Actress Meg Tilly on how parenting has changed

Film lovers of the ‘80s will remember when B.C.-raised
Meg Tilly shot to prominence playing the bereaved Chloe in
The Big Chill. Two years later, she earned an Oscar nomination
for the title role in Norman Jewison’s Agnes of God. After a
25-year acting hiatus spent raising three children (now 28,
26 and 22), Meg has filled her empty nest with a plum role
on Global TV’s World War II hit, Bomb Girls. At 53 and on
the verge of becoming a grandmother, Meg shares with
ParentsCanada how she thinks parenting has changed.

“I think access to the Internet and technology has really
changed home life. There is a lot of side-by-side play where we
might be together, but we’re not interacting. When my children
were really young they were allowed 30 minutes of TV Friday,
Saturday and Sunday. If they wanted to, they could pool their
hours and watch a movie instead. When kids came, they’d play
outside. You’d call someone and talk on the phone, their voice
would resonate. You could hear how someone was doing. Today
we text, it’s less intimate. You have to work at interacting. With
my own family, we started playing board games and going for
walks to be more connected, but the minute we returned home
– boom! – it was back to the parallel play.”

Originally published in ParentsCanada magazine, February/March 2013.