In today’s world, individuals have become accustomed to spending their time with others rather than with families. This has evolved for various reasons and impacts can be seen on both people themselves who are doing so and their families.
There is no doubt that today spending time with family is declining due to different factors. The main reason for decreasing family time is the increased standards of living, making individuals to study and work in cities and towns far from their homes so that breadwinners seek better opportunities in other areas. Domestically, it means that studying or working in other areas on the weekdays and returning back home on the weekends, while in other times people have to stay abroad for months and years on an international scale. The increasing need to multitask is another reason why people nowadays are spending less time with their family members. More and more people, for example, are demonstrating enthusiasm to do a number of tasks simultaneously, be it a business in addition to their primary job or education, or a hobby such as an e-business, taking piano lessons or going to the gyms or fitness clubs, which are making the doers of those activities less present in family settings.
Unfortunately, such a long time apart brings various consequences for people themselves and their families, homesickness and problems with relationships with family members. Homesickness often comes after a long time apart from family and missing parents, siblings and relatives, leads to anxiety and depression. If such people cannot recover quickly, they may encounter even more serious problems in their studies or work such as a vicious cycle. As for their families, this weakens family bonds, since decreasing the degree of communication and interactions with each other. For instance, while it may not be seen seriously in children when not seeing their father regularly, as they only miss them and cannot understand the whole situation accurately, it greatly affects couples, and even may end up with divorce, with the weakening relationship between themselves.
In conclusion, because of the general need to provide for the family and personal achievements, this trend of spending less time with family is becoming norm. However, if strong family bonds are maintained, families should consider that meaningful communication between themselves is somehow sustained.