This book pairs nicely with Jennifer Senior's All Joy and No Fun. While that book really examines the parenting angle exclusively, this one focuses more on inner-life and work-life. When I first began reading it I didn't find Brigid Schulte very likeable but she grew on me as the book progressed (like the Senior book this one is extremely well researched and has plenty of depth but unlike the Senior book this one has more of a Memoir feel woven through, with a hint of self-help). I certainly concur with her conclusion that much of the stress and pain experienced by parents in the US at this moment in time is systemic and I agree that we could all use a bit more self-compassion and a bit less one-ups-man-ship in navigating these waters.

(That said, this book and others of it's ilk (along with my entire life experience) are very much the purview of the worried well; it's not that I think our worries lack legitimacy--her point about the anxiety felt by middle class parents about the opportunities that will be available to their kids is spot on--but in the scheme of human suffering we are operating from a place of vast priviledge and comparative ease that makes navel-gazing into our own "suffering" a risky endeavor.)

This isn't a must-read, but it's worth reading. ( )

I've read or have seen several books in the same vein (women, work life balance, parenting), so Schulte is trodding popular territory here. They've all come out at around the same time, though, so I can't fault her for a bandwagon. (This book was chosen as part of a community reading program at my public library, which is partly why I read it.)

The diagnosis is typical, but it's well researched: the examples are good and she uses other countries as a contrast without idealizing them (the Danes wind up coming across as less perfect than they see themselves to be; I don't know if that was her intention). The framing of how this is all eating our time is well done, and she recognizes that the problem (and any solutions) are not just about women, but all of us.

THere are two flaws that got to me:

- The time problem is not just one for the middle classes. It's okay to write a book about middle class concerted cultivation parenting, as long as you've defined your topic clearly. However, the time crunch applies to a broad swath of the American population (those, who Schulte herself . If you're only interested in the time crunch of middle class families with children, define that. With a few exceptions, her targets fit a similar demographic.

- Her proposed solutions are weak, largely because there is no easy answer to broad social change. The people setting the policies are those who have managed to rise to the top in the current system. They're largely the ones who benefit. Further, we have firmly internalized Margaret Thatcher's famous remark that "There is no such thing as society." People (usually women) choose to have children and therefore to bear the consequences of that "choice." Schulte acknowledges American individualism, but facing up to its extent--that we begrudge people even the basics of sick time or recovery from childbirth--would make for a depressing conclusion. ( )

It took me a bit to get through this, but I found it helpful. It was nice to know that I'm definitely not the only one that feels overwhelmed with everything I have to do and it helps me to understand what factors into it. Also, I loved that there were suggestions on what to try to fix it or at least make it better.

Tip: check out the Do One Thing appendix if you don't want to read the whole thing for the short version.

Warning: This book may make you pissed off at your husband for a bit, no matter how great he is. ( )

First chapters were really fine (would give 5 stars), but later it began just to drop bare statistics and stories with no storyline. Finished at chapter 8.

Hope that "HBR Guide to Getting the Right Work Done" will be more balanced.

UPD: Maybe the Reading guide is even better than the book: http://images.macmillan.com/folio-assets/readers-guides/9780374228446RG.pdf ( )

It's funny. This book made me feel, mostly, lucky to be a single mom--at least right now--even though single motherhood has been a state of almost constant overwhelm for many years.

The first three years after the divorce, my daughter was still very small; every weekday I woke at 6 and worked straight through until 10 at night. I got my daughter ready for preschool (and later, school), got myself to work, worked for 8 hours, picked her up, got us home, made dinner, cleaned up, got her ready for bed, paid bills, and when she fell asleep ran on the elliptical for 30 minutes in the storage closet, and fell into bed. There was no time for reading, hobbies, crafts, or anything else I used to enjoy, until Friday nights when she was at her Dad's house and I had a few hours to myself (Saturdays were for errands, and Sundays she was home again). It was brutal, and it took years for me to figure things out.

I had a revelation a few years ago, at home one night taking care of my daughter after an exhausting day of work: "If I don't pay someone to clean this house, it is never getting done." For years it was on the to-do list as something I should do, and wasn't doing enough of, and felt terrible about; I'd spend part of my errand-days on the weekends picking up the worst of it, but it was never enough. And I realized, it was never going to be enough, because between taking care of my daughter and the house and the yard and the bills and the car, I simply didn't have the energy and time to clean everything up, too. So I started paying someone else to do it. And my daughter is now older and more independent, which also makes things easier. She lets me sleep in on Sunday mornings. Hallelujah.

Things are different enough now that when I read the first half of Overwhelmed, I felt mostly grateful for being single; her portrayal of the state of affairs for married mothers is fairly horrifying. Yes I do absolutely everything around the house, and the yard and the car, and it's a lot of work; but there's also no one to resent who could be helping but is instead watching TV while I race around like a maniac. It's all my standards and if something slides, no one complains. If I want to let the dishes sit, the dishes sit. Some weeks the lawn does not get mowed. I get the bed to myself, and if I want to paint the nightstand pink, goddammit, who's going to stop me?

On the one hand, I work hard than almost anyone I know (factor in a few chronic illnesses for myself and my little girl, and believe me, it's a lot of work with few breaks); but on the other hand, I have a feeling of autonomy and control that makes it psychologically more bearable, I think. For instance, I chose to spend Saturday morning finishing the book. My guess is a lot of my married mom friends at least did not feel they had the luxury of that choice.

All that aside, the book largely covers ground we've covered so exhaustively before that it's disheartening to have to cover it again: those studies showing that women have tons of leisure time every week count things such as "waiting for a tow truck in a broken car" as leisure time, because it can't be counted as work or child care. Women are incredibly stressed out not only by all the work they have to do, but by the mental energy spent managing it all, including managing the tasks that other people (including husbands) said they would do, and by intense role conflict between ideal mother and ideal worker stereotypes that have no give and directly contradict each other. As a result, women today spend a huge amount of additional time today both working *and* parenting, and today's full-time working mother spends more time on childcare than the full-time stay-at-home mother of the 1960s did.

Or that the pay and work penalties still exist, as this description of an experiment with identical resumes using different names, and with half listing PTA volunteer experience (showing parenthood) and the other half listing non-parenting volunteer experience: "Mothers ranked at the very bottom. They were rated as significantly less competent, less intelligent, and less committed than women without children. Mothers were held to harsher performance and punctuality standards and had to score significantly higher on a management exam than monmothers to be considered for the position. The recommended starting salary for mothers was $11,000 less than for nonmothers..."

Do you have any idea what I could do with an extra $11,000/year?

As is common with such books, we take a happy trip to Scandinavia and look at global rankings of the US against various other countries, in which the US always comes off looking badly. We discuss the role of fathers in modern families, and what needs to be done to make flexibility a realistic option for working fathers. We discuss childcare and attachment parenting.

She covers this familiar ground well, and I enjoyed the third section on the importance of leisure time and play for adult women. It was a treat to see Sarah Blaffer Hrdy's work covered--I'm always mystified when she's not interviewed for such books, with all the groundbreaking work she's done. Overall it was very well done, but I would have liked to see more about ways out of the overwhelm. It might be too much to ask for--she makes a convincing case that the "time confetti" is a result of very strong cultural forces that are difficult for individual people to stand against--but the final section could have been expanded to include additional details and direction for people looking for a way out of their own over-crowded lives. ( )