National Family Week

[Smithagain]

So it appears that the week after next is National Family Week.

Having just had a browse of the website, I must admit to feeling a bit downhearted. Do we really need a special week to tell us that families are special? To encourage us to eat together, play together, have fun as a family? Don't people do that anyway?

Have we lost touch so much that we need one special bank holiday per year to remember to get together with our families? And does anyone seriously think that once a year is enough?

Of course I'm well aware that there are huge issues around family breakdown, pressures of work, changing working patterns eroding weekend time etc etc. But do we honestly need a fancy, colourful publicity campaign to tell us this stuff?

Well yes, I would say that you do need one special holiday, because you don't have one special holiday every weekend, like the rest of Europe does.

sounds fun i like the idea

Well, when we were in the uk, we lived on a grotty estate, and we never had any money to go anywhere nice on Sundays (car, petrol...). So it didnt make much difference whether we spent Sunday trailing round the dirty town centre in the shops. We couldnt afford to buy anything not strictly necessary anyway.

Now that we are in germany, nothing is open on sundays, except the swimming pool, museums (free on sundays) etc (+ churches obv!)
We are forced to do all shopping on Saturday, but we also have the money to be able to go out on sundays, and there are nice parks to go to if you live in the city, with far more features and facilities than I ever saw in the uk.

So it is not just about sunday trading - it is about whether you want a fair and just society where everyone has the possibility to enjoy themselves at weekends.

but yes, national family week is just an elastoplast over a great big festering wound, imo.

So did we really shoot ourselves in the foot when we changed the Sunday trading laws? Because if we hadn't, we'd still have had a special family day every weekend.

Our school was given some free tickets to sell to the parents at £1 each for the premier of 'Night in the Museum 2'.
It was quite fun but early this morning 10am and we had to hand in our mobile phones to some big blokes who looked like bouncers.
We even had someone from the local ITV news to introduce the film, but i don't watch ITV much so had no idea who he was.
But it was nice to see lots of families from school all together in the cinema

What about the poor museum curators? Shouldn't they get the day off with their families?

looking through the list my local events seem to be 75% photo company promotions

Good for them Im sure but not quite sure how this helps the family

"What about the poor museum curators? Shouldn't they get the day off with their families?"

Yes!

We do seem to be in danger of losing the ability to just kick around together as a family, without going to a commercial enterprise of some sort.

I totally sympathise with Nighbynight's grotty estate with nothing to do. I know how lucky I am to be able to get to a decent park, a river and some woods, without a car. (Equally I know families in this town who are completely oblivious that we have any decent parks or a river, cos they've never gone exploring in their own neighbourhood).

But really, we shouldn't have let ourselves get to the point where a national publicity campaign is needed to remind people to eat together, kick a ball around a park or read a story to their kids!

And yes, I'm not sure how a stressful photo-shoot, followed by an hour or hard sell comprises a shared family experience .