“Family time” is often uncritically accepted as a uniform, coherent concept and a universally desirable goal. In order to fully understand the meaning of family time in experience, interviews were conducted with parents in 17 dual‐earner and 11 single‐parent families, and 8 observation episodes were done with 4‐ and 5‐year‐old children in childcare. What emerged was a dramatic discordance between the expectations and experiences of family time. Although families have held on to an expectation of a positive experience of togetherness, they are typically left with a feeling that there is never enough, that it is in the service of children, and that they are duty‐bound by it. There is a structural contradiction between the ideals and experience of family time that is typically expressed through disillusionment and guilt.
ࡗ Family Theory Versus the Theories Families Live By I argue that there is significant disjunction between the way that families live their lives and the way that we theorize about families. Using the metaphor of positive and negative spaces from the art world, I argue that there are many negative spaces in our theorizing-everyday family activities that take up considerable time, energy, and attention but that are poorly represented in our theorizing about families. Specifically, there are three negative spaces that call out for more attention, including the realm of spirituality, emotions, and myths; activities related to consumption; and time and space.This paper is about the disjunction between the theories that scholars create to explain families and the implicit theories that families live by. Implicit theories are the inherited practices, codes, beliefs, and traditions that shape what families do on a daily basis but that are often hidden from view. When we look at any families, including our own, we see that everyday life is shaped by the complex intersection of many forces. These can be material concerns (having to do with work, spending activities, or managing our things); health concerns (having a cold or depression-or worse, a cold and depression); moral and spiritual concerns (raising children to be good, or questions of faith); temporal concerns (being old, being late, scheduling); spatial concerns (commuting, no recreation room for the kids); or relationship con-
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