Quality time is an American term that originated in the 1970s. We will look at the meaning of the term quality time, where it comes from and some examples of its use in a few sentences.
Quality time is time spent with a significant other such as a spouse or child that involves giving that significant other one’s undivided attention for a short period of time. The idea of quality time arose in the 1970s, when women were encouraged to work outside of the home as well as assume the major responsibility for the home and children. With only so may hours in a day, women were torn between these disparate duties. Quality time was seen as a way of compensating for the lack of quantity time. The earliest known use of the term quality time occurred in The Capital, the newspaper of Annapolis, Maryland in 1973: “She gives ‘quality time’ rather than ‘quantity time’ to each task, whether it be writing, cleaning the house or tending the children.” The term quality time was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2001. Note that quality time is an open compound word, which consists of two words with a space in-between them.
Examples
But Sophia Ecclestone, two, got to spend some quality time with her billionaire grandfather Bernie on a family ski trip in Gstaad, Switzerland on Friday. (The Daily Mail)
Creating quality time with your baby can be tricky but there are simple and easy ways to build those precious bonding moments into your Christmas holiday. (Huffington Post)
“I saw the struggle she was going through as a mom and I just wanted her to have the same chance as everybody else to spend quality time with her kids and her family,” Lehman said. (The Coloradoan)