Spit-up On My Shoulder

Life’s Work: Confessions of an Unbalanced Mom came out in 2002 and I finally got around to reading it. You know how that goes when you’re a mom–there’s just not enough hours in the day. I highly recommend this book. It’s a compilation of Lisa Belkin’s personal columns from The New York Times on the intersection, really collision, of life and work.

Belkin’s search for balance led her to the conclusion that it can’t be done. The book is filled with her own stories and those of people she interviewed including a father-to-be who restructured his entire company to have more time with his new baby, and a young couple who placed a bet with a friend just to insure that they would meet for lunch twice a month.

I love this piece from the introduction to the book:

“Not a one of us seems to be able to give 100 percent of themselves to their job and 100 percent of themselves to their family and 100 percent of themselves to taking care of themselves. Small wonder. Yet we all seem to think someone (else) out there is getting it right; people who work full-time think people who work part-time are doing it, and people who work part-time are thinking people who don’t work at all are doing it, and those who left the office to tend to home think that if only they could escape back to an office, they might find sanity. But all of this misses the point. No one can do it, because it cannot be done.”

So true! So let yourself off the hook and sit down with Belkin’s book for an honest and humorous read. Another great thing: because these are pieces from Belkin’s newspaper column, each chapter is around four pages long. Perfect for a new parent who doesn’t have more than a few minutes free at a time.