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Life Arts    H4'ed 7/11/15

Exhausted? Read "Overwhelmed: How to Work, Love and Play When No One Has the Time" [Part 1]

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Some of that guilt comes from a very strong cultural perception that working mothers don't have or don't make time for their children. Some writers in some quarters have been even more pejorative, saying working mothers "abandoned" their children, and praising mothers who've "sacrificed" their educations and careers to devote themselves body and soul to their little ones.

What I found was this: the very same John Robinson did a time-use study at one point in the 1980s that showed exactly that - that mothers hardly ever saw their children - and the press went wild with it, because it reinforced what everybody was most afraid of. In fact, Robinson admitted later that he'd made an error in his calculations. But by the time he corrected it, it was too late. And I attribute decades of angst and stress and working mother guilt largely to a mathematical error!

JB: Yikes!

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At work
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BS: WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT: So much of the Mommy Wars and these perceptions of who's a "good" mother have been based on misconceptions, fears, ambivalence and mythology.

The first thing to do? Forgive yourself. Embrace your choices. Give room and accept that others have made and will make choices that are different from yours. And they're all good. No one is "better." This isn't a race. Every person, every family gets to decide for themselves what works. And "good enough" really is good enough.

Because the important thing to remember is this: All that extra time mothers have been spending with their kids? A massive longitudinal study was released recently that explored whether all that extra time - the sheer QUANTITY of it - really mattered to kids and their development. I have to admit, I was kind of shocked when I read the report and found out - IT DIDN'T! For children ages 3 to 11, the researchers found NO RELATIONSHIP between the QUANTITY of time a mother spent with her child, and their emotional, behavioral and even cognitive outcomes. For teens, ages 12 to 18, spending time as a family DID matter - it reduced the chance of getting involved in risky behavior. But even then, it wasn't a massive amount of time - it was basically the equivalent to having family meals, or checking in regularly with your teen, which is just good parenting anyway.

JB: They've been talking about the outsize importance of family meals for years.

BS: What a host of other studies have found is that it's not the quantity of time that matters, it's the quality. And when mothers (and fathers) are stressed out of their minds trying to work all in, all hours like the crazy Ideal Worker, like I was, AND are trying to be supercharged Ideal Mothers - well, the cracks show, and the stress - and the stress hormones - wind up finding their way into our kids. And THAT is what actually harms them.

I went to Denmark, and have a chapter set there, "Do the Danes Do it Better." I went for one reason only - International time-use studies showed that mothers in Denmark had almost as much leisure time as fathers - in most other countries, including the US, men usually have more. They had MORE leisure time than fathers in Italy. And they had the most "pure" leisure, time to themselves, of mothers and many fathers anywhere.

I thought - I have to see what's going on here. And I quickly discovered that for women to truly have leisure, you have to have work, love and play rewired. The Danes work intense, but short hours. Family time is sacred time. The kids are independent and not overscheduled, so no one is running themselves ragged trying to get kids to travel soccer practice and lacrosse games and ballet practice. They so value gender equality that boys and girls all take Home Ec as teenagers, men and women have paid parental leave and eight "nurture" days per child a year each. The government has a Minister for Gender Equality, on par with the Secretary of State. And they treasure leisure time - time for family, for friends, for themselves. They have more than 30 paid days off a year. And it's not like they go anywhere fancy. Many head to rustic cabins in the country and live a slower paced life for awhile.

So - we can learn from Denmark. We can begin to rewire our work culture, reimagine our gender roles and recapture the value of leisure time. It actually helps us do better work when we're refreshed and opens our mind to make new connections when we're out in different environments. It knits us closer to one another - and human connection is the foundation for human happiness. And it gives us time to not only refresh our souls, to reflect, to connect with the beauty of the ordinary present moment but, as the Greeks said, become most fully and authentically human.

So - as a recovering helicopter mom of two teens now, I can only say - learn from my experience and DON'T do what I did. Shed the guilt. Give yourself - and other mothers and fathers - a break. Give your kids space. Embrace your choices. When you're with your kids, really BE with your kids. Laugh and blow bubbles. The dishes can wait. Good enough is the new perfect.

As one child development specialist told me: Love your kids. Accept them for who they are. And get out of the way.

JB: All good advice. There's so many directions I want to go with this. Why don't we pause here, Brigid? When we return for the conclusion of our interview, you can explain how Denmark became the progressive nation it is today and what, if any, encouraging signs you've found Stateside. Readers, I hope you'll join us.

Try asking yourself this question
Try asking yourself this question
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Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which since 2005 existed for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. Our goal: to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Because the problems with electronic (computerized) voting systems include a lack of (more...)
 

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