No, Moms: It’s Not Selfish to Make Yourself a Priority
written by Bonnie Gibbs Vengrow, posted on Parents.com
With two children under the age of 3, a loving husband, and a work-from-home job she adored, Nessa Myers had the life she’d always dreamed of. Yet she found herself feeling increasingly frustrated and resentful and couldn’t figure out why.
Eventually, she turned to her counselor, who encouraged her to re-examine her schedule: It was brimming with activities for the kids but woefully lacking any of her own. It was then that Myers realized she was denying herself the opportunity to recharge at the end of a long day or curl up with a good book—things she enjoyed before her daughters were born. “I wanted a chance to just be me, the person,” she says.
For many parents, Myers’ story might as well be their own. Raising a child may be rewarding and joyful, but it can also be all-consuming, and one of the first casualties is free time. Consider a 2015 Pew Research Center survey, which found that 59 percent of people say they spend the right amount of time with their children. And yet more than half of all parents say they don’t have enough time away from the kids to spend with friends or on hobbies.
So where’s the disconnect? It may boil down to a host of reasons, including modern parenting styles. “We live in an age of overparenting—we treat it as an Olympic sport,” says Samantha Ettus, best-selling author of The Pie Life: A Guilt-Free Recipe For Success and Satisfaction and a mom of three. “We’re confusing the amount of time we spend with our kids with the quality of our parenting. The quality of your relationship with your child isn’t directly correlated to the time you spend with them.” And once you accept that, she says, it’s easier to figure out what you actually need to be the best parent you can be.