Reclaim Parental Happiness by Fighting Against the Mundane

Photo by: Matthew Henry

Parents everywhere are unhappy, but this doesn’t have to be you.

Many studies have repeatedly shown that parents report lower levels of happiness, well-being and marital satisfaction than their peers with no children.

I can easily see many reasons for this. To name a few — sleep deprivation, additional career and money stress, various forms of perinatal depression, non-existent time for self-care and kids’ illnesses (that often become entire-family illnesses).

While each one of those potential stressors deserves a book on its own, I would like to focus on one particular — terror of the mundane.

There are so many boring and repetitive tasks that constitute parenting and make up large chunks of parents’ days. I am still surprised just how long it takes to get kids fed, clean, and into bed — and that is just covering the absolute basics of keeping them alive and well for one evening. Left unchecked, the mundane can really take over a parent’s whole life.

Despite my disdain for the mundane I can say that I have been consistently happy since becoming a mum (of course, there are certain peaks and throughs in my happiness levels — after all, I am not a robot). However, on an average Thursday, I can say I wake up and go to sleep happier than pre-kids.

Here is my secret:

Go over the top in aspects of parenting that light you up, and keep it to basics in parts that don’t.

I know that novelty is one of my core values, and I found that focusing on novel activities with my kids makes me happy. That is why I am happy to go over the top in that aspect of parenting. For example I have been:

• Preparing various Instagram-inspired sensory play activities for my toddler for most days my toddler is in daycare.
  He is now used to coming home to a new elaborate setup — pouring station one day, color-matching activity the next. Homemade cloud dough and edible mud made an appearance. Sometimes he enjoys it for ages (read: 20 minutes), sometimes he abandons it after 2 mins. How much he is into it doesn’t really matter because ultimately what makes me happy is searching, preparing and his little “What is my activity called?” sing-song question as soon as he sees me walk through the door.
• Organising our weekend/free time to be filled with new and exciting adventures. I am always on top of new places to see and activities to try out. A new hiking path to explore, a child-friendly cafe to eat at, and a digger park that just opened are all on my list for the next few weeks.

I also absolutely love reading, so I will happily take my kids to the library every week, hunt for forgotten library books behind shelves, and (almost) never say no to their request to read one more book.

This is offset by keeping to a bare minimum, outsourcing, or just avoiding parts of parenting that I don’t enjoy.

Playing on playgrounds bores me (thank you, toddler friends & husband, for picking up my slack in this department), toddler/baby bathing doesn’t inspire me (again — thank you husband), and I can’t be bothered making an elaborate home-made lunchbox (so my kids' snacks are often random packets thrown into a bag).

Luckily, we are all different, so our “village” (however small!) often tends to enjoy other aspects. In my case:

• My husband loves when kids join him for some of “his” activities — he loves working with his hands and lights up when our toddler joins him in gardening. He is also Chief Play Officer in our house (and beyond) — his ability to engage in high-energy play with our toddler and his friends after a hard day at work is truly impressive.
• My parents love nourishing their kids (and now grandkids) with homegrown, organic food made with love. So, during our 2-month stay with them, they are in charge of starting solids with our baby. I am planning on not picking up a single baby spoon for the entire time we are there.

As for essential activities that are not covered by the other members of your team? If you possibly can, consider outsourcing them.

For my husband and I, they are those parenting-adjacent activities like cleaning our house or planning dinners. And I have yet to find the most effective way to do the same with endless laundry!

Key takeaway — you do (parenting version of) you!

In conclusion, parenting is time-consuming, it can be hard and mind-numbingly mundane. Focusing on what comes easy to you and makes you smile can make all the difference to your happiness — it does to mine.