Recently while I was at a friend’s birthday breakfast in Cape Town, South Africa, where I spend a few months every year, I spoke with 10 women about their most pressing parenting concerns. I was curious about whether their issues would be similar to those that my friends and I face in New York.

Sure enough, many South African mothers are struggling to instill in their children a sense of familial and communal duty. They are working to find ways of combating rampant materialism. They are trying to give their children space and freedom while vigilantly making sure they are safe. They are concerned about their children’s activities on Facebook and about the way that technology is dominating their children’s lives. At some point, though, I asked how many of the women eat dinner as a family each night. I almost fell off my chair when all of them said they did. This is not to be confused with mothers sitting down while their children eat dinner, as I do with my crew on most nights. In these homes, almost every night, both parents sit down with all the children and eat dinner as a family. And not just for 10 minutes. They sit down for a salad, for a main course, and sometimes for dessert.

While I was floored by this seemingly common exercise in domesticity, they were nonplussed, quickly teasing each other about the different times families sat down to eat, which ranged from 6 to 8 p.m.

This is my 10th year of spending a few months in South Africa, the country where my husband was born and raised. And each year, without fail, I am struck by how much insight I gain into my own family and my approach to parenting by spending a chunk of time in a different country. There’s nothing like new surroundings to put your old surroundings into perspective.

After a few months in Cape Town, I typically find myself craving the urban grittiness of New York — for the congestion and the honking, and for the ultimate duality that brushes anonymity against forced intimacy with strangers you encounter on the subway, at the playground swings, and in supermarkets.

As my children grow older, though, I also find myself captivated with certain aspects of the South African way of life — and I’m determined to bring them back with me on the plane to JFK. It’s not just the family dinners, which, according to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, increase the odds of children eating healthier meals, having increased language and literacy, achieving better grades, and staying clear of cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana.

Since I have been here, I have yet to see a BlackBerry, that addictive device that allows you to be connected to your e-mail wherever you go. And it’s not because there’s some other handheld device that’s more popular in the Southern Hemisphere, or because the efficiency that e-mail facilitates hasn’t impacted life here. It certainly has: School newsletters are sent via e-mail. Articles and jokes are forwarded from friend to friend. Itineraries are confirmed. Dinners and birthdays are arranged. Sometimes, instead of email, people text each other on their telephones to quickly arrange playdates, confirm plans, and convey thanks.

But you don’t see what I feel has become a widespread problem — almost an epidemic — in New York. Mothers at nursery and elementary school pickups checking their BlackBerrys instead of hugging their children. Parents of adolescents too busy reading their email and surfing the Internet to suggest to their children a short bike ride or a game of chess. I often hear people express frustration at trying to have a decent conversation with a spouse who is too busy in front of the computer or on a cell phone. These same people then wonder why their children are addicted to Facebook and Nintendo. Ever heard the expression “Monkey see, monkey do”? Now I know full well that the BlackBerry, Treo, and other handhelds enable working parents to comfortably leave the office and attend a school function. Cell phones and e-mail have given people enormous flexibility and freedom. I myself purchased one so that I don’t need to be tied to my house on days when I am working on this column.

But let’s face it. New Yorkers are addicted to the instantaneous rush of e-mail. And being away from it, even for a few hours, has become difficult. And not just because of work — although that’s the excuse we use.

I’m not a particularly religious person. Faith does not come naturally to me and the idea of any sort of ritualized Sabbath seems foreign. But I am enamored with the idea of somehow forcing my family to put down the BlackBerrys, turn off the computers, shut off the televisions, and eat together as a family more often. If it’s not for dinner each night, then breakfast or lunch on the weekends.

If you knew that turning off the technology would improve the quality of your family life, would increase the odds of hearing about your children’s concerns, would likely result in you and your children being healthier and happier — wouldn’t you try it? It doesn’t matter if it’s on Saturday or Sunday. Or even if it starts with a few hours on a Tuesday or a Friday afternoon. We have to acknowledge that family life in our city is eroding, and that reclaiming it won’t happen naturally. It’s going to be a fight. But it’s a fight worth fighting.

sarasberman@aol.com