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 plague that wiped out as much as half the population in four years.

OK. Fair enough. But then he points to modern day statistics like these:

• 18% of American adults (40 million) are affected by anxiety disorders
• 46 million prescriptions for Xanax (an anti-anxiety medication) were written in 2010

He also linked to these statistics by the National Institute of Mental Health, which I found really really interesting.

Here’s one of the graphics:

Notice that women are 60% more likely to suffer an anxiety disorder than men, and the age group who are most likely to suffer anxiety are those between 30-44 years old. You know, the years when we are raising young kids and still slogging through our work-a-day lives.

Hello! Can you say Working Mom Syndrome?

Yes, I know. There are many ways to interpret this data, but it made me wonder: Would these statistics be higher for women with young kids, particularly the ones who work full time?

So here’s a poll. Please take it, and share it with everyone you know. Then leave a comment below about your answer.

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. Come back in a few weeks to read about the results.

Why am I doing this?

There’s a ton of research about how time-starved working parents are, particularly in the U.S. where some experts say we work the longest hours of any developed country in the world.

There’s also a lot of research telling us how common work stress has become. Whether we have kids or not, our work stress levels have doubled since 1985.

So my question is, how is this time debt and work stress affecting the health of working parents? I can’t find any research that answers this question.

Will you take the survey?

The more responses we have, the more interesting and meaningful the responses become.

A note about terminology: I struggle with the term “working parent” because it makes it sounds like stay-at-home parents don’t work. This, of course, is not true. Stay-at-home parents work their butts off.

I could instead say “parents who work outside the home,” but that would exclude people like my husband, who performs much of his consulting work in a shed in our back yard.

I could just open the survey up to all parents, but I’m trying to focus on parents who help support their families through paid work, because they face a particular kind of time-bind that may or may not have adverse health affects.

P.S. I did a survey like this almost a year ago called “Who Clips the Nails?” asking parents how they divide up household chores. The answers were eye-opening. You can read about it here.

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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 when I started switching dates and times around in my head. I arrived an hour early for a dentist appointment. I showed for a meeting at her preschool on the wrong week. In my rush to get in the house with a crying baby, make dinner and simultaneously answer a urgent email, I left the keys in the front door lock and didn’t discover them until the next morning.

When my second child was born, it got much worse. I started losing my train of thought in mid-conversation and once, to my mortification, in the middle of a big presentation at work. (After that, I always made sure to have handwritten notes prepared in case it happened again.)

We all have these stories.

Our heads are crammed so full of details—the donation for the teacher gift, the overdue DVDs, the work file we need to resend, how to get our one kid to eat food that’s not white, how the other kid is starting to use the potty and doesn’t own any underwear, the meeting we need to reschedule, ordering new glasses for the pair we lost—that we miss our train stop, return the DVDs to library without a DVD in the case, leave our bank card in the ATM, burn the rice, and write cryptic notes on the calendar that we can’t read an hour later. We promptly lose our new pair of glasses, only to find them on top of our own head.

An informal poll of my friends confirms this is a pervasive problem. One says she showed up with her kids for an Easter egg hunt a week early. One says she finds herself driving in circles because she forgets to print the map. Another says that last week she started running a bath for the kids, then forgot about it until it started overflowing the tub.

My favorite is a friend who found her son’s pajamas in the freezer once, next to the ice cream. Right where she’d put them.

What about you? What was your best multitasking stoner moment?

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 hospital fantasy.
• 37% of you say you do.
• 19% of you answered “Other” and left more details comments, which I’ve summarized below.

What are we to make of this? I don’t really know. Obviously it’s not a very scientific poll, so we can’t say a third of all working parents have a hospital fantasy. But it’s interesting (disturbing?) to know that more than of third of the people who answered the poll have this fantasy.

Of the people who answered “other,” a couple said they used to have a hospital fantasy, but don’t have them now, and a couple said they’d never thought about it before, but it sounded quite nice. Several said no, but only because they hate hospitals or have crappy insurance:

I would never have a hospital fantasy no matter how bad things got!

No way, I work in a hospital and bad things happen there.

I love the idea of a break but NOT at a hospital. No way.

Yes! I had one for years (until I started working in a hospital)!

Yes, but because my insurance sucks, I’d have to pay a ton of money.

A lot of people who answered “other” had alternative fantasies:

I have a “sick day” fantasy.

I just want to have the flu for a week or so.

No but I often hope for a minor catastrophe (flat tire) to miss work.

Sometimes I wish for a migraine so I can take my meds and sleep for a day.

No, but I do LOVE long dental procedures now! I find the drilling very relaxing!

No, I’d rather go to a spa or hotel; hospital stays are exhausting.

I’m scared of surgery. But perhaps a nice stay at a mental wellness place?

I wish for long appointments.

And one person said “no, not that lazy.” I’m not sure what that means.

OK, everyone who answered yes, or had an alternative fantasy…It’s time to run a hot bath, have a cup of tea, maybe plan on calling in sick Monday.

You can still vote in the poll here. Be sure to check out the comments below the poll. Good stuff.

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Help Working Moms Break hit the first 500 fans on Facebook!

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. The more responses the better!

*This is the first time I’ve used Polldaddy to create a poll, and I’m not sure how it displays the results. If it doesn’t automatically show what people write in for the “Other” response, then I’ll post those comments separately after the poll has been up for a few days.

It’s been quiet around here for the last week. I took some time off to focus on my kids. (“Happy Chicken Day!” says my daughter, Ruby.)

Kids are back in school and today I’m catching up on a few bloggy things.

Thanks to everyone who left their suggestions to my question about what you’d like to see here on the blog. (It’s never too late if you’d still like to leave your suggestions here, I would still like to read them.)

It’s clear that just about everyone wants more stories of real women struggling with our competing obligations and, when possible, finding answers.

So in that spirit, I’d like to share an email I received recently from a blog reader named Ami who works as a college administrator in Baltimore. (She kindly gave me her permission to post it here.)

Like many of us, she’s feeling overwhelmed with her responsibilities and frustrated that there’s no obvious solution. (And she’s the second person I know who will admit she fantasizes about going to the hospital because it would be a vacation from regular life.) She would love to hear your thoughts (as I would) on what we can do.

From Ami:

Your site was exactly what I needed.  I am so far over the edge and it is reassuring (if that’s the right word) to read that other moms feel as insane as I do. As background, I am a full-time working mom of an 11 year old boy.

My son has Asperger’s and a host of co-morbid disorders. It is impossible, and I do mean impossible, to juggle work, battles with the public school system, and raising a difficult child. I could go on and on, but let me get to the reason I wrote…What can we do about this untenable situation? I would love to know if other women feel as trapped as I do.

When I graduated college, it was assumed that I would work full-time and bring in 50% of the income. My husband grew up in that environment, as well. But, as we all know, we are now expected to work full-time AND still be full-time moms, wives, etc. If I had known how hard this was going to be, I never would have had a child.

I stumbled back to work when my son was 6 weeks old. He had colic and chronic ear infections, so I really didn’t sleep for a year. No exaggeration. I would fantasize about having a minor car accident on the way to work. Nothing serious – just enough to lay me up in the hospital for a few days so I could sleep!

After 11 years of this life, I’m starting to have those fantasies again. I know that wishing does no good, but I really wish that I had remained single my entire life and had my tubes tied! How did we get to this point?

I have thought and thought over the years about a way out, to no avail. My husband won’t even entertain the idea of me working less than full-time and, honestly, we can’t afford it with all of my son’s medical bills. I feel like a zombie. I’m not really living my life. And I just love that advice about “taking time for yourself”!  How? When? There is always, always something left undone.

I don’t know what the solution is. It may be that there isn’t one for our generation (I’m 39).  But I surely hope that the next generation of women learns a lesson from our agony and wises up. Don’t go into marriage and family thinking you can “do it all.”  It’s a crock.

So, what do we do now? Is there any hope of relief for us? I feel that the only thing we can do at the moment is to vent to one another. At least we know we are not alone in this mess.

Thank you for starting a blog that really hits at the heart of the matter. The mothers in this country are slowly but surely being driven insane.

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Have a story to share about this modern day mess of working and raising kids? We welcome your war stories, happy stories, opinions, crazy ideas, questions, and brilliant solutions. Leave a comment on the blog, or email me at katrina@workingmomsbreak.com.

Help Working Moms Break hit the first 500 fans on Facebook!

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 love, and recover from heartache.

In short, it was a good brain.

The things it didn’t do so well, like sleeping, weren’t such a big deal then. Insomnia became an excuse to stay up late reading. I could always sleep in on the weekend.

Since I’ve had children, I’ve been growing increasingly dissatisfied with my brain. I don’t know how to get it to do all the things I need it to do within the time constraints that come with parenthood.

I’m a very good multitasker, maybe too good. Chronic multitasking often leaves me feeling stupid. With so many details to keep track of, it’s hard to be fully present. Quitting my full time job and going back to freelancing certainly eased the worst of the pressure, but I still have this nagging feeling that I’m missing out on the fun.

Which is why this interview with Katherine Ellison caught my interest as I was taking the kids to school yesterday. It was about an experimental technique called neurofeedback, which trains the brain to focus better. Ellison, who has ADHD, said neurofeedback was more effective for her than meditation, and an alternative to medication. That’s very appealing to me, a lazy meditator (is that an oxymoron?) who has had a bad experience with meds.

This is how neurofeedback works:

People usually sit in a chair facing a laptop screen. The laptop is connected to electrodes applied to the scalp. Special software monitors the electrical activity in your brain…So the computer software looks for desirable brain wave patterns and changes the image on screen to let people know how they are doing.

The image that worked best for Ellison showed a field.

“When my brain responded the way that it was supposed to, the field would burst into color. I’d hear bird song and beautiful flowers would bloom,” she says. “But when I got distracted or when I got a little bit more sped up, the flowers would wilt. It would turn gray, and I’d know that I needed to work a little bit harder.”

At first, people can’t control their brain wave patterns, at least not consciously. But over time, their brains become conditioned to associate certain patterns with pleasant images or sounds—a reward for good behavior. And our brains like rewards.

Obedience training for the brain!

I don’t have ADHD, but I do have a lot of tricks I’d like to teach my brain. If I could, I would teach it to

• Sleep on command.
• Take delight in washing dishes, doing laundry, and shuttling kids to and from school and activities.
• Enjoy the moment more. For example, I would like to revel in a day at the beach without worrying about whether I packed enough diapers, or thinking about how to get the sand out of the kids’ hair, or whether Ruby’s going to get carsick on the way home.
• Forgive more easily.
• Feel like working when it’s time to work, playing with the kids when it’s time to play, relaxing when it’s time to relax, having sex when it’s time to have sex, being creative when it’s time to write, and stop checking email so much.
• Feel satisfied with what I have; stop missing what I don’t have.

What about you? What tricks would you like to teach your brain?

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P.S. Don’t forget to vote today! You can find your polling place here.

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 glad I did, because so many wonderful things have happened. I was interviewed on the radio (here and here), I published several stories on the Huffington Post among other blogs, and best of all, hundreds of people (maybe you!) wrote to tell me their own stories, which has helped me to make sense of my own. Thank you.

A couple months ago I launched a Facebook page to help get the word out about the blog, and that’s been growing quickly.

Now what?

At first I thought I might run out of things to write about. Not so. Turns out I have way more material than I have time to follow through. That’s why I need your feedback.

The list

Which, if any, of these things would you like to see more or less of?

• Personal stories about the problem of “balancing” work and family (Breakdown stories like this and this and this and this and this)
• Stories about my very brave friends?
• Stories about how people are solving the problem?
• Surveys like this?
• Theories like this?
• Short posts vs. longer posts?
• Interviews with experts on work/life stuff?
• A podcast? (Haven’t tried that yet. What would you like to hear?)
• Advice?
• Discussion starters?
• Book reviews?
• Funny stuff?
• Specific topics like breastfeeding and working, women judging each other, guilt, starting your own business, quitting, negotiating with your boss, housework, happiness, policy, feminism?
• Events?
• Something I haven’t thought of yet?

Leave your comment at the end of this post. Whether you’ve been reading along since the beginning, or you just stumbled in today, I’d LOVE to hear from you.

By the way, if you’re shy, don’t feel like you have to use your real name. The only person who sees your email is me.

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 to do.

But nothing went wrong. The weather was unseasonably sunny, the kids spent days playing tag and climbing giant pieces of driftwood, and my sister and her groom were surrounded by people who love them.

The day after the wedding, we celebrated with homemade, gluten-free, chocolate-filled donuts fried in bacon fat. (Yes, you read that right. They were fried in bacon fat. I ate two for breakfast on our last day and wasn’t hungry again until dinner.)

While I was gone, a blog reader sent me a link to this story. It’s about how she was losing her mind as a working mom, and then decided to quit her job and start her own business. It’s funny and sad and I hope you’ll read it because it has a very happy ending.

The story got me thinking…the happiest working parents I know are the ones who work for themselves. I include Brian and myself among them.

Of course, being self-employed is not perfect. It takes a while to get used to the unstable paychecks. Sometimes we work too hard. We still have bad days, or even bad months. But for many of us, self-employment is the best way to have both a challenging career and a real life outside of work.

You might think of us as free-range families.

People are simply not meant to be cooped up in offices all day, smashed into little cubicles under fluorescent lights, and force-fed cafeteria food. It makes us sick. It makes us crazy.

We need to be able to cut out at 3 pm to see our kid’s school play, or help once a week with the after school co-op, or get home in time to make a real dinner once in a while, or take a week off to go to our sister’s wedding and eat donuts (preferably fried in bacon fat).

I’m interested in hearing from other people who are self-employed. Would you consider yourself a free-range family? Do you know any free-range families? Has self-employment made your life better or worse?

Editorial note: After I wrote this post, I did a Google search for “free-range families” and found a lot of links to Lenore Skenazy’s “free-range kids,” which is based on the idea of raising children who can be self-reliant. While I think she has some interesting ideas, I am talking about something very different.

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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 week ahead. I’d open my Google calendar, with its absurd overlapping red and purple boxes representing all the places I was expected at the same time.

If I’d been a Roman Catholic saint, I could have used the miracle of bilocation to appear in both 11 am meetings Tuesday, and Ruby’s 11 am dentist appointment. If I could have stopped time, it would have been possible to lead the workshop that was supposed to end at 5:30 and still manage to get back across the Bay Bridge to pick up two kids in two different places before childcare closed at 6 o’clock.

Alas, I was a mere mortal, which meant my week would be a series of mad sprints, one after another, without pause. I would eat standing up, answer email in the bathroom, and cut out everything that wasn’t necessary. And still I would be late. Still I would have to beg out of meetings, miss appointments, and disappoint people who counted on me.

Technically, I had chosen to live this way. But looking at my calendar, it didn’t feel like there was any choice involved in how I spent my days. There were so many to-dos that they were squeezing me out of my own life. The truth of this washed over me every Sunday evening.

The problem was more than busyness. There was no flow, that effortless state of being where the ego falls away and we truly enjoy the task we are engaged in, simply for the sake of doing it. Instead, I was racing through every task so I could move on to the next one. In my mind, I had already moved on to the next one.

My Sunday Night Blues ended abruptly that warm spring day when I had a nervous breakdown, quit my job, and completely changed my life.

Now Sunday nights are usually a mix of joy and relief. I’m tired from an active weekend with the kids, but I can also look forward to the coming week because I know I will have time alone to write, to talk to a friend, to look up a new recipe for dinner. No matter what else I have going on—freelance projects, housework, helping out at my kids’ schools—there is room for me. So far.

But this story is still unfolding. I’ve started working again. I’m determined not to fall into the trap of an unlived life, a life without flow, but the work I do is demanding and I’m ambitious. How do I keep from getting sucked in too far?

I’m not the only one who has sung the Sunday Night Blues. What is this phenomenon, do you think? Does it happen to you?

For more on “flow,” watch this talk by the author who wrote the book about it, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

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