Nothing Can Stress Out Moms Like Their Kids’ Daily Routine

Sometimes we middle-class moms ask ourselves: Why--since my life is so cushy--is just getting through the day so darn hard?

We tell ourselves: My kids are healthy. The bills are getting paid. I don’t have to work at Dunkin’ Donuts to keep my car.

So what makes afternoons so dreadful?

The time that I have at home (the afternoons when I’m around to drive kids to lessons, go shopping, take kids to the dentist or the doctor) is so much harder than hours at the office.

For a long time, I attributed this to what sociologist Arlie Hochschild identified in “The Time Bind”--parents find a haven at work instead of at home. Children are emotionally demanding, and taking care of them is messy work involving no end of interruptions, upsets and delays. Work is more orderly and interesting.

The problem Hochschild found in her study is that kids require more of our time than we adults are willing to admit--or give.

But that’s not the whole of it.

There are a lot of moms who do manage to have many hours at home.

Here’s where we find the stress and strain isn’t simply from being with kids. Rather, it’s from how that time together is spent.

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The mother’s routine takes her from one degraded environment to another. Daily.

No. 1 degraded environment: the car. Incessant driving around creates a lot of time for kids to argue or whine or wheedle. They’re stuck--and you’re stuck.

No. 2 degraded environment: the store. Whatever the store is, you will have a problem being in it.

You will be asked, over and over, to buy things you don’t want to buy. Often, you will purchase something you hate--like a bag of artery-clogging elfin-shaped cookies, or a pair of sleazy-looking leopard-print pants more suited for a hooker than a 4-year-old girl--just to buy peace. Of course, this will make it all the worse the next time you have to shop with kids. (“You let me have those last time!”)

No. 3 degraded environment: the waiting room. So many of our non-work hours are spent on kids’ lessons. Often, this means mothers end up crammed into messy, noisy, fluorescent-lighted partitioned spaces while the kids do karate on the other side.

In one crummy waiting area in my town, the only seating was some junked couch. There was no water fountain for the kids taking the martial arts lessons. But the couple running the place found room for a towering gum-ball machine, which collected quarters with each wave of departing students.

The more time you have to spend in these commercial spaces, the worse you will feel.

The magazine Adbusters bills itself as “the journal of the mental environment.” Point taken--where you are matters as much as how over-scheduled you may be.

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Even life in the neighborhood is degraded by the lesson lifestyle. A neighbor and I, for example, would like to let our little ones get together and just play outside. But their schedule includes music, martial arts and tennis at this point, and ours includes music, gymnastics and dance. On weekends, there are birthday parties.

Clearly, some of these golden autumn afternoons would have been much more pleasant had we moms stood chatting in the driveway while the kids wheeled and ran about.

But that didn’t happen. We stuck to the routines.

And that’s why these stupid suburban afternoons are so hard to get through. It’s an affliction of affluence. And it’s costly, all right.

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E-mail the writer: kochakian@courant.com.