Lost Weekends

There are three things that mark a typical weekend at the Howald house in suburban New York: a little chaos, last minute logistics, and an ever-growing list of things to do.

What does it sound like?

Allison: "I just need to get money and gas and then drop off the dry-cleaning."

Dan: "If you don't want to go to the hardware store, I'll do that."

Allison: "I have to bring her swimming suit over to Emily's. And I'll go to the playing field and pick up Jason."

It's Saturday morning, and 9-year-old Jason has two soccer games.
Twelve-year-old Amanda has soccer practice and a softball game.
And in between it all, their dad, Dan, needs to mow the lawn, put in the air conditioners, fix a broken pipe, pick up the dry-cleaning, oversee the soccer league and take care of some work he brought home from the office.

And his wife's list?

It's just as long. Allison needs to put gas in the car, go to the bank, do the gardening, run the laundry, buy groceries and return a half dozen phone calls.

"I'm not kidding you, Dan writes me where we have to be at what time, all day," offers Allison.

"I give her a little worksheet," he admits."

"He gives me my directions--gives me exactly where I need to be, and that's what it is because we don't really see each other."

And as crazy as it seems, it turns out that kind of schedule is perfectly normal across the country. A new study by Life Magazine concludes the American weekend is endangered.

"I think people are trying to cram so many things into their weekend," says survey editor Mark Adams. "Whereas it used to be sort of an escape from the week, now it's just sort of an extension of it."

According to Life's survey, more than half of all Americans spend more time doing things they have to do instead of things they want to do on the weekends. There's shuttling the kids around; doing the errands that pile up during the week; and then there's anxiety about keeping up with work.

"People are bringing work home on the weekend, which is much easier to do when you have a Blackberry and e-mail and voice-mail," says Adams. "A lot of people are bringing home eight, nine, ten hours of work on the weekend. That's a whole extra day of work."

Sure enough, in between spending time with his wife, Aura, and their three boys, Mark Adams stopped for a weekend check of his work e-mail. Dan Howald did it too.

"When you look at real families, you see that people are very over-scheduled with their kids," says psychiatrist Dr. Alvin Rosenfeld. "But they're also very over-scheduled through their work. So we have an overscheduled society.

Dr. Rosenfeld saw it so much in his family therapy practice, he wrote "The Overscheduled Child." He says we've lost the historical notion of a Sabbath.

"Four thousand years ago, there was a wisdom that developed that even in times of real deprivation, human beings need a day off to be quiet, to reflect, to be with family."

After all, weekends used to be sacred. The puritans created laws protecting them back in the 1600's. Commerce was outlawed; entertainment forbidden, and just about the only place you could meet on a Sunday was under a steeple.

But now it seems almost everything is open 24/7. Both parents often work, and on Saturday and Sunday put their kids in scheduled activities to keep their skills up, as well as to keep them safe and out of trouble. But something's getting lost: downtime. Dr. Rosenfeld believes that's a big loss indeed.

"I think that innovation and creativity comes at a time when you have nothing to do at all. You can imagine and create by making something out of nothing. By over-scheduling children so much, I don't think they develop those skills and it worries me.

It also worried Bugs Peterschmidt and her husband, Eric. They live outside Minneapolis. Their weekends used to be anything but relaxing.

"We always had to set an alarm clock. We'd have to watch the clock on the weekends
So five years ago, after watching weekend after weekend waste away, the Peterschmidts decided to slow down. They cut back on activities for their children, Max and Betsy, and they restricted work to weekdays.

"Now we don't do the alarm clock on the weekend," says Bugs. "I don't know about you guys, but I put my watch away Friday night when I get home from work. I take it off and I put it next to the kitchen sink until Monday morning.

But that doesn't mean the weekend's wasted.

Betsy just turned 14. She used to be knee-deep in sports and lessons on the weekends. Does she think she's missing out?

"Personally, I think that if I had to do all those activities I would just miss, you know hanging out with my friends and stuff."

Seventeen-year-old Max kicked the soccer habit, and found his true calling with a paper and pencil.

"I definitely started drawing a lot more after I started cutting back on stuff."

And now there's more time for Eric and Bugs to do what they want to do, like reading or working in their raspberry patch.

Bugs also is active in a group called Putting Family First, which encourages entire towns to turn the activities off for at least a night.

"You have the power as a parent to say, I don't really feel the need to keep up. My kids are going to be fine," says Bugs.

And every night at 6:15 the Peterschmidts do something fewer and fewer Americans do, even though experts say it's vitally important for families--they have dinner together, by candlelight, at that.

"You hope you're doing the right thing, and I think we are. I think the choices have been right," says Eric.

"We felt we were doing the right thing before," adds Bugs. "I mean the thing with people having crowded, complicated weekends is that you do it with the best of intentions.

"The bottom line is the kids love to play. It keeps them focused and together. And I feel bad leaving them out. I mean, our kids are 9 and 12. How do I tell my son, who loves sports, 'You can't do. You have to pick one or the other.'"

By the end of the weekend, most of the things on the Dan and Alison Howalds' list have been checked off. They've been wildly efficient. Alison even found the time and energy to go jogging!

But how does she feel Sunday night?

"Exhausted."

"She says she's getting the Sunday night blues," says Dan.

More than a third of Americans sing the same tune. They say their weekend activities, while enjoyable, tend to leave them and those around them exhausted. And 27 percent say going back to work makes them depressed.

CBS's Sharyn Alfonsi asks the Howalds if they think their parents were as busy.

"My parents absolutely say no," says Allison. "They shake their heads.
I felt bad. They came up to visit yesterday. I felt terrible. Nobody was home. I said, 'Did you have fun visiting with my house?'"

Still the Howalds say they'll always keep busy with their to-do list, even after the kids are gone.

Says Dan: "We'd find something else to do."