Present Time Orientation

An interesting finding is how the lives of the low-income families in the present study appear to be predominantly orientated to the present time and space. Their reality encourages them to live in the here and now with a kind of innocent simplicity dealing with one immediate crisis after another. This was readily apparent in the early data collection when the parents were not at home when I arrived for scheduled interviews. When I first began scheduling appointments, I had assumed that it was courteous to allow some time after my call before the interview and so I scheduled appointments for at least a few days from the date of the telephone contact. When I arrived at the agreed upon time, the parents were often not at home. There were no notes of explanation posted to give reasons for their absence nor telephone calls as to why they had to cancel the appointments.

Sometimes I questioned whether their behaviour came from growing up in a family where calendars and day planners are not important, not modelled, and not seen as having a purpose. At other times I thought their absence simply had to do with their priorities; my study was just not important to them. When questioned about their absences, one parent mentioned that she had accompanied a neighbour to the hospital and another had helped a friend to pack her belongings in preparation for a move. Later, I reframed my thinking about their behaviour, which I had erroneously interpreted as a sign of the parents being unreliable. I then concluded that what I observed was simply a sign of our differing temporal and spatial perspectives. While I am planning for the future, they hold to a present time orientation. Once I learned to accept their time orientation, rather than try to impose mine, I called at times when I was prepared to drop whatever I was doing and go immediately to their homes for an interview.