All Joy and No Fun

Have you all heard about this book - All Joy and No Fun.   It's a book on the paradox of modern parenting and the effects of children on parents.  It's a really interesting read.   As I've mentioned here before, I joined a group of new mother's when baby J was an infant.  They are a remarkable group of women - I feel so blessed to know them and share this journey of parenting with them.  It helps that our 9 kids were all born within a month of each other, which means we're generally experiencing  the same stages at the same times.  

We usually get together with the kids, which is awesome because I love seeing them all grow, but as the kids get older and more active, it's harder to actually have a conversation.   When we met and they were infants, we could simply nurse, rock, or hold them and carry on about what was going on with us.  Not that they're young toddlers, we meet at places where the kids can run around and the conversations are constantly interrupted.  Still fun, just harder to focus.

So this month, we're doing a sort of bookclub night and we're all going to read All Joy and No Fun, meet at a restaurant and have a night out.  I can't wait.  These girls have consistently impressed me with their wise insights and I'm sure the discussion is going to be really engaging.  

I'm sure I'll do another post to recap, but in the meantime I flagged this passage in the book.  It really resonated.

    "Children, I think, suffer - in a way that adults don't always realize - under the pressure their parents put on them to be happy, which is the pressure not to make their parents unhappy, or more unhappy than they already are.    ....just 10% of the kids in Galinsky's survey wanted more time with their mothers and just 16% wanted more time with their dads.  A full 34%, however, wished their mothers would be "less stressed". "  

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