Overload: Families today are victims of overscheduling

A decade ago, when Elizabeth Wilcox was in elementary school in Enterprise, Washington County, she walked to and from school and also walked home for lunch every day. Her dad came home for lunch, too — and her mom was always there when she got home.

In summer, the pace of life slowed even more. She was outside all day every day, she says. She and her brothers and sisters would make up games or walk to the reservoir for a swim.

When Wilcox came to the University of Utah, she met many students whose childhoods had been more harried than hers. She began to think about the intensity of life on the Wasatch Front today. Also, since she's an education major, she's been in classrooms and has decided she's especially worried about the pressures on elementary school kids.

"I think it is really a problem," she says. "Children are getting burned out. A lot of my peers here at the university just worked themselves too hard when they were growing up, and they don't know how to stop now."

Overscheduled lives seems to be the topic of the month. Last Saturday, Wilcox and other U. honors students set up a fair for families, with booths and games, around the theme of "What's the Rush?" Earlier in April at the Family Expo conference at Brigham Young University, professor Randall Day spoke about overcommitted families.

And next Monday, at the U.'s Belle Spafford Roundtable, Spafford chairwoman Helen Graber will introduce Lynette Rasmussen, director of the State's Office of Work and Family Life, who will talk about balancing work and family. (See box.) Graber says as she travels the state, she always meets women who feel the pressure of too little time. The angst is as real for today's moms as it was 30 years ago.

As for the U. students, they spent a year studying and researching quality-of-life issues. The statistics they found have changed the way at least one of them views elementary education. Brin Bon says she and her husband will probably take their first-grader out of the private school he is in now, because he is being given at least a half-hour of homework per night. "That is oppressive to me," Bon said.

Since 1981, children have lost 12 hours of free time per week, including a 25 percent drop in play, according to a University of Michigan study. The same study shows unstructured outdoor activities (hiking, camping, walking) have fallen by 50 percent. A separate University of Michigan study shows kids today spend 7 1/2 hours more on academics — homework and actual hours at school — each week than they did 20 years ago.