Thursday, July 15, 2010

All Joy and No Fun

A few weeks ago, this article went pinging around FB like mad. All the parents, new and experienced, seemed excited about it. While it is a long read for an article, I had no trouble getting through. The main theme is about how parenting can be simultaneously the best thing going and the hardest job ever. Study after study finds that parents are stressed, bored, exhausted and otherwise wrung out by their kids, so why, the authors ask, do people keep signing up for the job? The answer may lie in your definition of happiness. To paraphrase on great quote from the article: Parenting is the greatest source of joy in the world, but it turns all your other sources of joy to shit. Seems a bit strong to me, but I do see the point.

What interested me most about the passing around of the article was the subtle (or not so subtle) admission among friends that we aren't always completely blissful as parents. There's not a day (or an hour?) that goes by where I don't think how lucky I am to have Delphinium, but that doesn't mean I don't miss my freedom and peace sometimes. In the end, I do agree with this author that the love and sense of purpose are entirely worth the price.

1 comment:

Carrie said...

That is an awesome article! Thanks for posting it, I am going to read the whole thing.