Everyone says the recession has been, and is continuing to be, a disaster for families. Credit is being crunched, jobs are being lost and family charities report an increase in calls as the pressure and stress of money worries leads to a significant rise in family conflict. But is that the whole picture?

Some political butt has been kicked for daring to suggest there may be an upside to the situation. It’s usually true that anyone pontificating on the nobility of poverty speaks from the right side of the manor wall. It’s very easy to wax lyrical on the opportunities afforded by redundancy when your job is copper bottomed and gold plated. But hey – I’ve been there. In fact, I’m still there so maybe I do have the right to say having to tighten belts can have some interesting and indeed highly positive aspects.

You see, from my POV and IMHO, being cash rich and time poor has far more devastating effects on family life than the other way round. I’d say the worst influences on family life today are the things we’ve got accustomed to from a consumer society – stuff like chill-cook prepared meals, a tv, dvd, laptop and games console in every bedroom, the fast-forward, wired up, networking society. Oh yeah, I facebook and twitter with the best of them. But when my family are there, we eat together, chat together, watch films together; hell, we even take baths together (ok – husband only included in that….).

Six months ago I had an email from a man who had lost his job and felt he’d lost any entitlement to being a real father – a father and a parent, after all, being someone who could care for his family. We discussed other definitions of father and parenthood, and other ways of caring and he came up with quite a catalogue of things his children said they missed out on when he had been in fulltime work So here’s the question;  with less money and more time, what upsides could you find?