Summer is a time for relaxation. Most people have more time away from work and more time with their families to travel or simply relax. Since most children are off from school over the summer, many families take this time to go on vacation and plan warm weather events.
While all this is fun, it also serves a deeper purpose. Intentionally investing time and energy into one’s family relationships is critical for the health of the world.
Many Christians recognize that the family is the heart of culture. On a visit to Australia in 1986, Pope John Paul II said, “As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.”
If you want to make your family the priority this summer, there are three simple ways to do so.
First, families should learn to “waste time” with one another. Ordinary, routine moments of family life are opportunities to be truly present to one’s spouse and children. This practice of presence teaches how to love more deeply. These moments cultivate intimacy and love, allowing family relationships to flourish. If more families recognized the value of these moments, the tide of the culture could begin to shift, encouraging parents and children towards virtue.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this with characteristic clarity: “The family is the original cell of social life. It is the natural society in which husband and wife are called to give themselves in love and in the gift of life. Authority, stability, and a life of relationships within the family constitute the foundations for freedom, security, and fraternity within society. The family is the community in which, from childhood, one can learn moral values, begin to honor God, and make good use of freedom. Family life is an initiation into life in society.”
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A family that does not spend intentional time together raises children who will be unprepared for social life in the world. It will also make it harder for them to form their own healthy families as adults.
When parents learn to be more present to their children, kids intuitively understand that nothing is more important than giving and receiving love.
Second, families can become closer by eating meals together. Studies reveal that children who regularly eat with their families are better able to deal with stress than those who do so only rarely. One systematic review of previous studies showed that “Greater family meal frequency protects children/adolescents against a poorer diet, obesity, risk behaviours, poorer mental health and wellbeing, and poorer academic outcomes.”
For those who already eat together as a family, though, one of the biggest temptations is to allow technology—particularly smartphones—to encroach on this crucial time. Multiple studies have found that the mere presence of a smartphone nearby harms social interactions. When a smartphone is on the table or even in someone’s pocket, people display less empathy and are less likely to bring up serious topics.
Summer is the perfect time to break phone habits at the dinner table. Given the weather, families can put in the extra work to eat outside, making clear that everyone must leave their devices in the house. This also makes it easier to implement a firm rule that everyone keeps phones away from the dinner table. This practice can rekindle relationships and encourage intimate conversations between family members.
Finally, family members can grow closer this summer by explicitly expressing gratitude for each other—and by being more honest about their own flaws. Being thankful for simple ways that family members show love to each other is a great way to spark meaningful conversations between spouses and children.
When Pope Francis visited America in 2015 for the Eighth World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia, he said, “In the family we first learn how to show love and respect for life … In the family we learn to ask without demanding, to say ‘thank you’ as an expression of genuine gratitude … and to ask forgiveness when we have caused harm.”
Looking a child or spouse in the eyes to say thank you or sorry is a moment of vulnerability that builds intimacy. These conversations are profoundly formative for children and critical to a fulfilling marriage. Gratitude and honesty are the soil that allows seeds of intimacy to grow.
So this summer, invest in spending time with your family. Because when we examine our lives and place our careers, hobbies, and desires on the table we see that really nothing is more important than the relationships of our immediate family.
Let’s use the next few months to love our family intentionally; we might just begin to usher in a better world.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.
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