No one I know is actually so rude as to tell me I've become duller since having children. But I'm sure they think it.
(Cartoon caption:) I never really rallied after the birth of my first child.
That's my parenting style - 'Go watch the TV.' I'm one of 11 children, and my mother's parenting style was, 'There's the TV. Go watch it. Mommy's got 10 other people to take care of.'
Definitely there are lots of days that l am really tired, especially after becoming a new mom. There's nothing more exhausting because physically, mentally, emotionally, it requires you to be on all the time.
So much is asked of parents, and so little is given.
I think I'm an extremely good mother. I know I'm an extremely good mother. But I didn't realise how much it sucks out of you.
Everyone says that when you have kids, you become crazy.
Some days, I feel like I should win Best Mom of the Day award, and some days, I find myself doing strange things that don't have any real purpose, in faraway corners in my house, and I realize I am literally and deliberately hiding from my children.
My husband and I each had careers and two babies at home. They just demand everything from you. All the domestic duties fell to me and this resentment builds, as I think happens to a lot of young parents who have competing careers.
Often, parents feel overwhelmed. Many must accomplish the whole job single-handedly while bearing all of the emotional pain of divorce.
We're a nation of exhausted and over-stressed adults raising over-scheduled children.
As a parent, my fantasy is to cook every meal, read every story, do everything, and also work all day. I'm overly hard on myself.
I don't dislike children, I just don't particularly want to be around with them a lot. Problem is, neither do their parents.
Kids are fabulous, but when you're home all day with an infant that can't talk, your brain starts to kind of melt, and I thought, 'I have to do something, or my brain is just going to liquefy.'
I think all parents have a double life.
Being a parent is absolutely exhausting and draining, along with all the joy and love.
How hard or easy it is to raise kids, especially while working, is a big part of people's well-being everywhere.
When you're trying to be a parent and a businessperson at the same time, that is the most stressful thing you could do.
To me, full-time mothering felt like way too much and yet not nearly enough. Lost in a landslide of diapers, birthday parties, and others' needs, I ached to reestablish myself.
I feel like a semi-single mum.
A lot of the moms of autistic kids I met are so consumed with being their child's advocate that there's no room for anything else - least of all themselves. It's why so many marriages end in divorce, when a child is diagnosed on the spectrum.
I think by the time I was born, my parents had pretty well run the gauntlet with their kids. The novelty had kind of worn off by the time the twelfth child was born. I was lucky to get fed and changed, picked up and taken to school.
Parents who obsess about every detail of child-rearing and orchestrate their children's 'resumes' may run themselves ragged while their own personal identities and adult relationships wither for lack of care.
We've all seen the mom who devotes all her time and attention to her child and is so hungry for adult interaction that as soon as she's around another adult, she's not paying attention anymore.
I have less energy than I did when I was a younger parent, although I was never really a young parent.
