{"id":195,"date":"2004-12-04T22:44:55","date_gmt":"2004-12-04T22:44:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/?p=195"},"modified":"2004-12-04T22:44:55","modified_gmt":"2004-12-04T22:44:55","slug":"this-odd-business-of-parenting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/?p=195","title":{"rendered":"This odd business of parenting"},"content":{"rendered":"

The artist Gwen John when in middle age told a friend: “When I was a child I used to cry all the time and they told me ‘don’t cry now, when you’re grown up you’ll have something to cry about’. So I was afraid of growing up and I never expected any happiness in life.” (p.1)<\/p>\n

So much for the grand old days of childrearing.<\/p>\n

This reminded me of an article<\/a> (sorry free registration required) in The New York Times <\/em>about a study looking at “What Makes People Happy?”. Peculiarly the main answer was TV, but “taking care of children – bless their young hearts – is often about as much fun as housework”. (Don’t you love the way the reporter felt he had to insert that sentimental clause.)<\/p>\n

“The study, of 909 women living in Texas, found that in general, the group woke up a little grumpy but soon entered a state of mild pleasure that increased by degrees through the day, punctuated by occasional bouts of anxiety, frustration, and anger. Predictably, they found that commuting, housework, and facing a boss rated as the least pleasant activities, while sex, socializing with friends and relaxing were most enjoyable. <\/p>\n

Yet contrary to previous research on daily moods, the study found that the women rated TV-watching high on the list, ahead of shopping and talking on the phone, and ranked taking care of children low, below cooking and not far above housework.”<\/p>\n

It makes sense really; the people you see in public looking really miserable are almost invariably in charge of children.<\/p>\n

(Thanks to Rox Populi<\/a> for the reference.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The artist Gwen John when in middle age told a friend: “When I was a child I used to cry all the time and they told me ‘don’t cry now, when you’re grown up you’ll have something to cry about’. So I was afraid of growing up and I never expected any happiness in life.” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous","author-natalie-bennett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}