I can’t believe how crazy this time of year is, every year. Intense work deadlines right before the holidays, during which I caught some new strain of Monster Cold that hung in there for over a month. It was so bad that at one point I lost my voice completely—I could not get any sound [...]
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Working parents have a lot to juggle, and this can create stress. But what we often overlook is that stress has real health consequences. Several weeks ago, I put together a survey* asking working parents about stress and its effects on their health. More than 600 people responded. I filtered out respondents who lived in [...]
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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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There’s a provocative essay in last week’s Wall Street Journal called “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior.” The author, Amy Chua, describes her strict parenting style: no play dates, no school plays, no grades lower than an A, calling her daughter “garbage” when she is very disrespectful or “fatty” to shame her into losing weight. This, [...]
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Do you hear that sound? Like the wind through the trees? It’s the sound of a million parents, all across America, sighing with relief. Our children are going back to school today! All in all, we had a great two weeks off. Luckily, neither Brian nor I had to work. We went to the zoo, [...]
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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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Do you compare your insides to other people’s outsides? Most of us do, even though we know better. We’re social creatures. It’s natural to make comparisons. But we rarely get to glimpse other people’s insides. When we make our comparisons, we inevitably wind up comparing how we feel to how other people seem. This may [...]
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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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I drive a minivan. There. I’ve said it. Maybe you think that’s not cool. I’ll try not to hold that against you. I happen to think that SUVs, which are less fuel-efficient than my minivan, aren’t cool. I hope we can still be friends. Toyota has come out with this video (“Swagger Wagon”), proving that [...]
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