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More ominous are the effects on children. "Making an appointment is one way to relate to your child," says UCLA anthropologist Hammond, "but it's pretty desiccated. You've got to hang around with your kids." Yet hanging-around time is the first thing to go. The very culture of children, of freedom and fantasy and kids teaching kids to play jacks, is collapsing under the weight of hectic family schedules. "Kids understand that they are being cheated out of childhood," says Edward Zigler at Yale. "Eight-year-olds are taking care of three-year-olds. We're seeing depression in children. We never thought we'd see that 35 years ago. There is a sense that adults don't care about them."
Adults may care a lot, but in ways that are often distorted by their own zealous professional lives. Eager parents arrive home late and pour a day's stored attention onto a child who is more ready to be tucked in than talked at. "It may be that the same loss of leisure among parents produces this pressure for rapid achievement and overprogramming of children," argues Allan Carlson, president of the conservative Rockford Institute, an Illinois think tank. If parents see parenting largely as an investment of their precious time, they may end up viewing children as objects to be improved rather than individuals to be nurtured at their own pace.
Children are scuttling from karate classes to play dates scheduled by Mommy's secretary. Their social lives out of nursery school may rival those of their parents in complexity. Meanwhile, the parents must work even harder to pay for it all. When Arlie Hochschild studied working couples in the San Francisco area for a forthcoming book, Second Shift, she found that "a lot of people talked about sleep. They talked about sleep the way a hungry person talks about food."
Thus for many exhausted American families, the premium placed on free time is bringing about both subtle and sweeping changes. In some cases, it means a new division of labor between husband and wife, parents and kids; a search for more flexible professional schedules; or an outright rebellion against the rat race. Any or all of these may force a family to make some hard and intriguing choices. Which is most important? A challenging and fulfilling job? A bigger house? A college education for a gifted child? A life in the big city?
The glib answer most often boils down to women withdrawing from the work force and returning home, thereby easing the time crunch for the whole family. But it is almost never that easy. After 20 years of studying women and stress, Wellesley College researcher Rosalind Barnett has found that alcoholism and depression in women are less frequent among those who work. Nor could most families afford to have one spouse give up working. And the American economy could not stand the hemorrhage of so much talent from its work force.