A story in the New York Times caught my eye recently. The author questions whether we really live in “the age of anxiety” as it is often said. Earlier eras might have been even more jittery than ours. Fourteenth-century Europe, for example, experienced devastating famines, waves of pillaging mercenaries, peasant revolts, religious turmoil and a [...]
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I just put together a very simple survey about working parents and stress. It takes only 5 minutes to complete. If you’re a parent and you work to help support your family, here’s what I’d like you to do: 1. Take the survey. 2. Forward the survey (or this post) to everyone you know. 3. [...]
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It’s a much studied fact that too much multitasking has the same effect on our I.Q. as a bong hit. It makes us stupid. And yet, life with young children can require, at times, an absurd, stuntman level of multitasking. I first noticed the stoner effect of multitasking after my first child was born. That’s [...]
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A couple weeks ago, I put together a poll asking people if they ever fantasize about having to go into the hospital, just so they could get a break from their stressful lives. So far, 109 people have answered the poll. Here’s what you said. 44% of you say you do NOT have a secret [...]
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Inspired by Ami’s letter last week and the many comments that followed, I put together this quick poll.* I’m curious to see how many other moms and dads would feel lucky to get, say…bunion surgery, or maybe a minor concussion, if it meant a break from their daily obligations. Please share this with your friends. [...]
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Until I had kids, I was pretty happy with my brain. It got good grades in school, held its own in an argument, memorized lines in plays, and the year I lived in Chile, it learned Spanish. It was capable of empathy, which made it easy for me to make friends. It could fall in [...]
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I have a burning question that I hope you will answer: What would you like to see on this blog? A brief history I started Working Moms Break in March 2010 to make sense of a major crisis in my own life, and in the lives of many of the women I know. I’m so [...]
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I just got back from my sister’s wedding: a small, lovely ceremony on the beach in La Push, Washington, home of the Twilight vampires. Luckily, (as you can see from this picture), the vampire threat levels were low. If something had gone wrong, half the wedding guests, who were trained firefighter-medics, would have known what [...]
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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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