The loss of their freedom to fully be what they're capable of being is one concern that has spooked women since the 60s.
As she pushes her vacuum cleaner around the house, all the while thinking of the day's wash churning in the washing machine, and of the baby who'd be having his bottle in a while, Mom couldn't think about the injustice of it all: why does she have to do all the housework? But harassed moms can take a cue from their overseas counterparts, who, strangely, seem to have mastered the art of finding the middle ground where housework and the need for self-expression shake hands.
Take one aspect of housework, for instance: taking care of baby while doing housework.
Is that such a big issue for women in Peru? No, it's common to find Peruvian moms herding sheep in the Andes, their babies slung in a shawl on their mothers' backs.
And what more inhospitable place can there be than the Arctic? But are moms there forever grumbling about their lot? No, not at all.
The picture I saw of a smiling Inuit mom fishing for dinner in a hole in the ice is anything but a miserable, ill-treated slave, her red-cheeked baby comfortably nestled in his mother's parka! One might already be saying, but it's different, the demands on the time of a New York mom is so much different from that of her overseas counterparts.
Oh? Then tell that to the Peruvian mom who sometimes have to wander far from her Andes home to search in the craggy terrain for a missing sheep.
Or to the smiling Inuit woman who lives in one of the harshest places in the world.
The secret is to accept that for everything, there seems to be a purpose, and, for the moment at least, there is very little anyone can do about it.
Moms, and not dads, for instance, were given breasts most likely because it's moms who are supposed to care for babies, while dads hunt, er, bring home the food.
Moms were given more gentle voices, more tender touch, and more patience for the same reason.
And the second secret? It's nothing more than the fact that whether Mom has a ball, or becomes miserable, in her juggling of work and baby care is entirely up to her.
The modern mom has, at her disposal, incredible modern gadgets to make her day a breeze.
She can, for instance, do anything from keeping up-to-date on online orders from her e-business clients to keeping track of the latest NASDAQ-- all while changing baby's diaper.
After that's done, she can book online her travel plans or go over her grocery list, all the while keeping an eye on baby sleeping in the Moses basket [http://www.
babybagsonline.
com/moses-baskets.
html].
Why, she can even go out to her veranda overlooking the Pacific and soak in the gentle breeze, bringing along Baby with her, still soundly asleep in her Moses basket.
As she pushes her vacuum cleaner around the house, all the while thinking of the day's wash churning in the washing machine, and of the baby who'd be having his bottle in a while, Mom couldn't think about the injustice of it all: why does she have to do all the housework? But harassed moms can take a cue from their overseas counterparts, who, strangely, seem to have mastered the art of finding the middle ground where housework and the need for self-expression shake hands.
Take one aspect of housework, for instance: taking care of baby while doing housework.
Is that such a big issue for women in Peru? No, it's common to find Peruvian moms herding sheep in the Andes, their babies slung in a shawl on their mothers' backs.
And what more inhospitable place can there be than the Arctic? But are moms there forever grumbling about their lot? No, not at all.
The picture I saw of a smiling Inuit mom fishing for dinner in a hole in the ice is anything but a miserable, ill-treated slave, her red-cheeked baby comfortably nestled in his mother's parka! One might already be saying, but it's different, the demands on the time of a New York mom is so much different from that of her overseas counterparts.
Oh? Then tell that to the Peruvian mom who sometimes have to wander far from her Andes home to search in the craggy terrain for a missing sheep.
Or to the smiling Inuit woman who lives in one of the harshest places in the world.
The secret is to accept that for everything, there seems to be a purpose, and, for the moment at least, there is very little anyone can do about it.
Moms, and not dads, for instance, were given breasts most likely because it's moms who are supposed to care for babies, while dads hunt, er, bring home the food.
Moms were given more gentle voices, more tender touch, and more patience for the same reason.
And the second secret? It's nothing more than the fact that whether Mom has a ball, or becomes miserable, in her juggling of work and baby care is entirely up to her.
The modern mom has, at her disposal, incredible modern gadgets to make her day a breeze.
She can, for instance, do anything from keeping up-to-date on online orders from her e-business clients to keeping track of the latest NASDAQ-- all while changing baby's diaper.
After that's done, she can book online her travel plans or go over her grocery list, all the while keeping an eye on baby sleeping in the Moses basket [http://www.
babybagsonline.
com/moses-baskets.
html].
Why, she can even go out to her veranda overlooking the Pacific and soak in the gentle breeze, bringing along Baby with her, still soundly asleep in her Moses basket.