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RE-ENGINEERING CULTURAL REALITY : Traffic Jams Don't Count

Domenick J. Maglio, Ph.D. Neo-Traditionalist

"Are we there yet?" is the inevitable chant of children traveling in a car. The parent driving often attempts to tune out the gibberish emanating from the children sitting behind. As the traffic flow slows, the frustration of the parent in the front reaches the point of turning up the radio. The noise level escalates and the car proceeds forward toward the destination with everyone in his own world. These times are not happy memories and would hardly fall into the bonding category. Yet today this less than productive experience is being counted as positive time children and parents spend together.

This interval of a parent transporting children is counted as significant time while time spent with Mom in the kitchen is not counted. This methodology has been used in recent nationally acclaimed research by John F. Sandberg, of the Institute of Social Research at the University of Michigan. The research states that today children spend more time with their parents than did children of twenty years ago. According to proponents, this creative tampering with reality has a good end, to keep Mother in the workforce. The end, keeping mothers in the workforce, justifies the means-a little white lie.

Let us not forget the 1993 federal study that stated: "20% of American adults were illiterate." The project director of the original National Adult Literacy Survey, Andrew Kolstad, has recently reassessed the 20% figure downwards to 5%. This "cultural fact" of 20% illiteracy which is four times less, was used for eight years to justify an activist agenda. The media's declaring that Superbowl Sunday is the day with the highest rate of domestic violence became another "cultural fact". It was later shown to be without merit. The cultural engineers: researchers, teachers, political activists, mental health professionals, and the liberal media, not to mention Hollywood, are attempting to relentlessly push the nation from the traditional to the new world order.

John Sandberg's recent study that states the amazing new cultural fact of today's parents spending more time with their children than did parents of twenty years ago is an attempt to patch-up the damaged "cultural fact" of "quality time." Forty years ago our American cultural engineers decided on new concepts to pry the mother from her child. "Quality Time" became the mantra to minimize the maternal guilt of mothers entering the work force. "Quality Time" is the time parents and children spend together doing "so called" significant activities. This special "quality" time compensates for the lack of duration of time that traditional families spent with their children. "Quality Time" became a social phenomenon that was readily accepted by the public without reservation. It became an instant panacea that seduced parents into deciding on an untested lifestyle. The script was well written, insuring the child's blossoming in a daycare environment. This left the guiltless parents additional time to explore personal and career interests.

This fantasy script purposely avoided addressing shifts of responsibility. The role expectations of parents, especially mothers, were drastically altered. Fathers were supposed to be given more domestic responsibilities while receiving the assistance of the wife in the provider role. Mothers took the brunt of additional responsibility. Besides the job outside the home, mother's responsibilities included finding childcare for the children, quelling the fears of her husband over her increased social interaction, while retaining most of the domestic work. Nevertheless mothers inundated the job market. The modern family came into existence. Simultaneously the traditional family crumbled. "Quality Time" catapulted into the status of self-evident cultural truth with hardly a whimper of a challenge from the traditionalists.

However, aging has brought the parents nostalgia for their own childhood. When contrasting their own childhood to the "Quality Time" of their children, guilt has reared its ugly head. They remember the importance of "QUANTITY TIME", the hours spent with Mom and Dad, the smell of fresh baked cookies, home cooked meals, and being taken care of by Mom when they were sick. They remember fishing trips with Dad, discussing politics, gardening and tinkering with things in the workshop.

The reemergence of understanding of the beneficial effects of "QUANTITY TIME" (the actual length of time parents spend with their children) in books like ESSENTIAL PARENTING makes it harder for mothers to ignore their instinctual urges and increases the awareness of their need to spend more time with their children.

However, the lynch-pin of the modern family is "Quality Time" not "QUANTITY TIME". When "QUANTITY TIME" was reintroduced "Quality Time" received negative scrutiny that had to be addressed. The social engineers were up for the task. Ingeniously those keepers of the politically correct truth went on the offensive rather than attempt to defend a flawed position. They redefined time! By redefining what constitutes time and dismissing once acceptable periods of time as non-time, it can be deceptively demonstrated that "Quality Time parents" spend more time with their children than did "QUANTITY TIME parents" twenty years ago. In essence "Quality Time parents" become "QUANTITY TIME parents" while retaining the special virtues of "Quality Time." By concocting new definitions of time, studies can show that time parents spent with their children twenty years ago is less than that spent by modern parents. This would be a coup to squelch any self-doubts of modern mothers. The "QUANTITY TIME"-"Quality Time" debate would become irrelevant because modern parents would not only do special doting things but now would be proven to spend longer periods of time with their children.

The results of a study demonstrating today's parents spend more time with their children than did parents 20 years ago can be imposed by finagling the study's definition of time. If "time" is defined as doing only certain things and not others you can manufacture the desired results. By not counting the time a mother spends cooking, cleaning house or father spends maintaining equipment, working around the home while the child is present, "QUANTITY TIME", would be drastically reduced. On the other hand by counting the time spent in the car chauffeuring children here and there while the child listens to a CD with headphones, sitting in the stands watching the child play baseball while doing business on the cell phone, or attending a rock concert with the child pretending to be a teenager too, or shopping at opposite ends of the mall, "Quality Time" would significantly increase.

Through wide spread media dissemination of biased liberal agenda research, a form of propaganda is produced. The cultural engineers are attempting to stabilize the status quo by creating a distortion of reality. This distortion of the truth is of course in the best interest of modern families. Parents will again be freed from anxiety and guilt. Children will retain the power to make adult choices. The economy will continue to have an ample work force. Everyone appears to win in this masterful piece of social engineering.

Ultimately reality exposes everyone as a loser in a world based on distortion and deceit. Parent's primary focus on material wealth is insufficient to sustain a meaningful existence. The lack of "QUANTITY TIME" necessary for training children to be civilized is becoming evident in an epidemic rise in childhood mental disorders. Children with absentee parents are deprived of the role modeling necessary to develop civility, intimacy, trust, and security in interpersonal relationships.

Parental disagreement in coping with the unfolding of ever escalating children‘s demands leads to domestic dissatisfaction and increasing divorce rates. The upheaval in the basic social unit, the family, eventually has a corresponding impact on the economy. Throughout history when families cease to effectively exist societies collapse.

No matter how many phony studies, statistics, slogans, focus groups or other media propaganda is produced for shaping thought and behavior, reality will re-emerge through the fabricated smoke screen. Mothers and fathers become aware of the importance of "being there" for their children's development. It does matter how you define time, as well as love, male/female differences, duty, goodness, spirituality, and courage. As social engineers misuse their expertise to promote their social agenda over truth, negative results occur. Establishing false premises for parents to act irresponsibly may reduce parental guilt but has destructive results for the child's development. When we reject reality even for what one might consider a commendable social cause, we lose our bearings- eventually ending in personal or social disaster. When we demand the truth and follow reality we will again be on firm foundation as parents to raise healthy children.

The social engineers have the sophistication to develop politically correct thinking patterns. They are in positions of power to implement then radically alter our culture. These "experts" have been incredibly successful and have placed the traditional culture on the defensive. In today's culturally relativistic world it is considered almost as dangerous to be a Christian as a member of a Satanic cult. The traditional culture that has made the United States a great nation is being challenged on every level. We are at war for the minds of our citizens.

In order to regain the upper hand we need to stop accepting political spin as truth. We must again trust our own senses and be vigilant in determining the truth. We can no longer blindly accept media propaganda no matter how well packaged by Madison Avenue, Hollywood or academia. Good parents know they need to be there with their children on a consistent basis. Not even a major university's sophisticated attempt at redefining time will alter reality.