“What I missed most was the childhood of my kids. I just wasn’t there for them, and even when I was there, I wasn’t really ‘there.’ My mind and my heart were focused on other things. I tried to give quality time because I knew I didn’t have quantity, but often it was disorienting and confusing. I even tried to buy my kids off by giving them things and providing exciting experiences, but the real bonding never took place.
“And my kids feel the enormous loss themselves. It’s just as you talk about, Stephen—I have climbed the ladder of success, and as I’m getting near the top rung, I realize that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall. I just don’t have this feeling in our family—this beautiful family culture you’ve been talking about. But I feel as if that’s where the riches are. It’s not in money; it’s not in positions. It’s in this family relationship.”
Then he began to open his briefcase. “Let me show you something,” he said as he pulled out a large piece of paper. “This is what excites me!” he exclaimed, spreading it out between us. It was a blueprint of a home he was building. He called it his “three-generation home.” It was designed to be a place where children and grandchildren could come and have fun and enjoy interacting with their cousins and other relatives. He was building it in Savannah, Georgia, right on the beach. As he went over the plans with me, he said, “What excites me most about this is the way it excites my kids. They also feel as though they lost their childhood with me. They miss that feeling, and they want and need it.
“In this three-generation home, we have a common project to work on together. And as we work on this project, we think about their children—my grandchildren. In a sense I am reaching my children through their children, and they love it. My children want my involvement with their children.”
As he rolled the paper up and put it back into his briefcase, he said, “This is so important to me, Stephen! If accepting this position means that we have to move or that I won’t have the time to really invest in my children and grandchildren, I’ve decided I’m not going to take it.”
Notice how, for many years, “family” was not this man’s most important priority. And he and his family lost many years of precious family experience because of it. But at this time in his life he had come to realize the importance of the family. In fact, family had become so important to him that it eclipsed even the presidency of a major international firm—the last rung on the ladder of “success.”
Clearly, putting family first doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to buy a new home or give up your job. But it does mean that you “walk your talk”—that your life really reflects and nurtures the supreme value of family.
In the midst of pressures—particularly regarding work and career—many people are blind to the real priority of family. But think about it: Your professional role is temporary. When you retire from being a salesman, banker, or designer, you will be replaced. The company will go on. And your life will change significantly as you move out of that culture and lose the immediate affirmation of your work and your talent.
But your role in the family will never end. You will never be replaced. Your influence and the need for your influence never ends. Even after you are gone, your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren will still look to you as their parent or grandparent. Family is one of the few permanent roles in life, perhaps the only truly permanent role.
So if you’re living your life around a temporary role and allowing your treasure chest to remain barren in terms of your only real permanent role, then you’re letting yourself be seduced by the culture and robbed of the true richness of your life—the deep and lasting satisfaction that only comes through family relationships.
In the end, life teaches us what is important, and that is family. Often for people on their deathbed, things not done in the family are a source of greatest regret. And hospice volunteers report that in many cases unresolved issues—particularly with family members—seem to keep people holding on, clinging to life until there is a resolution—an acknowledging, an apologizing, a forgiving—that brings peace and release.
So why don’t we get the message of the priority of family when we’re first attracted to someone, when our marriage is new, when our children are small? And why don’t we remember it when the inevitable challenges come?
For many of us, life is well described by Rabindranath Tagore when he said, “The song that I came to sing remains unsung. I have spent my days in stringing and unstringing my instrument.”1 We’re busy—incredibly busy. We’re going through the motions. But we never seem to reach the level of life where the music happens.
The Family: Sideshow or Main Tent?
The first reason we don’t put family first goes back to Habit 2. We’re not really connected to our deepest priorities. Remember the story about the businessmen and -women and their spouses in Habit 2 who had difficulty creating their family mission statements? Remember how they were unable to achieve the victory they wanted in their families until they really, deeply prioritized “family” in their own hearts and minds—inside out?
Many people have the feeling that family should be first. They may really want to put family first. But until that deep priority connection is there—and a commitment is made to it that is stronger than all the other forces that play on our everyday lives—we will not have what it takes to prioritize the family. Instead, we will be driven or enticed or derailed by other things.
In April 1997, U.S. News & World Report published a hard-hitting article entitled “Lies Parents Tell Themselves About Why They Work” that really challenged parents to do some serious soul searching and conscience work in this area. Authors Shannon Brownlee and Matthew Miller claim that few topics are as important—and involve as much self-deception and dishonesty—as finding the proper balance between child-rearing and work. They list five lies that parents tell themselves to rationalize (create rational lies) around their work-preference decisions. In summary, their findings were as follows:
Lie #1: We need the extra money. (But research shows that better-off Americans are nearly as likely to say they work for basic necessities as those who live near the poverty line.)
Lie #2: Day care is perfectly good. (“The most recent comprehensive study conducted by researchers at four universities found that while 15 percent of day care facilities were excellent, 70 percent were ‘barely adequate,’ and 15 percent were abysmal. Children in that vast middle category were physically safe but received scant or inconsistent emotional support and little intellectual stimulation.”)
Lie #3: Inflexible companies are the key problem. (The truth is that family-friendly policies now in place are usually ignored. Many people want to spend more time at the office. “Home life has become more like an efficiently run but joyless workplace, while the actual workplace, with its new emphasis on empowerment and teamwork, is more like a family.”)
Lie #4: Dads would gladly stay home if their wives earned more money. (In reality, few men ever seriously contemplate such a thing. “Men and women define ‘masculinity’ not in terms of athletic or sexual prowess but by the ability to be a ‘good provider’ for their families.”)
Lie #5: High taxes force both of us to work. (Even recent tax cuts have sent well-off spouses rushing into the job market.)
It’s easy to get addicted to the stimulation of the work environment and a certain standard of living, and to make all other lifestyle decisions based on the assumption that both parents have to work full-time. As a result, parents are held hostage by these lies—violating their conscience but feeling that they really have no choice.
The place to start is not with the assumption that work is non-negotiable; it’s with the assumption that family is non-negotiable. That one shift of mind-set opens the door to all kinds of creative possibilities.
In her bestselling book The Shelter of Each Other, psychologist Mary Pipher shares the story of a couple who were caught up in a hectic lifestyle.2 Both husband and wife worked long hours, trying to make ends meet. They felt they had no time for personal interests, for each other, or for their three-year-old twins. They anguished over the fact that it was day care providers who had seen their boys’ first steps and heard their first words, and that they were now reporting problems in behavior. This couple felt they had essentially fallen out of love, and the wife also felt torn apart by her unfulfilled desire to help her mother who was ill with cancer. They seemed trapped in what appeared to them to be an impossible situation.