This fascinating piece published in the Guardian last year, takes you on an interesting thought journey exploring the realities of trying to ‘work’ after having children.

“There’s a belief that to do great work you need tranquility and control, that the pram (stroller) is cluttering up the hallway; life needs to be neat and tidy. This isn’t the case. Tranquility and control provide the best conditions for completing the work you imagined. But surely the real trick is to produce the work that you never imagined. The great creative moments in our history are almost all stories of distraction and daydreaming – Archimedes in the bath, Einstein dreaming of riding a sunbeam – of alert minds open to the grace of chaos.”

This gives me much ‘food for thought’ as I am trying to navitgate my own way in this crazy path of ‘working’ with children.  It also speaks greatly to my grad school husband who is daily trying to figure out how to be the best student and also father.  I hope it leaves you with some inspiration if you have children, or are considering them, and also with a good laugh.

“I remember reading that when the writer Tracey Chevalier had her first baby, someone told her that “every baby costs one book”; she said something to the effect that that seemed fair enough. But we should turn Connolly’s equation upside-down and say that maybe what’s in the pram – breathing, vulnerable life, hope, a present responsibility – is actually more important than good art. It might make us produce less art, but maybe it would be art with the future at its heart.”

Wow…Well said.

-M.C.