November 29th: Work and the Family

It is interesting to see how work has affected family life throughout the years. For centuries the family worked together until about the time of the industrial revolution in the 18th Century. When the industrial revolution began fathers began leaving their homes to work. This changed the entire family structure. The family had to try and cope with the father leaving the home to work. The father began working 12 hrs a day and 72 hrs a week. For some families it felt as though they lost their father because they were always working. Then the family structure continued to change as the older children left the family to work. The only family members that would be at home were the younger children and the mother. Then work was deemed to dangerous for children and they went to school instead. This is more of the structure we see now with fathers at work, older children at school, and the mother and younger children at home. Other changes we see know is that most fathers don't have to work as many hours during the day with an average maximum at 40 hrs a week. The real question that I think this sparks is: since we have more time on our hands with less work hours, why aren't we spending that time with out families? I would ask that we consider taking that time to have quality time with our families.

Here is a link to a video called, "By The Hour" that shows us how important quality time is to our families:

https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2009-04-010-by-the-hour?lang=eng

I would hope this would inspire us to spend more of our time we have off work with our family.