happiness

Cross-posted from The Huffington Post. I write a lot about unhappiness. Specifically, the unhappiness that affects millions of overworked, under-appreciated moms and dads who live in the country that has the most hostile conditions for working parents in the developed world. (Can you guess which country that is? Rhymes with “God Bless.”) But today, I […]

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Many of us find a traditional career path to be stifling, especially after we have kids, and the number of hours we can toil away at the office becomes more limited. The happiest women I know are the ones who either work part-time or are self-employed. My friend Laura Scholes is no exception. Laura is […]

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Why we lean back

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by Katrina on April 9, 2013

All right. I read it. The book that everyone, including my hero, Jon Stewart, has been talking about. So many reviews have been written about this book, that people have resorted to writing reviews of the reviews. The hype has been so incredibly, hyper—The Time story! The 60 Minutes piece! The banner ads! The web […]

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The things you can’t control

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by Katrina on September 10, 2012

I’ve hit one of those weird rough patches. In the last two months… The radiator hose on our car exploded in a steaming mess while driving our daughter to a camping trip. The day Car #1 got back from the shop, Car #2 blew a tire. A week later, on my way to an important […]

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The Atlantic magazine story

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by Katrina on June 22, 2012

I’m blown away by this essay: “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.” Finally, someone is saying what’s true. The author, Anne-Marie Slaughter, was a high-powered working mom in Washington who stepped off her career fast track to be with her teenage children. Then she wrote an essay, which was published in The Atlantic, saying […]

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A Care Revolution…in America?

by Katrina on February 9, 2012

I read The Second Shift more than a decade ago, when I was fresh out of graduate school, working at an Internet startup, newly married (to my first husband), and planning to have a child. That book scared the hell out of me. It was based on research conducted in the 1980s by the prize-winning […]

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Almost two years ago, I wrote my first blog post. As soon as it went live, I thought, I have quite possibly just ruined my entire life. This was about a year after I went home sick from my job and then never went back. The whole experience still felt painfully raw. I was filled […]

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Letter from Connecticut: “I hate my job!”

by Katrina on September 19, 2011

Many of the parents I know spend 99 percent of their time divided between working and taking care of their family. If you really love your job, maybe this isn’t such a bad thing. Work becomes your social outlet, your creative outlet, your intellectual challenge, etc. But what if you hate what you do? I […]

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Avoiding the “Workation”

by Katrina on July 7, 2011

We’re back, after a peaceful week in a tent, at the edge of Yosemite. For one exciting, very wet day, thunder and lightening crashed around us. The rest of our vacation was sunny days by the river, swimming, fishing, and eating popsicles. I even read a whole Aimee Bender novel! The absolute best part of […]

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Sneak peek at survey results

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by Katrina on June 7, 2011

I’m still going through your wonderful responses to the survey and hope to post the results next week. Here’s sneak peek at the data: 81% of people who took the survey said they worry about burning out. 81 percent! Are you as astonished by that number as I am? In the words of one parent […]

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