Old-fashioned parenting proves productive, researcher says

PROVO — Family time and meals together are two factors that can help rescue parents and children from the "toxic combination" of cultures geared toward individuality, competition, super-sized consumerism and "kids-are-fragile" therapeutic thinking, said Dr. William J. Doherty, a family therapist, educator and researcher.

"It's good to spend time together as a family, and it's good to eat together. Write this down; you heard it here," Doherty said Thursday night at Brigham Young University, having fun emphasizing seemingly old-fashioned values as newfound techniques.

"Researchers are showing that this kind of 'older wisdom' is really quite important — and young parents raising children believe it," he said. "But it's hard to practice. When you lose your family meals, it's hard to get them back."

Doherty, director of the marriage and family therapy program at the University of Minnesota, spoke on "Parenting Wisely in a Too-Much-of-Everything World" in the fifth annual lecture of BYU's Marjorie Pay Hinckley Endowed Chair in Social Work and the Social Sciences. Parents packed the Hinckley Center Assembly Hall for the lecture, and an overflow crowd gathered across campus in the Kimball Tower to watch a broadcast of Doherty's address.

"I think we think we need a lot to make us happy," said Doherty, adding "there's so much to offer our children that wisdom and balance is difficult ... and in the process, children grow up too fast."

Early in his lecture, Doherty showed a video segment when a TV crew followed a family around for a weekday afternoon and evening. Within five hours, the three children had managed to squeeze in a total of eight after-school activities, as well as snacks, separate dinners, homework and getting shuttled to and from practices and lessons.

While studies have shown that extracurricular activities have some positive impact on the academic, social and psychological development of a child, Doherty cited other studies that say an overload of such activities has a much greater negative impact.

He also cited national and multinational studies that show family meal time is a strong predictor of academic and psychological adjustment in children in teens — better than time in school, sports or cultural arts, and helping to decrease future involvement in alcohol, drugs, promiscuity, depression and eating disorders.

Making changes to emphasize family time and meals together is difficult but doable, Doherty said.

"It takes courage, it takes vision, it takes values, and it takes community values," he said.

E-MAIL: taylor@desnews.com