Vacation read #3 was All Joy And No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood, by Jennifer Senior. I rarely read non-fiction, but I saw this book at the library the day before we left on vacation and I grabbed it.
It is fitting that I am trying to write this blog post after a long day of being with the kids. It is now 12:07AM and our daughters are still awake (we’re on vacation). I feel physically and emotionally depleted, and if I weren’t getting in a car in the morning for 12 hours to head home and then dealing with re-entry and back-to-school prep on Sunday, I’d probably just wait to write this post. But I want to get it done before we get home, while the book is still fresh in my mind.
Basically, Senior has endeavored to explain why the hell we parents are so tired and stressed. There are good reasons for our anxiety, whether we have toddlers, elementary school kids, or teens. The challenges of raising each of these age groups are different, of course. For example, when our kids are little, we crave time when we are physically apart from them, and when they are older, we feel hurt when they reject us and don’t want to be with us. Younger kids are over-scheduled, while older kids constantly vacillate between wanting their independence and being totally helpless.
To research All Joy And No Fun, Senior interviewed couples, single moms, grandparents raising grandchildren, working moms, SAHMs, and SAHDs to get at the heart of why parenting can be both such a slog and the most rewarding thing we’ve ever done in our lives. She also explores the effect children have on marriage, on friendship, on work, and on self-esteem. I read this book with interest and felt reinforced by many of Senior’s conclusions. One of my friends on FB posted about this book a few months ago, calling it required reading for parents and suggesting that we have our parents read it too, so that they can understand why we’re all going crazy. I agree.
There’s also a lot in here about how “flexible” schedules and technology have made it hard to contain work to work hours and parenting to parenting hours.
Here are a few quotes that I thought were particularly insightful:
- “The portability and accessibility of our work has created the impression that we should always be available. It’s as if we’re all leading lives of anti-flow, of chronic interruptions and ceaseless multitasking.” (YES!)
- “A wired home lulls us into the belief that maintaining our old work habits while caring for our children is still possible.” (True!)
- “The result, almost no matter where you cut this deck, is guilt. Guilt over neglecting the children. Guilt over neglecting work. Working parents feel plenty of guilt as it is. But in the wired age, parents are able to feel that guilt all the time. There’s always something they are neglecting.” (Amen!)
- “Today’s parents are starting families at a time when their social networks in the real world appear to be shrinking and their communities ties, stretching thin.” (Yep!)
- “All it takes for a couple to start fighting, really, is for them to go out to dinner with another couple whose domestic division of labor is slightly different from their own.” (Eek!)
- “Our expectations of parents seem to have increased as our attitudes toward women in the workplace have liberalized.” (Makes sense!)
- “Homework has replaced the family dinner.” (Oh my god, yes!)
- “One wonders if actual family dinners might happen a bit more frequently if they hadn’t been supplanted by study halls at the dining room table, and if that time wouldn’t be more restorative and better spent – the stuff of customs and stories and affectionate memories, the stuff that binds.” (Um, what’s that?)
- “Parents of adolescents have to learn, by stages, to give up the physical control and comfort that was once theirs. In the end, they are left only with words.” (UGH!)
- “When parents spend forever trying to get their kids to stop playing video games and come down to dinner, they’re trying to impose artificial boundaries in time where no natural ones exist.” (Pretty much true!)
I can’t say that I walked away from All Joy And No Fun with The Answer to the challenge of how to parent successfully in this intense, connected, 24/7 world, but I did find it quite interesting and got a lot of perspective from it. If you liked the quotes I listed above, you’ll probably like this book too. If you can find the time to squeeze it in.