Can I just come out and say this first:

Why is it such an odd/weird/unique/strange thing to have one kiddo that we need articles and discussions to debunk myths about it?

1 in 5 families in the United States have one child. That’s 20% of all families — hardly an oddity or some tiny % that we need to study these children under a microscope and have endless debates about whether they will grow up to be selfish, anti-social narcissists  or somehow miraculously manage to become well-functioning human beings.
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If you’ve not yet read the New York Magazine article titled All Joy and No Fun: Why parents hate parenting, you should. It’s really well-written and talks about some interesting studies about parents. Many of the studies it cites indicate that having kids doesn’t actually make us happier. (I’ve written about this before and argued that parenting may not make us happier, but it’s amazing fulfilling and I think many parents would agree.)

But one of the studies the article talks about is about Scandinavian parents vs. parents in America. In Scandinavia parents can take a year (yes, a YEAR) off for parental leave, daycare of often subsidized, and there are lots of other support mechanisms to help parents juggle work and family. And guess what? According to the study mentioned in the article, parents in Scandinavia are happier.
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Every three or four months I travel for work. Most times, I’m awake for an entire week.

I did very little work-related travel after my kiddo was born, up until about a year ago. And I have to be honest, going away on business was ROUGH the first few times, mostly because of that ugly monster called working mom guilt. But I’ve learned to (mostly) keep the guilt at bay because well, I don’t have a choice but not to travel, my husband (while he might have a tough week here and there) is a great dad and can totally handle it on the home front, and sometimes (if I am lucky) I can even squeeze in a little R&R while traveling.

I just got back from one of these week-long business trips and this one was brutal. Meetings from 7:30am til 6pm, without many breaks. Traveling to two separate cities. Socializing at night with colleagues whose company I enjoy but with whom I can’t entirely relax. A few other professional reasons that I don’t want to mention, but that added some stress and anxiety. Oh, and did I mention that my favorite hotel for these business trips, the one thing that makes me exhale at the end of a brutal day, was booked so I stayed somewhere not nearly as awesome? (Hi, I am Nataly and I am spoiled by good hotels I get to stay in because I work for a very large company.)

As I was settling into my seat to fly home, I thought about some things I should have done to help make this particular trip less of a killer that it was. Here are some ideas from my business travel experience, please add yours in the comments
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Last week my daughter’s summer vacation officially began. School was out but because they’d used fewer snow days than estimated, it was out earlier than camps in our area were starting. Which meant some fun lazy days for her and some hectic childcare schedules and arrangements for us. On one of the days, I stayed home with her in the morning and we spent a few hours chilling in the shaded back yard, she shuttling between the swings, the sandbox, the bubbles and many fun snacks we took outside and me… well, I spent the few hours shifting my attention from her to my iPhone.

I really do wish that I could have taken the morning entirely and completely off but because of a number of factors, there were some burning emails to answer. (Over the years I’ve learned to differentiate between truly “burning” and just routine, and these were closer to the former, for sure.) I told my daughter that I was going to have to do a little work so she was totally fine with this, but I’m pretty sure that’s because she is used to my iPhone being a full member of our family during weekdays. I am grateful that I work at a company where flexibility is part of the working reality — I can come in late, leave early, or work from home if I need to. But this doesn’t mean that the work stops and my iPhone is how I get it done while I’m not in the office.
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