issues, it works on promoting federal legislation concerning sick leave, vacation time and compulsory overtime. (Would I be the only to find it funny that one suggestion on the organization's Web site is to "Plan an Event" to reduce overscheduling?)

No one thinks that leisurely country drives are suddenly going to replace frantic weekend sprints from one event to another, but Professor Doherty said just identifying the problem was a big step forward.

"The biggest form of power is the power to define what is natural and normal," he said. Groups like Putting Families First have "taken something that seemed normal and fine and named it as a problem." "They've created a cultural conversation."

Just overseeing the survey made Mark Adams, Life magazine's articles editor, realize he had to build in some relaxation into his weekends or "run around like a chicken with its head cut off."

"There is nothing more pathetic than having your weekend be a source of stress," Mr. Adams said.

Of course, because weekends seem so hectic now, maybe the answer is longer weekends. Life Magazine's survey asked what respondents would be willing to sacrifice for an extra day off.

More than half said they would work 10 more hours over four days to get a three-day weekend.

And 16 percent volunteered their spouses to work longer hours.