Friday, June 02, 2006

A Little Poll of My Own

The June issue of Working Mother magazine contained this blurb:

The recent American Time Use Survey classifies parenting activities like bathing a baby or reading bedtime stories as separate from "leisure" time. Huh? We tossed this out toe WM's Reader Panel and found that most of you disagree! In fact, the vast majority say parenting is fun 90 percent or more of the time.

Allow ME to say "Huh?" Some parts of parenting are indeed a lot of fun (I would include reading stories in that category). But bathing? Not in this house. And far less than 90% of my parenting duties would be characterized by this grumpy parent as "fun."

I know that Elizabeth touched on this a while back when she discussed a study reporting that Americans have more leisure time now than in the past despite our overarching feelings of being stretched to the limit and stressed out. Depends on how you classify leisure time, she said. Exactly!

Is it just me? Am I just too joyless a mother? Do you think that things like bathing or, say, going to a soccer game constitute leisure time?