Fewer Mothers Prefer Full-time Work

In a recent study of the changing attitudes of mothers, the Pew Research Organization determined that fewer mothers prefer full-time work now (2007) than did in 1997:

Among working mothers with minor children (ages 17 and under), just one-in-five (21%) say full-time work is the ideal situation for them, down from the 32% who said this back in 1997, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Fully six-in-ten (up from 48% in 1997) of today's working mothers say part-time work would be their ideal, and another one-in-five (19%) say she would prefer not working at all outside the home.

But, really, how is this surprising? My only surprise is that a third of mothers in 1997 thought that full-time work was their ideal situation. Frankly, I'm amazed that working full-time is ANYONE's ideal situation. Be honest: if money weren't a factor; if, say, you could get paid the same for working just 4 days a week, wouldn't you jump at the chance?

Personally, I think it's the main folly of American society that we expect that our workers spend 40 hours or more a week working. Why can't the standard be a 4 day work week? In my logical analysis, the money saved over the long term because we are (1) overall healthier and saner due to working less, (2) able to work longer because we aren't burned out and desperate to retire would more than make up for having to hire extra people to cover the one day's productivity lost. In fact, I'm not convinced that there would be all that much lost productivity: I think that a happier employee with a better quality of life is going to be more productive and focused in the time they are at work, knowing that they have every Friday off, or that they get to leave the office at 3:30 instead of 5.

Image courtesy of Gotham Gazette.

Happy Kids! (Or are they?)

The Associated Press and MTV conducted a poll of 1,280 people ages 13-24 and determined that kids love their parents. Okay, I over-simplify. But in response to the open-ended question, "What makes you happy?" the most common answer was their parents. What great news! Right?

Of course, what the AP article doesn't clearly state is that while 49% of teens said that their relationship with their family made them "very happy," a full 61% said that "listening to music" also made them "very happy." So, are they happier with music than their family?

Also glossed over is the statistic that 58% of those polled said that "the way things are in the world" made them either somewhat or very unhappy. Only 15% said they where somewhat or very happy with the state of the world. To me, that sounds like a lot of young adults who are dissatisfied with the world they soon will be inheriting...

One thing that is so frustrating with these types of polls is that they take a sampling (less than 1,300) of kids, ask them a bunch (100) of different questions and then someone somewhere along the line between the people conducting the research and the reporters reporting on it decides which "research" findings they want to publicize. And, folks, that's all we see--what someone else has decided is important. Now, as someone who works in education research, I fully understand that it's not always easy, possible, or even desirable to publish the full text of questions asked, how the responses are analyzed, or what conclusions can be drawn. But as a discerning consumer of information, this poll just leaves me wanting to know more. Who are these 1,280 kids? Are they truly a representative sample of kids across the U.S.? Good research practices would dictate that they are, but without more information, we just have to trust that this poll, and the news article written from it, is giving us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

As it happens, I know of a far superior research study into the true happiness of kids today that provides relevant, real-time data reporting personalized to your specific socio-economic, cultural, and geographic background: just ask them yourself. I hear that works wonders.




Graphic from: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070820/ap_on_re_us/youth_poll_happiness

Homemaking at its Best

Healthy Living = Happy Families is just a small brain-child right now--I guess it's the younger sibling of my two year old son and six month old daughter! But it is because of my two beautiful babies that I've gotten more interested in living healthily and purposefully, and I'm thrilled to share whatever small nuggets of knowledge I've gleaned with anyone out there who might be reading.

I plan to share ideas for homemaking in the best sense of the word: making a home. This won't be about staying-at-home, working-out-of-the-house, or any other fancy acronyms. We all need more time to do the things we really want to do in life, and we all need to make our footprint on the planet to be as small as possible, and I'll throw a wild guess out there and say that we all need to live healthier, too! So, this is for you, all of you, and any of you, whether you're a family of one or 10. Or more!

Who am I? Well, there's two good answers to that:

Prebaby? I was someone who enjoyed reading, cooking, baking, travel, learning other languages, and occasionally watching Sex in the City re-runs.

(Although I must confess, I always wondered, Who ARE these women? And: How do they have time to brunch and lunch and shoe-shop with such vigor? But I suppose some of the sweetness of watching any TV show is in its disimilarity to one's own life. My husband, for his part, loves to watch Everybody Loves Raymond and then say to me "Our marriage isn't like that!" Like, Oh thank goodness you don't mock me in front of your parents! Or, I'm so happy that you don't actually call me stupid to my face!)

Now? My vaunted daily to-do list includes reading Brown Bear, watching Sesame Street, cooking toddler-friendly meals with colored vegetables, deciphering baby-talk and toddlerease, sneaking in a nap on the couch while my son is watching the afore-mentioned Sesame Street (or, as it is called in my household, "COOKIE!"), and, if you were a fly on the wall, you'd think my favorite activity was cleaning the kitchen. Somehow I never move beyond the kitchen. I clean the kitchen at least every other day, sometimes I make it to the living room, rarer still to my son's room...the bathroom? Let me just say, and I'm not proud of it, but we just bought our second shower curtain liner this year due to the lovely colors that were beginning to grow on the old one. And, since we don't actually have a shower curtain, but only a clear liner, it must at the very least be actually clear.

Perhaps that isn't the best story to tell you as I try to convince you that I actually know something about homemaking! But I do, I promise, and I'll be posting recipes, cleaning tips, budget-living ideas, healthy planet thoughts...and, any suggestions YOU have for me to include! So, let me know what you think and what your best ideas are, and I'll be thrilled over the moon to hear from you.