Family Values in France

Take some time to learn to like your children.

Every living politician will talk endlessly about helping out families, about their over-arching concern for children, and about how much they understand the trials of raising a family in today’s world.

This talk is of course, largely nonsense. When push comes to shove the politicians will almost always choose to support oil producers or real-estate developers before spending money on real families.

France though has found a brilliant way to support families: create a society where they can spend time together.

For instance:

• in almost every town most businesses shut down for lunch between 12:30 pm and 2:00 pm. Many people choose to spend that hour and a half in a local café or restaurant, but an equal number walk home, and have a nice lunch with their spouses or children. Every weekday has a time built in for families to sit down together.

• Almost every business shuts down by 7 or 8 pm, and the latter is really limited to big box stores, or corner groceries. Because almost all businesses shut down in the early evening, parents are home to have dinner with their children. Evenings are spent with family, not working.

• Sundays, despite dramatic declines in the number of people who attend church, are still a day of rest. Supermarkets might be open in the morning, then close for the rest of the day. Everything else except for bakeries are closed all day on Sunday. Families get most or all of a day off every week, and can spend those relaxed, non-shopping hours with their children.

• Holidays are actually days when the whole country closes their doors and everyone gets a day off together. The point of this is that when everyone has the same day off there’s absolutely no expectation that people will feel obliged to work, even at overtime rates. Instead, you see families out for a walk, or a bike ride, or just hanging out in the sun and enjoying the day. And again, it’s relaxed, and laid back, and avoids the “Oh my God its a Holiday and we HAVE to do something or its wasted!” dynamic.

Obviously there are always some people who still work, and some businesses (especially the boulangeries that provide the daily bread) that remain open, but for the vast majority of the population there’s time, lots of time, to spend with their family, to eat long lazy meals, to enjoy each other’s company.

I haven’t looked at the numbers, but my sense is that children have less issues, as do their parents. That sense of safety and belonging is what builds a community that’s relatively free of antagonism and hostility.

None of this is the only solution, but if our political leaders really wanted to help out families and children they really only need to do one thing: change the rules so that people can have big chunks of time to spend with their family.

Now the big reveal. When I was a kid growing in Kelowna in the 60s we also went home for lunch every day, and all of the stores were closed on Sunday, and on Wednesday afternoon, and on holidays everything stayed closed and everyone had a whole day off.

I’ll admit that when stores like London Drugs battled the BC government to get rid of the Lords Day Act I was a cheer-leader. Now that I look back at life in Vancouver today I have to think that I was badly mistaken.

More shopping, it turns out, means less time for family.