This weekend I was reading an article over at Babble.com, which talked about several conflicting studies about parents and happiness they derive from having kids.  According to one widely-discussed study, there was no increase in happiness for people who had kids. In fact, it showed that parents experience less emotional well-being than non-parents. But another recent study demonstrated quite the opposite, showing that parents do experience increased feelings of life satisfaction. These studies seem to contradict each other, but as I thought about them, I realized that they actually make a lot of sense.

Happiness is a really elusive and subject and difficult to describe concept. I think it means something different to each of us. One of the things that I know makes me happy is not feeling stressed out and anxious and exhausted. And it is a fact that after having our daughter my husband and I are more stressed out and anxious and exhausted. So on that measure of happiness, we’re less happy. But if happiness means feeling deeply grateful about having a loving family or feeling an amazing sense of satisfaction at watching our daughter become a kind, warm, funny, great person, of knowing that we have our little family to help each other deal with various unhappy stuff that life throws at us, then we’re happy. Insanely happy, actually.

So I think it makes sense that a study about happiness — emotional well-being, which definitely has to do with stress that comes with parenting — and life satisfaction, as they relate to having kids, will show different results. Having kids is really really really hard work and as the Babble.com article points out, using yet another study (there must be one for everything, right?), while we’re doing hard work, it’s hard to feel cheery and happy. But the feeling of deep satisfaction that parenting brings, especially once we figure out how to get a bit more sleep, is a kind of happiness.

Do you think having kids has made you happier? Do you think it’s increased your life satisfaction? How about the impact on your marriage - positive or negative?

This was a really important and crazy trip, with tons of meetings and presentation which were critical for my work right now. It wasn’t a choice, I had to go. Overall, It was really productive and fairly successful, and for most of it, I felt fine about being away. But sometime mid-way through the flight home the working mom guilt reared its ugly head and sent me into a spiral of guilt-ridden thoughts. By the time I got home to my smiling daughter and equally smiling husband, I was a guilty mess. Don’t you love how I was a mess right when I should have just been psyched to be back? Yep, I hated it too.

I’ve written about business trip guilt here before. I’ve even confessed that sometimes I like going on business trips because they feel like a vacation. (Great hotel room with an amazing bed, someone else to pick up my towels off the floor, lots of meals out at fancy restaurants, and no lunches to make or piano to practice — can you NOT enjoy that just a bit?) And that’s why this intense guilt that I felt about being away for so long felt so shocking. It’s almost like I felt like I learned to put the useless feeling of guilt away but they stubbornly returned.

It didn’t help of course that my daughter got sick the day after I came back and my husband stayed home while I ran to an important meeting at work. I hate when I hear other working moms say this but let me tell you, I felt like a REALLY bad mother just then. I mentioned this to a friend, also a working mom, who gave me this really kind look of both understanding and “you really need to snap out of thinking this way, girl!” Right.

I guess the thing to realize is that regardless of how long you are a working mom, there will be some guilt there, more or less at times, but always somewhere there. At least that’s what I am realizing, painfully.

Do you feel guilty when you go away on trips or business trips or have you figured out how to park the working mom guilt somewhere very far away? Do you think it’s something we can ever completely get rid of?

She is not the first ultra-busy working mom who has surprised me with her ability to find time for books. A friend at work is a voracious reader, who always brings a book on her daily train commute. Another friend is always mentioning this or that book she has read and she has two kids and pretty hectic job. I have to confess that I feel like a total book failure because ever since I became a working mom, the number of books I’ve managed to read has shrunk significantly.

I love to read. And while I wouldn’t call myself a bookworm by any means, before the work-life juggle or working motherhood became my reality I read regularly and with endless pleasure. But reading books is absolutely one of the things I love that I’ve given up a lot of, especially in recent years. Most of the books I’ve read have been on vacation or during long flights (often for business trips), and while I always have a few books that I want to read on my bedside table, I don’t manage to read more than a few pages before I fall asleep. Add to that the fact that I love to read the New Yorker — which takes up the little reading time that I do manage to find before bed — and the number of books I’ve been reading is tiny.

I really miss losing myself in a good book and I am looking forward impatiently to our April vacation partly because I know I am going to devour several. One of the things I know is key to not losing my mind as a working mom is accepting that I can’t have it all — work, family, hobbies, me time, friend time, enough sleep, enough time to read, etc. – all the time. Right now in my life reading has definitely fallen to the lower list of priorities and I accept that. But I can’t say that I like it.

Do you find time for reading in your hectic life or have you cut down on the number of books you read because you have a lot of other priorities?

For the record, I am no food nazi. I think it’s good to eat a variety of everything, including dessert, and it’s really important to enjoy your food. But generally yes, I do try to keep our family healthy. We stay away from most processed and junk food and prioritize whole grains, veggies and fruits and lean meats and fish over simple starches, fried anything, and red meat. It takes some effort but I have to say, I’m pretty proud of the way we all eat, especially our kiddo.

It’s not my place to judge how other people eat or feed their kids, but I do find myself in awkward situations when my daughter is being offered something that we wouldn’t ordinarily eat. And I don’t mean a food she is unfamiliar with; I mean junk food or fast food or sugary snacks in the middle of the day after having just had some sugary snacks in the middle of the day. I will admit that I usually just let her have what the other kids are having, as much as I cringe. But choosing for her to eat crap so that we don’t offend the other parents and I don’t appear like a totally uncool mom isn’t something I feel great about.

I know there is a very limited time during which I can be the main influence over how my daughter eats. Already she is coming home asking to have food for lunch that her classmates eat and not all of it is healthy. The older she gets, the more food choices she will make on her own, and the only way I can try to keep her eating healthy is by setting a good example. Recently her class had a make-your-own-sandwich lunch at school and when I asked her what she had, she said she made a sandwich with white bread. “I’d never had it before so I wanted to taste it. It was yummy!” she told me afterwards, and my heart sank as I looked over at the whole wheat bread on the counter. Obviously it wasn’t a big deal but I won’t lie — it made me wonder if she will make healthy food choices when I am not next to her or stocking the fridge with her options.

How strict are you about your kids’ food choices?

This got me thinking about the friends in my life and how we’re always struggling to find time to catch up. Between work, kids, kids’ activities, family stuff, and various home to-dos it’s never easy to set aside a chunk of time to spend together. One of my friends and I tried to establish a regular schedule at one point - every Monday night we’d meet up for however long we could manage. We made it two Mondays in a row and it was truly awesome. One night we went out for dinner. The next we only had time for a glass of wine. It didn’t really matter what we were doing — it felt great to step out of our hectic lives and just talk, somewhere outside of our homes and without the husbands and kids nearby. But then our hectic lives started to creep in and we’ve not managed to keep up our Monday night tradition. As I write this we’re ten emails deep into a conversation about when we can get together next.

Carving out more time to spend with friends is something I’d love to figure out how to do. But since most of my friends are also ultra-busy working moms — so there are two hectic schedules to try and synch up — so far I’d say I’m not doing great. There are other factors as well. A friend called me the other day to go shopping with her on a Saturday afternoon. My husband was around so I could have gone, leaving our kiddo in his care. But besides having weekend separation anxiety, I felt like I hadn’t seen her very much the previous week so I said no to my friend and yes to making cookies with my daughter. I know that making time for friends will sometimes mean trading in time with my kiddo, but I find this trade-off insanely difficult to navigate.

I’d love to hear how you guys are finding the time to spend with friends. Do you have regular catch-up schedules? Get away for a few hours on weekends? Run errands together?

The author cites a few non-surprising statistics:

No woman has ever been CEO of a Wall Street firm.

Women were primary owners of only 19% of the 237,843 firms founded in 2004.

I say non-surprising because I am well aware of how few women hold top positions in business and finance. During my five years in venture capital, I ran across very few women who held senior positions in other firms and got used to scanning networking events for one or two women in the sea of make suits.

When people talk or write about why more women aren’t don’t hold top positions in business, there are common themes that emerge:

Women don’t want to hold these high-stress positions because they want to spend more time with their kids.

Women are less ambitious than men.

Women get off the corporate ladder to raise kids and it’s too hard to climb back up when they return to work.

I am sure some of this is true. In fact, there is some evidence to suggest that women don’t, in fact, want to run big companies. (And while I’d argue that there are enough ambitious women to run tons of companies, the fact that ambitious women are often considered bitchy makes it tougher for them to rise to the top.)

But the Business Week article suggests another take on this topic:

Evidence suggests that this does not reflect a failure on the part of women but rather a societal failure. Consider the contrast with India, a country that is in many respects more conservative than the U.S. It might therefore be expected to be even less amenable to women in leadership. Yet there, women are rapidly rising through the top ranks of the business community.

In India, women are in charge of divisions of some of the largest financial firms, like UBS and JPMorganChase. One in five big banks, insurance and money management firms in India is run by a woman, but there are no women in charge of a major bank in the United States (or Europe, for that matter).

So what’s the reason? Perhaps it is the fact that in India, the business and financial sectors are relatively new as compared to the US and there is no entrenched male-dominated culture and networks that stand in the way of women rising to the top. Women are then able to compete with men on more equal terms for the top positions and there are no societal stereotypes that stand in their way. As this New York Times article notes, women at the top of financial firms in India don’t feel the need to act like men; many often wear saris to work and openly talk about their families and kids.

Perhaps societal stereotypes and expectations with regards to women’s roles can and will change. (With women breadwinners at the highest level ever, there is evidence that this is already happening.) Personally, I’m cautiously and very mildly optimistic. Having been in that world, I think it is going to take a looooong, long time for the culture to change.

Why do you think there aren’t more women at the top in the business world? Would you ever want to run a large company or start one?

This sounded insanely wrong to me when I read it and (sorry to give away the punch line) the article’s author didn’t find her 30 weekly hours either, even aftertracking how she spends her time. It was funny to read some of her observations and realize that many of us crazy busy working moms think of things similarly. For example, she described her 30 minutes of exercise a day as leisure time. I do the same for my time at the gym. But c’mon, is it really leisure? John Robinson disagrees, and if I am honest about it, so do I. It IS something I am doing for me, but it’s not relaxing in the same way that a leisurely walk or a few hours reading can be.

I tried to think about my average week and figure out how much leisure time I have. I do try to take a 1/2 hour walk as often as I can, which realistically is about 3 or 4 times a week. So let’s call it 2 hours. My husband and I usually watch a movie or go out to the movies or dinner with friends at least once a week — that’s leisurely, so let’s call it 4 hours. And in the past few months I’ve gotten pretty disciplined about taking at least one night a week just for myself — spending it with a friend or getting a latte and reading some magazines — so let’s be generous and call that 4 hours. And for the fun of it let’s throw in some random leisure time here and there and add it up to a few hours. So 12 hour total of weekly leisure time and this is for a mom with just one kiddo. 30 hours? I don’t think so.

(My first inclination was to add sleep to my leisure time, because I really do think of it as that. But I’m pretty sure what the sociologist meant by leisure time was something relaxing you did while awake.)

The article did have some interesting observations related to how we treat leisure time. The author points out, for example, that society used to value leisure a lot more and rich people who could indulged in a lot of leisure and not a lot of work. These days, as she writes, even billionaires have insanely busy schedules. Work has become much more prominent as a value for many of us and I can attest to the fact that I do derive a lot of pride/satisfaction/self-assurance from accomplishing a lot at my job. There are definitely hours I spend working that I could be spending in more leisurely ways.

I am not sure I need 30 hours but I could definitely use a bit more leisure time. And I think like with everything else, I could create some more if I were more focused on it. There are times when I could have a few hours to myself on the weekend but my separation anxiety doesn’t let me leave my kiddo whom I don’t see as much during the week because I work. And I could definitely feed my family more healthy prepared and frozen meals or takeout instead of cooking til midnight a few times a week; that would free up some leisure time. Sure, less work and household/childcare responsibilities would give me more time, but I’m pretty sure I am a contributor to my too-little-leisure time life.

What about you — how much leisure time do you think you have per week to do what you enjoy and what’s relaxing? Do you think you could have more if you made it a priority?

First of all, wow. Second of all, according to the New York Times article, this gender role reversal is having a surprising effect — it’s making marriages happier.

Here are some interesting points from the article that support the idea that when both the wife and the husband work, their marriage is more stable:

• In states where fewer wives have paid jobs, divorce rates are higher.
• American couples where both the husband and wife work have lower divorce rates than couples where the man is the main breadwinner.
• Divorce rates in the US have fallen as women have gained more financial independence.

Sociologists interviewed in the article suggest that as women become more financially independent and better educated they choose their husbands differently. Instead of just looking for someone who can support them financially they are looking for a good life partner, which leads to a happier and more stable marriage.

I completely buy this argument. I also think that when a woman feels self-sufficient — i.e. able to support herself financially if need be — she is overall happier and more secure, which then leads to her being happier in her marriage. But I am still a skeptic when it comes to families where moms are the main breadwinners. I’ve been one and I’ve been honest about the fact that it caused me to feel some resentment for my husband. I’ve heard this from endless number of friends who are the main breadwinners.

The main resentment-causing issue seems to be that even when the wife earns more than her husband, she still handles the majority of household and childcare responsibilities. And I tend to think that both the husband and the wife are partly responsible. As in our case, part of the problem was that I just couldn’t let go of trying to do everything at home and the other part was that my husband wasn’t jumping in to take on more responsibilities. Either way, this did lead to stress in our marriage and I’d be hard-pressed to argue that more women as primary breadwinners leads to happier marriages. Perhaps in time this can be true, as men and women get more comfortable about the reversal of traditional gender roles.

I’d love to hear what you think about this topic and the idea that when both the wife and the husband work the marriage is more stale or happier? Have you found this to be true in your marriage?

After three months my maternity leave was over and I went back to work. By this time I’d already been using the breast pump so I decided to give regular breast pumping a go to see if I could make it to my six month mark. It was really annoying and really challenging — by the end, each pumping session was taking more than half an hour for me to get enough milk for a feeding — but I made it.

I felt really proud of myself but I was also fully aware that I was in a privileged situation. My company paid for a three-month maternity leave, which is not common by any means in the US. At work, I had a large private office in which I could pump, instead of having to do it in the bathroom, as many of my friends were forced to do. I had a schedule flexible enough to find time to pump and no one at work, including my boss, ever questioned why I needed three half hour breaks during the day.

In other words, making it to my six-month breastfeeding goal was really difficult, but my three-month paid maternity leave, flexible schedule, and a private office all helped me achieve it. So when I read articles like this one, that talk about the fact that short maternity leaves are one of the reasons for why women in the US are not breastfeeding for the recommended first six months, I nod my head violently. Of course short maternity leaves can be blamed, and so can companies that don’t provide comfortable private areas to pump and schedule flexibility to make it happen.

Here’s a statistic from the article:

Of infants born in 2006, 43 percent were breast-feeding at 6 months and 23 percent at 12 months. Just 14 percent, however, had been exclusively breast-fed for six months.

This is the point in which I again express my amazement that the United States is the only industrialized country in the world without a guaranteed, paid national maternity policy. And this is coming from someone who is not a big fan of government regulation in general. But here’s my beef: If the government is going to issue guidelines about breastfeeding shouldn’t it ensure that women who work have the right conditions to actually reach these goals?

Did a short maternity leave cause you to quit breastfeeding before you wanted to?

Except lately I’ve been feeling really guilty and naive any time I think negatively about my job. With 10% unemployment, millions of people are out of work who would probably be very happy with my job or any job, for that matter. It feels petty to complain about a gossipy colleague when a friend has just been laid off or to wish I had a more creative work environment when another friend has been looking for work for a year.

But the reality is that those of us who are working often do dislike — or, in the most extreme cases, hate — our jobs. I’ve written here before about reasons why you might not want to quite a job you hate. And if you choose to stick it out, you have to find a way to survive without becoming completely miserable. Because spending a huge chunk of your day miserable is 1. horrible, 2. not productive, and 3. just not fun. Here’s an article I read recently with some helpful (although a bit simplistic, if you ask me) tips about how to survive a job you hate.

Some highlights:

Figure out why you hate your job and if there is anything you can do about it. Maybe the answer is yes, maybe no. But it’s worth thinking about specific reasons and seeing if any of them are modifiable.

Many people hate their jobs because they hate their boss. Obviously you can’t always control who your boss is but if you form strong relationships with your colleagues, it might be a positive counter to the negative relationship with your superior.

Feeling anonymous, unrecognized, and unappreciated at work is a common reason for job misery.What if you helped your colleagues feel less so and they, in return, did the same for you? (This point strikes a chord with me. It seems a bit naive at first, but a few jobs ago I think this is exactly what our office did, without being explicit about it. Management seemed entirely oblivious to the hard work we were doing, so we developed a culture of being outwardly nice to each other, openly discussing and noting achievements, challenges overcome. It’s worth a try.)

Find something to appreciate about your job (like um… having it at all). No, this will not make your job hate go away, but it should temper it.

Do you have any suggestions or things you’ve done in the past (or are doing now) to deal with a job you hate?  Share in the comments!