Keywords

1. Learnt Time – temporality, futures planning and time socialisation through the eyes of children and parents • Keywords Time use style, busyness, hurriedness, time squeeze, polychronicity, time socialisation • Phenomenological approach based on the meaning-making processes that accompany time socialisation, • How hurry, time pressure and busyness are passed down from parents to their offspring

2. Context • In-depth interviews involve a total of 61 participants (25 dual-career families who attended parenting workshops and their 36 kindergarteners). • The narrative ethnotheoretical approach highlights how time use styles based on busyness, hurriedness, acceleration and time squeeze are constructed subjectively by young children

3. Verbal cues as socio-linguistic vehicles and streams of meaning that circulate constantly between parents and their children • Strive to decipher the language (partly shared, partly incongruent) of parental and children’s expectations • Emerging conceptual model of time use lifestyle and early time socialisation.

4. Multitasking • Adults adapt to time pressure by multitasking, in a frantic endeavour to maximise their rate of time use (Tietze & Musson, 2002) • Pressure-inducing overlap of multiple assignments and cannibalisation of simultaneous activities in a null-sum game

5. Free time • Parental individual time capital is not transmissible, but can be shared with children, as intangible, yet very precious gift, due to its rarity • Pressure on occupied time rendering family care an unavailable option (Tietze & Musson, 2002; Tillman & Barne, 2015) • Spare time, viewed as used time, not as lived time distorts quality time by introducing coercive regulations (Southerton, 2006). • Spare time – the ultimate, elusive luxury • Fuzzy boundaries between private and public (engaged, contracted and free) time

6. Research Questions • How do young children „pour substance” and make sense of the abstract notion of time? • What is the learning dynamics of pre-schoolers’ clock-time self-discipline, in the family cultural context in which they are immersed? • How does time pressure and accelerated rhythm (“fast living”) impact on children’s availability to internalise features such as patience, perseverance, gratefulness, resilience against adversity or the capacity to delay gratification? • How are emerging time rhythms reshaping children’s agendas or ritualistic time use?

7. Methodological Outlook • Grounded theory, constant comparison method • Why? To capture a glimpse of lived time as slice of micro-reality that people can connect and relate to. Sampling: • 36 children were interviewed, through face-to-face meetings at five public kindergartens, all with extended schedules and all located in Bucharest suburbs

8. Sampling • Dual-earner families • Nuclear families • Equivalent marital status • Living in a single-family house with a courtyard • Graduates of middle or higher education • Projective images and storycrafting techniques involved a child-centric approach of figurative and intuitive meaning

9. Children’s sensification of time • Their understanding is fragmentary and non-linear, sometimes contradictory or divergent • However, it pushes forward a fresh, innovative approach of simple, elementary ideas (sometimes forgotten or under-toned) that make sense and offer grown-ups inspirational insight.

10. Findings • Time deprivation and the busyness syndrome constitute unwanted inheritances between older and younger generations • Propagation of time-ridden anxiety and “a social capital of fear”.

11. Why so busy? • Many projects are put aside or postponed sine die, on a constantly expanding waiting list composed of pending or stand-by activities, moved in a horizon of wishful thinking: • “The waiting list is getting longer and longer every day: I have to literally snatch every second away from work to do chores, let alone have fun. I’ve been wanting to donate blood for a whole month now, get the dishwasher fixed – three weeks, get my dog a haircut – two months; get myself one – I don’t remember how long [she laughs]” (Diana, 31).

12. Embedding haste since early childhood • Time squeeze: • We’re like balloons pumped full of air, because what we do has no <kernel>, it’s meaningless. Still, there’s so much nothing, so many trifles to attend to, that we’re gonna burst, any minute now” (Miruna, 41) • Planned quality time as forced, a shortcut of paradoxical “planned / staged spontaneity” or as mere compromise solution

13. Why Wait? • Waiting as Pre-requisite to developing desirable personality traits in children: • Consistency, resilience to failure, tolerance, gratitude for what life has to offer, perseverance and a sustainable approach to success. • Waiting tests both children’s and parents’ self-regulation abilities • It improves goal-directed behaviour.

14. Functionality of time measurement – children’s views • Impression management, as antidote to “losing face”: “I show up on time, so people know I’m well-behaved and all grown-up, almost” (Cristian, 6). • Mnemonics or memory keepers: We need a clock in the house so that my grandma won’t forget to take her medicine” (Raluca, 5)

15. Children’s taste for philosophizing over time • Counter-intuitive attraction for Thinking about time, questioning aspects such as aging, favourite pastimes, likes and dislikes about time use, haste, lateness and slowness • Need for child-centric pedagogical designs and educational systems that support creative, interactive methods of debating for the early development of logics and argumentation capabilities.

16. Positive follow-up • Kindergarteners were eager to have a follow-up meeting, especially since they found the picture-led inquisitive approach to be attractive • When are you coming back to ask us some more?” (Radu, 5) • Concerned with how their name appeared in the paper • They got involved in story-telling about time tokens (old grandfather’s clock, sports stop-watches or hourglasses) that can be exhibits in a family time museum. • They also inquired whether they would receive some diploma or other recognition for their cooperation.

17. Time duration notions • Children become knowledgeable about time duration by relating abstract notions to concrete life experiences: • Daily habits:“2 minutes is how long it takes to brush my teeth” (Filip, 4) • Other routines: “one hour is how long my tennis lesson lasts” (Ioana, 5) • The positive side of restlessness is that children develop a strong sense of making time worth, making sense of time, of adding value to time.

18. End remarks (1) • Time pressure / anxiety / harassment are self-propagated on an inter-generational scale • Parents tend to pass along to their children their own attitude towards time, time use strategy and temporal style

19. End remarks (2) • Most likely unassumingly, parents convert discretionary time spent with children in an instrumental time, contaminated by “to do lists”, following the cult for efficiency • Gain in intellectual capacity and knowledge capital - early onset of reflective meta-cognition on lifestyle choices based on time use strategies.

20. Projective images used as support materials http://englishsongsandfairytales.webnode.com.tr/

21. Projective images used as support materials Source: http://www.crabbiemasters.com/hurry-up-kids; http://madamend.blogspot.ro/2010_10_01_archive.html

22. Thank you for your TIME!