Working mother

It's been one of those weeks. (Mind you, it's only Tuesday). A week when I feel like I'm not devoting enough attention to my career, to my family, to my house, to my fitness, to my wardrobe. I want to work my ass off, be a devoted wife and mother, with a clean house, toned abs, a killer wardrobe and an actual hairstyle.

I keep thinking I can do and be all these things, if I just watched less television, got up earlier, spent less time on the Internet, prioritized more, organized more, and made even more to-do lists. Then today, I read this article in the New York Times. The article isn't about my generation, but it hits the nail on the head:

"It did not take long, of course, before the guilt set in ... They expected to be both their mothers (or their rosy memory of what their mothers had been) and their fathers (who won the bread but never dreamed of baking it), and because that is an impossible task, they felt they had failed. The old guideposts were gone, and new ones had not been established."

The article is by Lisa Belkin. I read her book, “Life’s Work: Confessions of an Unbalanced Mom” years ago, before I was a wife or mother. It might be time to read it again.