ideas & inspiration

Sex and the working parent

by Katrina on October 29, 2010

Has your sex life taken a hit since your first child was born? Sex is one of the many casualties of an over-busy life. After an informal poll of my friends, I’ve come to believe that being busy has a different impact on the libido of men and women. I believe it looks something like [...]

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Guerrilla art: “Women are heroes”

by Katrina on October 25, 2010

JR is a 27-year-old guerrilla artist whose work has appeared all over the world. The video below shows one of his recent projects called “Women Are Heroes.” I first heard about it when JR won the TED Prize* last week. Never in a million years would I have thought that getting women who had been [...]

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Technology CAN be your friend

by Katrina on September 14, 2010

I work in a technology-related field, and I am consistently disappointed by how the same technology that is supposed to liberate us often ends up enslaving us. Smart phones, lap tops, and social media have made it “possible” for many of us to work all the time. Gee, thanks. So today, I’m logging into my [...]

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Your boss needs this book!

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by Katrina on September 2, 2010

Today’s workplace is profoundly out of sync with today’s workers. Longs hours, rigid schedules, and lack of parental leave was (sort of) fine, as long as one parent (usually mom) stayed home with the kids. Now that about 70% of mothers in the U.S. work, let’s agree that this system is officially broken. Why don’t [...]

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Starting a mother-friendly campaign at work

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by Katrina on August 16, 2010

A few weeks ago, someone named Sarah* left a comment on my blog saying she was starting a “mother-friendly campaign” at work. I’d never heard of such a thing. A mother-friendly campaign? What does that look like? Is it for coworkers? HR? Company executives? New mothers? Is it about changing attitudes, or policy, or both? [...]

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Sunday Night Blues

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by Katrina on August 1, 2010

I would get it every Sunday. It would start in the late afternoon, a sadness laced with dread, a weight pressing lightly on my chest. As the evening wore on, the feeling would get stronger, the weight on my chest heavier, until I tucked the kids in bed. Only then could I fully contemplate the [...]

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Work-life balance: Finding the Swede spot

by Katrina on July 26, 2010

A quiet revolution has been taking place in Sweden for 15 years, affecting everything from the gender pay gap to workplace culture to relationships between parents and children. It all started at home. Here’s a link to the fascinating New York Times story about this phenomenon. Now here’s my distilled version—with original illustrations! This Swedish [...]

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This is part of a series of posts about how working couples share the under-the-radar chores that, taken together, represent the “psychic burden” of parenting. Be sure to read these parts first: Part I. Survey results Part II. Why it’s fair Part III. Why it’s not fair My last post explored how parents (mostly moms) [...]

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Who clips the nails? (Part I. Survey results)

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by Katrina on July 14, 2010

This is the first of a series of posts about how working couples share the under-the-radar tasks that, taken together, represent the “psychic burden” of parenting. Even though studies show fathers are changing more diapers and folding more laundry than ever, mothers are still bearing most of the “psychic burden” of parenting—the scheduling, organizing, and [...]

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Several of my friends have been talking about a story that appeared earlier this month in New York Magazine called “All Joy and No Fun: Why Parents Hate Parenting.” Do parents hate parenting? According to the story, studies show that Parents are as happy or less happy than their non-parent counterparts everywhere except Denmark. Mothers [...]

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