Keep Time for Children came into existence in 2002 to promote the importance of family time at weekends, particularly for families with school age children. Our aim has been to encourage parents to make time with their children a priority, and to challenge business and government to allow parents to take one day off at weekends to be with their family.

Our time is the most important thing we can give our children. More than toys and activities, what children want and need most is time spent with their parents. But the growth of our 24/7 culture and particularly the rise in weekend working has meant that many children of school age don't see their parents nearly as often as they should.

March, 2009: Keep Time for Children is now launching a campaign on behalf of hard-pressed families – of all shapes and sizes – under ever-increasing pressure to work at weekends, the very time when school-age children are at home and in need of parenting. We believe that the time has come for a Family Day Bill which we are offering to parliamentarians of either House and all parties. It would give every parent of children under the age of 16 the right in law to a weekendday off each week. This right would be established through anextension to current flexible working legislation. It would address theincreasing prevalence of ‘shift-parenting’ and of young children beingleft ‘home alone’.

Download a copy of the pamphlet in which we present our case for the Family Day Bill: Weekend Workers: Part-time Parents?

We are seeking to build a coalition of individuals and organisations to promote the idea of the Family Day Bill. Please contact us if you would like to be involved.

'A future beckons of a 24/7 society in which we stretch childcare to cover round-the-clock flexibility, from breakfast clubs to after school clubs. At what point does the flexibility which employers want snap the fragile threads of interdependence on which human life is based? How is it that we have so little time - the most basic requirement of human engagement - to give each other?'

Madeline Bunting: Willing Slaves: How the Over Work Culture is Ruling Our Lives 2004