Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time
Brigid Schulte
Language: English
Pages: 224
ISBN: B00OHXRPXG
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In her attempts to juggle work and family life, Brigid Schulte has baked cakes until 2 a.m., frantically (but surreptitiously) sent important emails during school trips and then worked long into the night after her children were in bed.
Realising she had become someone who constantly burst in late, trailing shoes and schoolbooks and biscuit crumbs, she began to question, like so many of us, whether it is possible to be anything you want to be, have a family and still have time to breathe.
So when Schulte met an eminent sociologist who studies time and he told her she enjoyed thirty hours of leisure each week, she thought her head was going to pop off.
What followed was a trip down the rabbit hole of busy-ness, a journey to discover why so many of us find it near-impossible to press the 'pause' button on life and what got us here in the first place.
Overwhelmed maps the individual, historical, biological and societal stresses that have ripped working mothers' and fathers' leisure to shreds, and asks how it might be possible for us to put the pieces back together.
Seeking insights, answers and inspiration, Schulte explores everything from the wiring of the brain and why workplaces are becoming increasingly demanding, to worldwide differences in family policy, how cultural norms shape our experiences at work, our unequal division of labour at home and why it's so hard for everyone - but women especially - to feel they deserve an elusive moment of peace.
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farther still when the first child arrives. Through the years, I have seen an increasing number of fathers strapping on BabyBjörns and taking the baby for a walk, shopping for groceries, taking kids to school, and doing the ballet pickup. Surveys are showing that fathers are feeling more time squeeze than mothers. Still, time-use researchers report that the ratio of mothers’ childcare time to fathers’ ranges from 2:1 in the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, and Norway, to more than 3:1 in
habits and how to change them, I am deeply grateful for the work of Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business (New York: Random House, 2012). 22. This idea is outlined in his videoblog: Tony Schwartz, “Develop Productivity Rituals,” HBR Blog Network, video, January 3, 2012, http://blogs.hbr.org/video/2012/01/develop-productivity-rituals.html. 23. Sue Shellenbarger, “The Peak Time for Everything,” Wall Street Journal, September 26, 2012. Science is finding
having worked a weekend shift, but I spent it avoiding doing the taxes by cleaning the oven, and on the phone with Apple customer service trying to figure out why all the icons on the Mac had turned into question marks. The only activities that, with some stretching, I would consider “leisure” were our usual Family Pizza Movie Night on Friday, a seventy-five-minute yoga class on Saturday morning, and a family dinner at a friend’s house with the kids in tow. There were the few minutes each night
with the judiciary.” “I figured they were licensed when we went to take a tour,” Cummings told me. “They seemed like they knew what they were doing. They were mothers. They were grandmothers.”30 In 1981, when some states were trying to set higher teacher-training standards for child-care workers, Ronald Reagan scoffed at the attempt. “Mothers and grandmothers have been taking care of children for thousands of years without special college training,” he said.31 In the minds of many, child care
roles despite their best intentions. Anna, who had an emotionally volatile childhood with parents who divorced early, was between careers when they had their first child. She grew to like the idea of devoting her full attention to the family for a few years. James became the breadwinner. With their first child, he took his company’s maximum paternity leave: one week. When their second child was born, James planned to take leave. But after just one day off, his extreme-hour company called in a