The other day I was reading an article about how many mothers are working full time in the workforce. It broke it down into various professions and detailed what percentage of the workforce were women. Apart from one or two professions like builders and manual workers, in most cases, the number of women employed was nearly 50%. Apart from those one or two, none was less than 40%. In some cases, there was a higher percentage of women employed than men.
This has terrible implications for children. Worldwide, the most stable families are those where parents put their children at the centre of family life. Not those who get married, buy a large house, two or three cars and a full-time job. These people tend to make children an add on to be displayed in their trophy cabinet along with all their other possessions.
We have to work two jobs so that we can maintain the lifestyle we have chosen and send our kids to the best schools. What they do not understand is that the lifestyle they have chosen does not include what their children want more than anything else. Their parents. They are latchkey kids who have to accept the crumbs the parents offer in the parenting stakes, along with a few dollars more to keep them happy.
But of course, a few dollars more does not keep them happy. What keeps them happy is coming home from schools and seeing a familiar face of mum or dad or both.
Research shows that when a teenager comes home from school they want to offload. Right there and then. It cannot wait. When my kids came home they headed straight for the kitchen, got themselves something to eat and offloaded as they put their snack together. once they had done that and eaten the food they had made for themselves, they were content to deal with what the rest of the day offered.
If a parent is not there, they will not offload later on. They will bottle it up and stress out because they go to bed with it.
Having a second job so that you can have a bigger house and a newer car is a mistake of gigantic proportions. Let me illustrate it this way.
I read a report of a missionary in an Asian country. He told the story of two parents and their two children. They were dirt poor and lived in a shack next to a rubbish dump. No electricity, no running water and no sanitation.
Each day the children would clamber all over the rubbish dump to see if they could find anything that was saleable to help their parents scrape together enough money to put food on the table.
Although the family lived in abject poverty, the missionary noticed how happy the children seem to be. On further enquiry and observation, he became aware that despite having nothing the children were very happy because they had a mum and dad that loved them. The parents could not give them money or possessions but they could give them time.
The moral of the story is that the one thing that children want from their parents is time, not things. Research shows this to be a fact. if you give them time rather than things, the time you give is worth its weight in gold.
Satan is very successful in breaking up families. All he has to do is get the husband and wife put their jobs and career before the children. They cease to be a family and become a living unit with four individuals it. That is not what God intended.
Just one other thing. In America, 60% of black children grow up without a resident father. 80% of those incarcerated for crime are blacks, mostly male. Do I need to spell out the obvious?
I thank God that my wife and I made do with what we had and we were not tempted to make a second income essential. We had enough and two very lovely kids, who never had everything but they did have us.
And I have a car that is 18 years old that is in perfect condition so I don't need a new one.
This has terrible implications for children. Worldwide, the most stable families are those where parents put their children at the centre of family life. Not those who get married, buy a large house, two or three cars and a full-time job. These people tend to make children an add on to be displayed in their trophy cabinet along with all their other possessions.
We have to work two jobs so that we can maintain the lifestyle we have chosen and send our kids to the best schools. What they do not understand is that the lifestyle they have chosen does not include what their children want more than anything else. Their parents. They are latchkey kids who have to accept the crumbs the parents offer in the parenting stakes, along with a few dollars more to keep them happy.
But of course, a few dollars more does not keep them happy. What keeps them happy is coming home from schools and seeing a familiar face of mum or dad or both.
Research shows that when a teenager comes home from school they want to offload. Right there and then. It cannot wait. When my kids came home they headed straight for the kitchen, got themselves something to eat and offloaded as they put their snack together. once they had done that and eaten the food they had made for themselves, they were content to deal with what the rest of the day offered.
If a parent is not there, they will not offload later on. They will bottle it up and stress out because they go to bed with it.
Having a second job so that you can have a bigger house and a newer car is a mistake of gigantic proportions. Let me illustrate it this way.
I read a report of a missionary in an Asian country. He told the story of two parents and their two children. They were dirt poor and lived in a shack next to a rubbish dump. No electricity, no running water and no sanitation.
Each day the children would clamber all over the rubbish dump to see if they could find anything that was saleable to help their parents scrape together enough money to put food on the table.
Although the family lived in abject poverty, the missionary noticed how happy the children seem to be. On further enquiry and observation, he became aware that despite having nothing the children were very happy because they had a mum and dad that loved them. The parents could not give them money or possessions but they could give them time.
The moral of the story is that the one thing that children want from their parents is time, not things. Research shows this to be a fact. if you give them time rather than things, the time you give is worth its weight in gold.
Satan is very successful in breaking up families. All he has to do is get the husband and wife put their jobs and career before the children. They cease to be a family and become a living unit with four individuals it. That is not what God intended.
Just one other thing. In America, 60% of black children grow up without a resident father. 80% of those incarcerated for crime are blacks, mostly male. Do I need to spell out the obvious?
I thank God that my wife and I made do with what we had and we were not tempted to make a second income essential. We had enough and two very lovely kids, who never had everything but they did have us.
And I have a car that is 18 years old that is in perfect condition so I don't need a new one.
