Why Keeping House is Different When You Have Kids
May 31, 2007 by Maricar
Filed under General Housekeeping and Homemaking
Carolyn Hax, who writes the syndicated column “Tell me about it”, answers a reader’s question about why parents don’t seem to have enough time in a day. The reader asks:
What is a typical day and why don’t moms have time for a call or e-mail? I work and am away from home nine hours a day (plus a few late work events), I manage to get it all done.
Carolyn’s answer:
When you have young kids, your typical day is: constant attention, from getting them out of bed, fed, clean, dressed; to keeping them out of harm’s way; to answering their coos, cries, questions; to having two arms and carrying one kid, one set of car keys, and supplies for even the quickest trips, including the latest-to-be-declared-essential piece of molded plastic gear; to keeping them from unshelving books at the library; to enforcing rest times; to staying one step ahead of them lest they get too hungry, tired or bored, any one of which produces the kind of checkout-line screaming that gets the checkout line shaking its head.
It’s needing 45 minutes to do what takes others 15.
It’s constant vigilance, constant touch, constant use of your voice, constant relegation of your needs to the second tier.
It’s constant scrutiny and second-guessing from family and friends, well meaning and otherwise. It’s resisting constant temptation to seek short-term relief at everyone’s long-term expense.
It’s doing all this while concurrently teaching virtually everything — language, manners, safety, resourcefulness, discipline, curiosity, creativity. Empathy. Everything.
If you have kids, especially small kids, you know how it is. Just remember that you are not alone. 
If you don’t have kids, well, now you know why your friends who are new parents seem to have disappeared from the face of the earth. Don’t worry, they’ll resurface. Just give them a few years.
Read the entire article here.
via Seattle Post-Intelligencer; image: MyBindi.com
Tags: stay-at-home moms, parents and housekeeping, new parents, homemaking, housekeeping
Very nice blog!