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Takingback Sundays

A grass-roots initiative of parents collectively reclaiming Sunday as a sports-free day.

Schedule balance into your week by reclaiming Sunday as family day.

Balance4Success at University of Minnesota

A group of students at the U of M adapts Balance4Success for college life. new

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Family Mealtime

Countless studies show that regular family mealtimes are more critical for kids’ development than any extracurricular activities.

Youth Sports

Organized sports provide many developmental benefits-and lots of fun. But with play time overwhelming many kids' and family's lives, pediatricians and mental health professionals and youth sports leaders and educators are increasingly concerned that excessive involvement in organized sports can be detrimental to kids' well being in many ways.

Media » Articles

Concerns of Children, Youth, and Parents

  1. Children's concerns: A national poll of children ages 9-14 found that only 32% say they spend a lot of time with their parents. The two major reasons they gave for lack of togetherness were parents work schedules and their own schedules.8
  2. Teens' concerns: In a 2000 national YMCA poll of a representative sample of American teens, 21% of teens rated "not having enough time together with parents" as their top concern. This tied with educational worries as their chief concern.10
  3. Parents' concerns: In 2002 national YMCA/Search Institute poll, 41% of parents reported that their children being overscheduled with activities and homework was something that made their job as a parent harder.11 A Quebec pool of parents found that 71 per cent agreed that parents don't allow their children enough time to be kids these days.12

References

  1. Sandra L. Hofferth, "Changes in American Children's Time, 1981-1997." University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, Center Survey, January, 1999. National probability samples of American families with children ages 3-12, using time diary data from 1981 and 1997. Findings on how time use is associated with children's well-being are reported in Hofferth, S. L. (2001). How American Children Spend Their Time. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 63, 295-308.
  2. Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000. Putnam reports on the decline in dinners and vacations, using yearly polls of national probability samples of married couple households since the mid-1970s. The dinner question repeated yearly asked whether "our whole family usually eats dinner together. "The percent of married respondents answering "definitely" declined from about 50 percent to 34 percent from 1977-1999. Putnam also reports that, although TV watching has increased in American homes, watching TV as a family has declined by nearly 25 percent.
  3. RGA Communications, The 1995 Kentucky Fried Chicken Family Dinner Survey: a national poll that that found that 32.8% of parents say they have dinner together "on a regular basis," 41.3% say they have dinner together "several times a week," 13.6% have it "once a week" and 10.3% several times a month. About 58% have the TV on during dinner. Other polls that don't specify "daily" dinners tend to report higher rates.
  4. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, "Trends in the Well-Being of America's Children and Youth, 1999. " Washington, DC: U.S. Department of HHS. Compilation of national surveys of teens.
  5. Council of Economic Advisers to the President. "Teens and Their Parents in the 21st Century: An Examination of Trends in Teen Behavior and the Role of Parental Involvement." Report released by the White House, May, 2000. Analysis of the Adolescent Health Study, using a national probability sample of adolescents and parents.
  6. Eisenberg, M. E., Olson, R. E., Neumark-Sztainer, D., Story, M., & Bearinger, L. J. (2004). Correlations between family meals and psychosocial well-being among adolescents. Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, 158, 792-796. Study of 4,746 middle school and high schools students.
  7. Gillman, M.W., Rifas-Shiman, S.L., Frazier, A.L., Rockette, H.R.H., Camargo, C.A., Field, A.E., Berkey, C.S., & Colditz, G.A. (2000). Family dinners and diet quality among older children and adolescents. Archives of Family Medicine, 9,235-240. A questionnaire using (24 hour recall) that was mailed to children of participants in the ongoing Nurses Health Study II.
  8. What Do Kids Really Want That Money Can't Buy? Poll conducted for the Center for the New American Dream, Takoma Park, MD. http://www.newdream.org/publications/bookrelease.php Poll conducted in 2002 on a nationally representative sample of 746 children, ages 9-14.
  9. National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. The Importance of Family Dinners, September 2003 and September 2004. Based on nationally representative surveys of teenagers. This Center's reports also find substantially lower risks of substance abuse problems among teens with more family meals.
  10. Global Strategy Group, Inc., "Talking With Teens: The YMCA Parent and Teen Survey." Final Report, April, 2000. National probability sample of teens who were asked to list their chief concerns. Teens of all ages listed not enough time with their parents as the top concern.
  11. Search Institute and YMCA of the U.S. "Building Strong Families." A national poll of parents with an oldest child between ages 5-18 conducted in 2002. The sample of 1,005 parents under-represented low income and ethnic minority families. http://www.search-institute.org/families/FactSheet.pdf
  12. Globe and Mail Newspaper Pool of 648 Canadian parents, April 10, 2004. Interestingly, only 28 per cent of parents agreed that they themselves have enrolled their children in too many activities.