minding

A Talk at Lesley Ellis School

A friend recently confessed to me that she sent a child to school without socks and that she has occasionally offered her children pop-tarts for breakfast. "Am I a bad mother?" she asked. She feels guilty that she hasn't signed her child up for the Young Scientist program at a local museum.

Perfect children need perfect parents—good enough won't do. The trouble is, though, none of us is perfect.

I'm excited to be speaking on the topic of perfectionism and parenting at Lesley Ellis School in Arlington, MA on Wednesday, January 13th at 7:00 pm. The event is  part of the school's ongoing series of Parent Education talks. These talks are free and open to the public. Please call or email the school for more information.

Lesley Ellis School
41 Foster Street
Arlington, MA 02474
781-641-5987
admission@lesleyellis.org

 

Caring For The Caregivers

I was a guest contributor this week to WBUR's Commonhealth blog. You can read my entry here. Thanks.

Who's Happy Now?

The news is not good: women are not happy.

According the survey that has tracked America's mood for over 30 years, women are not as happy as they used to be. The survey is the General Social Survey the University of Chicago is a face-to-face survey of randomly selected adults.

Columnists are speculating on the reasons.

Maureen Dowd's take on our funk in the New York Times is here:

Arianna Huffington's musings are here.

Both also refer to economists Betsey Stevenson's and Justin Wolfer's report, " The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness," originally published back in 2007 and recently updated.

Back then, more than a few writers questioned the premise. Maybe, they opined at Freakonomics, women are more unhappy because women's lives are more like men's lives now, and men have historically reported being less happy. Or maybe there's less social pressure for women to pretend to be happy. Or maybe surveys designed to elicit self-reports of happiness produce questionable data.

Some want to blame feminism for making women unhappy. Others believe it is evidence of an enduring degree of inequality.

What's your thinking?

Photo: Michelle Brea, Creative Commons