I didn’t notice that this was a study for moms of 5-12 year olds. Mine are 0, 2, 4, and 6. Sometimes I dream about the easy life I imagine living in 4 years. It might be an illusion, but I can’t imagine there will be as nearly much hands on child management at that point.

There’s an interesting follow-on question: is something leisure if you don’t enjoy it? Like answering an angry email from a friend who’s upset about something. Or volunteering somewhere you got roped into, but don’t really feel that excited about. There may be an issue of people allocating leisure time to stuff that isn’t fun in the grand scheme of things.

@Alicia- When I’m on hold, I usually read a magazine or scroll through social media (which could be leisure). Alternately, I could see classifying those sorts of phone calls as other family care or management, or household administration.

I love Brigid. In that particular section of Overwhelmed, though, she had a definite point to make. She writes in her book of sending out queries to email lists saying “Looking for moms with leisure time.” She does not mention anyone responding that they had anywhere near the 30 hours — but I know someone did, because *I* responded saying I had about that in leisure time. We exchanged emails about it. My answer didn’t make it in the book 🙂 But the truth is, by the end of the book, she realizes that a lot of the time that could have been leisure she was chopping up or doing stuff like scrubbing the oven for no good reason. Sure, there are horrible phone calls people have to make (as you point out!) But even busy lives have space for much joy.

I probably exercise about 5-7 hours/week these days, and read for another 10-12 (time that exists because I generally don’t watch TV at night). I have couple time with my husband, go out with friends occasionally, definitely spend non-work time on social media, and occasionally do longer personal stuff (e.g. massages).

You’re right that it’s not a popular thing to say, but you essentially say the same thing as John Robinson but I have a completely different reaction. Because he (if I’m getting the right guy) thinks that everything not paid work or obvious labour (mopping floors, changing nappies) is leisure. If I recall correctly in Brigid Schulz’s book he wanted her to classify spending hours on the phone with govt departments to sort out the repatriation of her brother in law’s body (who had recently died overseas) as leisure!

@omdg – I’m with you that 20 minutes of sleep matters in that crucial window. If I get 7 hours I’m happy. If I get less, I’m noticeably less functional. Of course, in my work it probably doesn’t matter — which is not the case in medicine. I have no idea why anyone in the medical world would be proud of or encourage sleep deprivation. I understand that emergencies happen in the middle of the night and surgeries go long and such. But sleep-deprived medical professionals seem like accidents waiting to happen.