FEEL LIKE YOU'VE GOT ADD? Solutions for the Frazzled and Overwhelmed
Anne Tergesen
About a year ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Edward Hallowell, a Sudbury (Mass.) psychiatrist, who believes many of us are suffering from environmentally induced attention deficit disorder, brought on by technology and activity overload. Tonight, as I dashed from email to homework to dinner to laundry and backâ??interrupted periodically by my four-year-old pleading for help with just about everything you can imagineâ?? Hallowellâ??s message was on my mind (that is, to the extent that anything was on my mind for more than a fleeting second).
Not surprisingly, he feels that working parents are particularly susceptible to this syndrome. I have to admit, Hallowellâ??s description of my life is pretty much dead-on: â??They're juggling deadlines, games, rehearsals, and school meetings. They're worrying about how the grocery shopping, cooking, and laundry will get done. People want to do all these activities. But they take on more than they can reasonably do. E-mail tends to facilitate the overscheduling.â??
The good doctor has a number of tips for the frazzled masses. Iâ??ve tried to incorporate many of them into my daily life. Despite tonightâ??s chaos, I feel Iâ??ve made some progressâ??although I obviously still have a ways to go when it comes to multi-tasking, a tactic Hallowell is particularly down on. (In his recent book CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap â?? Strategies for Coping in a World Gone ADD, Hallowell presents convincing evidence that the brain cannot focus on more than one thing at a time. The notion that multi-tasking is efficient is simply a myth, he says). Here are some of his other tips:
1) Set aside time to work before you check your e-mail or snail mail or voice mail, before you allow the world to intrude on your fresh and focused state of mind.
2) Do not allow the world to have access to you 24/7. Turn off your BlackBerry and cell phone. Stretch or have a five-minute conversation. When you sit down again, you'll be focused.
3) Prioritizing is crucial. If you don't, you'll find yourself spread so thin you'll only be able to see your good friends on the first Tuesday in February.
4) Give yourself permission to end relationships and projects that drain you.
5) Do what you're good at and delegate the rest. This is important, because when we do what we're good at, the work can take on the quality of play.
6) Keep in mind that some of our best thoughts come when we're doing nothing. Downtime is a forgotten art.
09:21 AM | Behavior | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
February 28, 2007IT'S ALL ABOUT ME
Cathy Arnst
My greatest hope for my daughter is that she grow up to be nice. Not a pushover, mind you, but someone who is considerate, generous, happy, and in general a pleasure to be around.
If she does turn out that way, she may be swimming against the tide. A new study out of San Diego State University finds that narcissism and self-entitlement among college students are at an all-time high.
The study examined the responses of 16,000 college students across the U.S. who filled out the Narcissistic Personality Inventory between 1982 and 2006. The lead author is Jean Twenge, SDSU psychology professor, and the research is the basis of her provacatively titled book "Generation Me: Why Todayâ??s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before." Her findings:
"Far from being civically oriented, young people born after 1982 are the most narcissistic generation in recent history," says Twenge. Thirty percent more college students showed elevated narcissism in 2006 compared to 1982, making current college students more narcissistic than Baby Boomers and Gen Xers. In addition, the average 2006 college student scored nearly as high on narcissism as the average celebrity from a sample of actors, musicians and reality TV stars collected by "Loveline" host Dr. Drew Pinsky.Twenge says people high in narcissism lack empathy for others, are aggressive when insulted, seek public glory and favor self-enhancement over helping others look good. Narcissists are also more likely to be materialistic and to seek attention and fame.
To be fair, I have friends with children at or near college age, and none of them meet that description--except one. This young man, a recent Ivy League graduate, is the most self-absorbed and unhappiest person I know. How did he turn out that way? Perhaps because his parents raised him to think that nothing was his fault, that the rules didn't apply to him, that he could sleep/eat/play when he wanted, that he could quit or change any school, camp or lessons that didn't please him. To this day his mother talks about him as a very "special" person, who is frustrated in both his personal and professional life (no close friends, hates his entry level job) only because other people just don't "get" how smart and unique he is. He recently told me he plans to quit his job soon because he is smarter than all the people he works with but makes three times less. I imagine his supervisor has a different view.
I know several young children in my New York neighborhood who are being raised the same way, which makes me think that those narcissism percentages will only go up. It's certainly not easy in any high-achieving neighborhood to raise kids to not have a sense of entitlement. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
01:45 PM | Behavior | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
WHY PARENTS LOVE TV
Lauren Young
Well, Iâ??m clearly not the only person turning on the TV to keep my toddler son occupied. I just saw an online poll on BabyCenter.com that validates the existence of Dora the Exploder. (Thatâ??s what my hubby calls her). Among 6,459 parents who responded to the poll when I last checked, 97% said they use TV or a video to catch a break, and more than half of them do it at least once a day.
The top reasons respondents say they are using TV as a babysitter: Cooking dinner or Housework. Itâ??s not like we are all in the other room watching â??Ellenâ?? or â??SportsCenterâ?? and eating bonbons. You can vote and check out BabyCenter poll results here:
http://click.babycenter.com/b/?le=7VTe&me=CYe4&pe=8wNqFO&t=1
Although I use TV as a crutch to get me through the morning routineâ??I often turn it on for my son when Iâ??m in the showerâ??I still feel guilty about its role in our household. When my son wakes up in the morning, often his first words are: â??Watch TB.â?? (sic) Iâ??m always trying to figure out new ways to distract him from the television. But sometimes itâ??s just easier to turn it on than argue.
If you fall into this camp, check out an interview I did with an interesting childrenâ??s media expert here:
http://www.businessweek.com/careers/workingparents/blog/archives/2006/05/kids_tv_the_boo.html
What do you do when Junior is parked in front of the Boob Tube?
01:13 PM | Family | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
February 26, 2007THE MADAM AND THE MAID: BUILDING BLOCKS FOR WORK/LIFE BALANCE
Amy Dunkin
Savita Iyer is a freelance financial journalist who lives with her family in Mysore, India. This is her second guest blog for Working Parents.
Saroja works as a babysitter in my apartment building in Mysore, India. She is six months pregnant, and a couple of weeks ago, while traveling through the countryside to visit her mother-in-law, the bus she was on overturned.
Sarojaâ??s leg was badly injured, but even though she was in great pain, Saroja still came to work. She left her home extra early because it would take her more time to walk the 12-kilometer distance from her hut to our building. Saroja cannot afford the four rupee (about eight cents) bus fare, because taking the bus to and from work will mean that one member of her joint family must go without tea for a month. If she takes time off work, her employer will likely dock her pay, but more than that, she worries about the bind her â??Madamâ?? will be in if Saroja does not come to look after her two children, and how her Madam will be able to do her job.
There are scores of women like Saroja in India and elsewhere in the world, and each time I complain about being a working mother and having to rush around to strike a balance between my job and my home, it takes but a minute or two of remembering these people to bring me back to earth with a bang. These women are the foundations upon which I rest; without them, I would not be able to balance my work with my life.
When I lived in New Jersey, my nanny, Pili would ring my doorbell at 7.30 a.m. every day, when her young children were still having breakfast. She left them and came to work because I needed her to watch my children so I could do my work in order to then get back to my children. In all honesty, she always made that seem far more important than the fact that her children went to school from a parentless home and came home to the same, and that the salary I paid her was barely adequate for her familyâ??s life-blood.
Christineâ??s husband sails the world on a cargo ship and has no visa to visit her in Geneva, Switzerland, where she lives with their son, Jerome. Even if he did, the airfare alone would probably swallow up his annual earnings, so Christine â?? who in addition to babysitting, also cleans houses on the weekends -- manages four year-old Jerome by herself. She drops him at a crèche before going to work in the morning and in the afternoons, a cousin of hers rushes Jerome from the crèche to a babysitter, where he remains until Christine finishes looking after other peopleâ??s children and can take care of him. Jerome has only seen his father once in his life.
In India, Sarojaâ??s paltry 1,200 rupee (around $26) monthly salary goes a long way toward sustaining her family, and there is no way she will be able to take time off or even stop working before or after her child is born. Because her mother is also working, she will have to rely upon the kindness of her neighbors, older women who are physically unable to work anymore, to look after that child for her. Once he or she grows up a bit â?? well, who knows. Probably the child will join the scores that just trail around the slums.
Social and economic inequalities exist everywhere, thatâ??s obvious, and at the end of the day, everyone is doing a job and everything is relative. But as white collar workers, itâ??s important, I believe, to take a couple of minutes to think about those others, who in the process of helping us achieve work/life balance, are sacrificing theirs.
01:56 PM | Childcare | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
February 22, 2007EVERYONE GOING HIS OWN WAY
Anne Tergesen
I live on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, an enclave so wealthy that itâ??s not hard to find families that employ multiple nannies, even when mom (or dad) isnâ??t working.
To me, this is baffling. I fully admit that I have a hard time accepting help. Some of this has to do my guilt over working. Some of it is because of my parentsâ?? rather thrifty ways (a euphemism). Much of it has to do with the fact that I donâ??t like to share my personal space. But Iâ??m also afraid that too much hand-holding can ultimately do more harm than good. Iâ??ve heard stories of parents who panic when left alone with their kids. Iâ??ve also seen kids who are so over-indulged, they donâ??t really understand the concept of making sacrifices for others. My childâ??s nursery school teacher told me about siblingsâ??each with his own nannyâ??who were unable to take initiative or play alone.
As a result of all of this, Iâ??ve always tried to make sure my children and I spend a good amount of time together on Wednesdays and Fridays, the two days of my part-time work week when Iâ??m home. Forget about dispatching one to hockey with the nanny while the other goes to chess with me: â??Weâ??re all in this together,â?? was my mantra. For the past several years, this approach has worked pretty well. But as my boys get olderâ??they are now 9, 7 and 4â??Iâ??ve found the all-for-one-and-one-for-all approach less than optimal at times. Not that I donâ??t still believe in together time. But as my sons have started to develop their own interests, I can see the value in having one go to hockey while the other goes to chess.
Iâ??m still too cheap and guilt ridden to spring for more help than I already have. To spare myself from spending all my â??freeâ?? time transporting kids to and from activities, Iâ??ve come up with a few ground rules:
1) Each child may select twoâ??and only twoâ??activities.
2) While Iâ??ll go to great lengths to accommodate a childâ??s wish to do something horribly inconvenient, I will only do so if the child proves to me that heâ??s very, very interested. When one son asked about hockey, I said yesâ??provided he skates at our local rink on weekends first. Luckily, heâ??s dropped the subject.
3) When two show interest in the same activity, I try to find a way for them to do it together. My older two sons take swimming and chess lessons together. Of course, this isnâ??t always a good idea. When I tried to convince our local Little League to allow my younger son to join my older sonâ??s team, I was warned my oldest might feel resentful at the competition from his younger brother, while my youngest might feel overwhelmed. I agreed.
4) I also try really, really hard to stick close to home. My smartest move so far: Hiring the guitar teacher who comes to our house.
I have a feeling the activity craze is going to get worse as they all get older. Any tips on managing it all?
06:01 PM | Family | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
February 21, 2007The worst vacation...EVER! (And no, Jet Blue wasn't involved.)
Lauren Young
My husband Jon and I are two of the unfortunate people who lost their luggage on a US Airways flight (#1651) to Miami on Friday. It was our first trip away as a couple since our son Leo arrived two years ago.
(Loyal readers may recall Leo has a medical condition that required seven surgeries, so it has been difficult to get away until recently.) The stress of his surgeries as well as the drama surrounding the insurance issues had put a stain on both of us. Weâ??ve been looking forward to our romantic getaway for weeks.
My mom and sister were kind enough to offer to watch Leo over President's Day weekend. We simply had to drive him down to Philly where they live. So we left work on Thursday and delivered our sweet boy. Done.
I should have known it would be a bad trip after we sat on the tarmac in Philly for two hours on Friday. The captain told us that we were waiting for the plane to be serviced and for our bags to be loaded on board. Yet when we arrived in Miami (two hours late), the scene was total chaos: About 50 people on our flight lost their bags!
Continue reading "The worst vacation...EVER! (And no, Jet Blue wasn't involved.)"
03:04 PM | Travel | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
February 20, 2007Return to Sender
James Mehring
I love Netflix. Lyn and I have been members for more than a year now and it serves our small couch potato fix perfectly. Since moving into our house last year, we have gone without cable. Itâ??s just too much money for the amount of time we actually want to sit down in front of the TV, especially since we aim to spend as much quality, TVless time with our daughter. As much as I tried to not watch TV in the past, I couldnâ??t shut off a sporting event. Lyn was a Law & Order junkie and we both were hooked by, of all shows, Project Runway. Thatâ??s why Netflix has been such a good fit for us.
But now we have a bone to pick with the company. Earlier this month, Lyn pulled out the first season of U.S. version of The Office, (The episodes seem get more uncomfortably funny when you watch them a second time.) from our DVD player and sent it back. At least thatâ??s what she thought. It turns out that we still had the disc and NetFlix now had our We Are The Laurie Berkner Band disc. I assume that many parents are familiar with the bubbly group whose refrains constantly play in oneâ??s head. While I must admit that losing the disc wasnâ??t a big deal for me, we both felt very guilty because our daughter loves to dance to the videos.
So now that weâ??ve returned The Office, Netflix still wonâ??t return Luarie Berkner to us. Despite being in the business of shipping and receiving DVDâ??s, they say they wonâ??t return our disc. They actually wrote to Lyn that â??we have no process in place to return customer property.â?? Even though the company mentions in the FAQ that they wonâ??t return discs, it seems hard to believe that there isnâ??t a way to do it. After all, I am sure the next person expecting to see Steve Carell didnâ??t end up watching Victor Vito. So if somebody at Netflix has our daughterâ??s Laurie Berkner disc we hope it brings you a super-fun day.
05:39 PM | | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
February 15, 2007SICK NANNY: NO SAFETY NET
Anne Tergesen
My employer makes a lot of accommodations for working parents. Perhaps no one knows that as well as me: for the past six years, Iâ??ve worked a part-time schedule. Among the other benefits working parents here enjoy are flex time and the ability to work at home one day a week.
Then, thereâ??s backup childcare. Weâ??re entitled to use a local day care center 20 days a year for just $20 a day per child. Sounds great. The only problem? Each time Iâ??ve had a childcare emergency, theyâ??ve had no vacancies.
I may just have bad luck. The first time it happened was in Augustâ??a tough time, given that schools have yet to open, but camps are already closed. But itâ??s happened at other times of the year, too. Yesterday was the latest example. Our nanny called just after lunch to tell me she didnâ??t feel well. She said sheâ??d try to stick it out for the rest of the day. But since she so rarely plays this card, I decided it must be bad and headed home. En route, I called the backup childcare center to reserve spots for my three sons the next day. No dice. Not even one slotâ??never mind the three I need.
Whatâ??s a working parent to do? My oldest son is nine. He loves to read and could probably be counted on to sit quietly in my office after school, doing homework and reading. But my other two? Forget it. Theyâ??re lunatics. I called my parents and my brother, who (quite understandably) were too busy to drop everything. Then, I asked our nanny for names. One of her suggestions came through. While I havenâ??t seen this woman in about five years, I know her well enough to be comfortableâ??although, unfortunately, my sons donâ??t remember her at all. Of course, it wonâ??t be cheap. But I guess itâ??s better than having no safety net at all.
02:35 PM | Childcare | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Let Us Now Praise...Properly
Cathy Arnst
My father, who I admire a great deal, is not one to hand out a lot of praise. Actually, he doesn't hand out any praise. His attitude: "You're supposed to do things well. My job is to point out how you could have done it better." Not an easy standard to live with, granted, but I think I can attribute a lot of my success in life to trying to live up to it.
Most parents today are far more liberal with praise, and it appears we may not be doing our kids any favors. A fascinating cover story in this week's New York Magazine, titled How Not To Talk To Your Kids: The Inverse Power of Praise, finds that children are much more motivated if they are praised for the effort they put into a project, rather than their intelligence or innate ability. Given that one survey found that 85% of U.S. parents think it's important to tell their kids they are smart, we could be raising a generation of underachievers.
The article's author, Po Bronson, highlights the extensive research of Dr. Carole Dweck, a psychologist now at Stanford University. Her discovery:
Students who view their intelligence as an unchangeable internal characteristic tend to shy away from academic challenges, whereas students who believe that their intelligence can be increased through effort and persistence seek them out.Many teachers and parents may be unwittingly leading students to accept an entity view of intelligence. By praising students for their intelligence, rather than effort, many adults are sending the message that success and failure depend on something beyond the students' control. Comments such as â??You got a great score on your math test, Jimmy! You are such a smart boy!â?? are interpreted by students as â??If success means that I am smart, then failure must mean that I am dumb.â?? When these students perform well they have high self-esteem, but this crashes as soon as they hit an academic stumbling block. Students who are praised for their effort are much more likely to view intelligence as being malleable, and their self-esteem remains stable regardless of how hard they may have to work to succeed at a task. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that these students are more likely to be willing to push through setbacks and reach their full academic potential.
Bronson describes a study Dweck conducted of 412 New York City fifth graders that supports her theory. The students were given successively more challenging tests. Those who had been praised for their effort on earlier tests significantly improved on their first score, by about 30%. Those who had been told they were smart did worse than they had at the beginnning, by about 20%.
The article also described research that would make my father smile knowingly, by psychologist Wulf-Uwe Meyer, a specialist in self-esteem. He found that, by age 12, children believe that earning praise from a teacher is not a sign that you did well--it's actually a sign that you lack ability and the teacher thinks you need extra encouragement. And teenagers discount praise to such an extent that they believe it's a teacher's criticism, not praise at all, that really conveys a positive belief in a student's aptitude.
Good grief! Does this mean my father was right? If so, I don't think I'll tell him. After all, he's supposed to be right. My job is to find other failings to blame him for.
Read the article. It's well worth it.
01:18 PM | Behavior | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
February 14, 2007What do you want for Valentine's Day?
Lauren Young
Happy Valentine's Day to all the Working Parents readers out there!
Careful magazine readers know I'm also the self-annointed chocolate expert here at BusinessWeek. (Make sure you check out my excellent slide show on good chocolate gifts.)
But I don't want chocolates for the holiday. In fact, I'm probably the only woman in America who asked for...drumroll please...a will. That's right, a will. You know the old adage about the cobbler's children going barefoot? Well, I'm married to an attorney, so naturally our legal affairs are in shambles. We have no will. It's quite pathetic, really. But I've seen an early draft, so I think my wish will be granted.
My guess is that I'm not the only one with an offbeat VD request. Fellow blogger Amy Dunkin posted an item earlier this week that women really want the gift of serenity. No flowers, no massages, just peace and quiet.
Is that really the case?
What do male and female readers of the Working Parents blog want this Valentine's Day??? Do tell!
12:28 PM | Work/Life | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
February 13, 2007Sick Day
James Mehring
A few days ago Lyn and I got a knock on the door at 5 a.m. Lyn answered the door and got the news that he mother wouldnâ??t be able to watch our daughter that day. That meant one of us had to stay home to watch our daughter for the day. Luckily, it was a Friday and I could do all my work from home. Unfortunately, Lynâ??s department was shorthanded so we couldnâ??t make it a family day at home.
I got really excited about the prospect of spending a whole weekday at home with my daughter. It was the adult version of a snow day. All I had to do was spend some time working while Abby was still asleep in the morning and then again while she napped or when Lyn got home. I started to form an itinerary for the day in my head of all the things we could do together. I had a nice day all lined up. We would eat breakfast, then play in the living room, go out to lunch, take a quick trip to the local mall and grocery store (our daughter loves to ride around in shopping carts), come home for a nap, and then play some more. Perfect.
03:58 PM | Family | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
AND YOU THOUGHT WE WANTED FLOWERS
Amy Dunkin
Here's an interesting item that just crossed my computer screen. A social networking site for mothers called MomJunction.com did a survey that found the No. 1 request by moms for Valentine's Day is this: Just leave me alone.
"More than half of [the 300] moms [surveyed] said that for Valentineâ??s Day this year, they would gladly forgo flowers, chocolate, and jewelry in exchange for 24 hours to simply do nothing. No kids, no husband, no car pool, no cooking. Just serenity."
Said Rory Murray, senior vice-president of Mom Relations (some title, huh?) at MomJunction: "We all know that being a mom is the hardest job in the world, so we expected some answers to be of the 'I wanna sleep' variety. But we were shocked at how many, especially given the other possible choices in our survey, which included spa treatments, a romantic night with your special someone, and of course, flowers and candy."
Love it!
12:33 PM | Family | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
February 12, 2007THE WITCHING HOUR
Amy Dunkin
It's 3:15 p.m. Do you know where your children are?
Happily, on most days, I know where mine are. They're just out of school and on the nearest available cell phone, pulling me from my office cocoon into the microdetails of their afternoon.
It doesn't matter what I'm doing: holding a meeting, talking on the other line, editing a story. Everything comes to a standstill as I make vital decisions about playdates, help answer homework questions, or try to referee a sibling altercation when each claims the other one started it.
It's household management from afar, to the point that when my cell phone rings after 3:00, my coworkers announce, "Amy, your son is calling."
I don't know how often fathers take part in these mid-day conversations from the home front. In my experience, it's mostly the moms who are summoned. We're usually the go-to parent when the school secretary calls to tell you your kid forgot to bring his lunch, or the nurse informs you that he's in her office with a stomachache, or the babysitter wants to know what to feed him when he's rejected everything she has offered.
These calls invariably come at inconvenient times, they often disrupt my concentration, and they can send me into paroxysms of anxiety and guilt. Yet on another level, they tell me I'm doing my job as a mom right. I may not be in their face, but I'm on their mind.
The important thing is that the kids understand you're always available to them wherever you are, that you'll figure out some way to help them, and most importantly, that you're the parent and you're still the boss.
When my cell phone rings at 3:15, I smile before I pick it up. Because I hope never to be one of those moms who has to moan to her kids, "You never call, you never write."
10:12 AM | Work/Life | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
February 09, 2007Vaccines and Autism: Still No Link
Cathy Arnst
There's a lot of coverage today of a new Centers for Disease control report on autism rates in the U.S. The CDC found that the prevalence of autism is about one in every 150 U.S. children, based on an analysis of data from 14 counties in 2000 and 2002. That's considerbly higher than the estimate of one in every 200 children made in the 1980s, and there are many theories about that jump--chief among them a broader defintion of autism and better diagnosis. But the one theory that no reputable scientist supports is that vaccines somehow cause autism.
I blogged about this issue before, but it cannot be repeated enough: There have been no reputable studies linking autism and vaccines, while there have been many, many exhaustive studies showing no link at all. For an excellent essay on this issue, read this op-ed piece , titled in the Philadelphia Inquirer by Arthur Kaplan, an esteemed bio-ethicist at the University of Pennsylvania. Here's an excerpt:
What must it be like to spend a huge amount of time every waking day trying to change public health practice - only to find out that you were wrong?That is precisely what has happened to the proponents of the theory that mercury in vaccines - contained in the preservative thimerosal, which once was used (and is used no longer) in vaccines - is responsible for a nearly 20-year explosion in autism and other neurological disorders among American children.
This urban legend has had very real - and terrible - consequences. It has led, and continues to lead, many parents to avoid getting their kids and themselves vaccinated against life-threatening diseases. The failure to vaccinate has caused many preventable deaths and avoidable hospitalizations from measles, whooping cough, diphtheria, flu, hepatitis and meningitis. And fear of vaccines puts each one of us at risk that we, our children or grandchildren will become part of a deadly outbreak triggered by someone whose parents avoided getting their child vaccinated for fear of autism.
Recent research on many fronts in medicine and science has nailed the coffin shut on the mercury-in-vaccines-
causes-autism hypothesis. The connection is just not there. Perhaps the key fact, which has garnered little attention, is that thimerosal has been removed from vaccines in this and other countries for many years, with no obvious impact on the incidence of autism.
If you want more information on this very important issue, go to the CDC site on vaccines and immunizations. If you are thinking of not vaccinating your child, get the facts first.
12:22 PM | Health | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
February 08, 2007We Could All Use A Wife
Cathy Arnst
For the six years my amazing nanny Cheryl worked for me, people would always ask me how I could possibly manage as a single working mother. "Easy," I said, "I have a wife." Cheryl not only did a fabulous job raising Jesse (really, I learned how to be a mother from watching her), she also kept the apartment clean (though not in her job description), often cooked meals for me as well as Jesse (also, not in her job description), kept a running grocery list, found repairmen for me, and every season went through Jesse's closet, weeding out the things that were too small and switching off the summer and winter clothes. I often joked that I should have hired her years earlier just to take care of me. Unfortunately, once Jesse hit 2nd grade I really couldn't justify paying a full time nanny anymore, and although Cheryl is still very much a part of our life as a friend, I'm on my own at home. I still haven't recovered.
It seems I'm not alone in wanting someone to keep those home fires, well, clean. In a blog called A Cure For Hiccups, a medical student whose husband is also in med school (now that's a stress-filled household!) writes about Why Female Doctors Need A Wife .
A 1950's style wife - well, at least my personal stereotypical 1950's wife... you know... a pleasant person who is able to wash and iron your clothes each day, ensure the sheets are changed weekly, the tub is washed, the toilet scrubbed, and the floors vacuumed. Oh - and someone to cook healthy dinners, and make your lunch for the next day at work. I would like to be able to do the above things with a smile on my face... but I don't (no smile, no ironing, and DEFINITELY no smiling during ironing!). Not often enough, at least.A few years ago I stumbled across a Home Economics textbook from the 1950's... I've found an online link that is similar for you enjoyment. My favorite statement, in teaching the wife how to behave for her husband is:
"Have a cool or warm drink ready for him. Arrange his pillow and offer to
take off his shoes. Speak in a low soothing and pleasant voice."Now, wouldn't it be nice to have this when you arrive home from a long shift dealing with low urine outputs, digital rectal exams, requests for morphine from drug seekers, and 2am requests for chlorpromazaine to "cure hiccups"?
The blogger does an informal survey of 7 doctors-in-training and their spouses, and ALL agreed that a wife would be a highly useful addition to their households.
Interesting, not all of the above subject polled were married, making it obvious that regardless of sex or marital status, a wife would be highly appreciated.
She then goes on to write about Grey's Anatomy, a great alternative to doing housework, I'd say.
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