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Too Many Choices=Misery
So New York magazine's cover story is all about the latest research on happiness. A lot of the data in the article was already known--married people, overall, are happier, so are people who are religious and church goers, but having young kids makes people less happy. Yawn.
But buried in the story is the nugget that lots of choices are making people really miserable, leading to self-doubt, angst, even depression.
NY mag played up the fact that New Yorkers live in a city that offers more of everything, speculating that's why people are more neurotic there. Well, a surplus of choices is what defines our entire American culture and the economy. Our supermarkets, department stores, our media, our banks, all offer endless choices. And it is driving us crazy.
I also think the article failed to explore how choices weigh heavily on parents, especially mothers. I truly believe one of the reasons why so many of us are unhappy is because of this gnawing sense that we've made the wrong choices. Whether we're working part-time, full time, from home, or taking time off to raise kids, we worry that we should have been doing something else.
 Stumble It!
At Home with One Child
This month's Child magazine published an essay of mine in which I wrote about the unexpected rewards of traveling alone with my older daughter, Emily. (Sorry, not available online yet.)
What I'd realized was that kids, unlike adults, are constantly evolving, so spending time alone with my daughter--without the distractions of work, another child, a household to run, etc--enabled me to see who she was becoming.
This summer I've had an almost mirror experience with my five year old daughter, Annie--though for different reasons. Emily has been away at sleep away camp, and I've noticed that Annie can behave quite differently when her big sister is not around.
Annie openly adores Emily and wants to do everything she does. No shock there. But when her sister isn't around to take the lead, Annie makes very different choices. She marches on to the dance floor at a huge wedding and insists that Daddy dance with her. She runs up to even distant relatives to say hello.
Just two months earlier, when we were at a wedding, Annie slinked around with her reserved sister during the cocktail hour. When the music started, Emily, who hates to dance and abhors big crowds, refused to budge from her chair, and so did Annie. She sulked and said she wanted to go home. Then Annie did too.
At the wedding we just attended, Annie was like another child --more like herself.
The challenge is, how do we encourage Annie to show more of Annie when her big sister returns?
Stumble It!
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