I Love My Children, I Love My Life

I just finished reading the New York magazine article, “I love my children, I hate my life.” Kids are awesome but raising them is drudgery. The author made this parental dilemma seem like a riddle, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a quandary that would never be solved. To me, the riddle was how the author could have missed the obvious solution that she had unearthed herself during her research. It was as if she was too polite to state the obvious. I’m not. It’s called happiness= time AWAY from your kids.

If you haven’t read the article, it was about how parents love their kids, but hate their lives more than their peers did 50 or so years ago. Parents can’t figure out how to unravel this problem even though studies show that today’s parents have at least 5 less hours of alone/down time per week. 5 hours. That works out to a 10 days vacation per year away from your kids, doing whatever you want! And there’s the golden nugget, folks. 5 hours.

Apparently, this time shift occurred because parents “like” to spend time with their kids and feel guilty doing things without them. Seriously, how inane are we? Stop spending so much time with your kids, a.k.a. your job, and go on vacation or out to dinner without them once in awhile! 5 hours.

My parents, who were relatively happy in their role as childrearers, abandoned us at least once a year for weekend ski trips together or they’d fly to NYC. As we grew older, and probably more annoying, they started going away for longer stretches of time. And this isn’t including countless dinners out and my mom’s lunches with girlfriends. Flashforward to today, and I have many friends with young children who rarely dine out or have never even left their kid for an overnight away. And they wonder why they’re stressed out. Heck, even if you can’t leave your kids with someone for a getaway, try getting a babysitter once a week. Oh, say maybe for 5 hours.

I think one of the main reasons that I adore being a parent is that I instinctively knew I’d be miserable if being a parent meant ending life as I knew it, i.e., dinner with friends, working out, the occasional manicure, dates with my husband. So, my husband watches our son at least once a month when I go to dinner with a girlfriend, we picked a building with a gym in the basement so I can squeeze in workouts, I have a sitter for 8 hours during the week and at least once a month, we get a sitter and head to a movie or dinner (or both).

As adults and parents, the lives we lead are our creation, our own doing. If we’re miserable or stressed, the only way to be happy is to start doing things differently. To craft a life that makes us happy. So, ignore your inner parental guilt, abandon your child to a trusted caregiver and go have fun (and not to run errands folks).