The text came from my friend Lee Ann first thing Saturday morning: “Read the Washington Post Magazine, if you have time…Not even halfway through but I’d like to punch the guy they pull quoted already.”

Uh-oh. I knew if Lee Ann’s hackles were up, mine would be, too. After I made my bleary-eyed way downstairs, said good morning to the kids, let the dogs outside, and opened the curtains, I found the Post’s weekend magazine and opened it to the cover story: “The Test of Time” by Brigid Schulte. The subhead read: “An expert told her she had loads of time. She decided to see if he was right.” Immediately I saw the pull quote Lee Ann was referring to: “Women have time. Women have at least 30 hours of leisure every week. In fact, women have more leisure now than they did in the 1960s, even though more women are working outside the home.” The quote was attributed to John Robinson, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland who is known as the Father of Time-Use Studies.

It didn’t say whether he is the father of actual children, but it did mention that he is now, at the age of 74, divorced and living alone. As soon as I read that, I, like probably 99 percent of the women who read the article, thought, “Of course he is.” Because either he never had kids and doesn’t realize how time-consuming they are, or he had kids and his wife did all the work and promptly divorced him.

I really, really didn’t like this man.

I’ve actually read this argument before: that we have more free time now than the generations of women before us. And why wouldn’t we? We no longer have to scrub clothes on rocks or cook dinner for twelve over an open fire. I remember reading an article years ago in Ms. magazine that interviewed women who were at least a hundred years old. It asked these women what, in their century of living, they thought were the greatest achievements for women’s rights. The first thing all of them cited was the right to vote. But do you know what came second? It wasn’t the Pill, or women being accepted in greater numbers to law and medical schools, or women flying into space. It was the washing machine. Almost all of the women talked about how being able to toss clothes into a machine instead of scrubbing them by hand on a washboard revolutionized their lives. It gave them free time, something none of them had had before.

So I get why we should have more free time. But I also get why we don’t. Or, rather, I get why most women don’t. Because as I read the article, I realized that I actually have what seems to be an inordinate amount of leisure time.

I hesitate to write this for fear that you’ll all find a way to stone me through the computer screen. But it’s true. I did a quick calculation and found that I spend more than 30 hours each week doing leisure activities:

• Four days a week, I ride my horse. If you count my drive to the barn, grooming, tacking, etc., it’s about a four-hour excursion: 16 hours
• On days that I don’t ride my horse, I walk the dogs for roughly an hour: 3 hours
• I read for pleasure (a book and/or newspaper) at least an hour each day: 7 hours
• I watch TV (including movies on the weekends) an average of about two hours a day: 14 hours
• I take a half-hour nap every day. Okay, I know this sounds like the epitome of laziness, but I’ve always believed the Spaniards were on to something with the whole siesta idea. And now multiple studies have proved it: we’re much more productive if we close our eyes for just a few minutes each day. So I do: 3.5 hours

Weekly total: 43.5 hours. And that doesn’t even count Facebook.

So, as much as I don’t like Mr. Robinson, I’m living proof that he’s right. And it’s embarrassing. Most working mothers I know, like the woman who wrote the article, barely have time to shower, much less spend 16 hours a week on a horse. Admitting that I have this much free time makes me feel spoiled and lazy and, quite frankly, unimportant.

The reason I feel this way, according to Edson Rodriguez, a professor of cultural sociology at the University of Southern California, is that being busy is a status symbol. As the article observes, “Everybody who aspires to be anybody is busy. Gone are the days when the goal of the wealthy and elite was to laze around doing nothing.”

But the weird thing is, I’m not the wealthy and elite. We’re far from rich. I don’t have a staff taking care of us. Aside from having someone clean the house twice a month (which we just recently canceled), everything else it takes to run a household (grocery shopping, cooking, daily cleaning, shuttling kids to and from activities, laundry, paying bills, filling out school forms, and so on and so forth), we do on our own. And, in truth, I do most of it. So how in the world do I have all this free time?

Right now, the answer is easy: since the economy went south, my contract work (the corporate communications stuff I do that actually makes money) has slowed to a crawl. I still write for several hours each day (working on articles or this blog or my book), but I don’t have the pressing deadlines looming over me like I have in the past. But even when I think back to those days when I was juggling multiple projects and working 50 hours a week (often including nights and weekends), I realize that, although my leisure time activities were truncated, I still found time to do them. I don’t think a week has gone by since I started riding horses that I haven’t gone to the barn at least once.


Part of the reason for this is that I work from home and am my own boss. So I can decide, in the middle of the day, that I’m going to leave my work for a few hours and go ride my horse, or take a shorter break and go walk the dogs. I might pay the price later by having to work after the kids go to bed, but still, I can make the choice to do that. If I worked in an office, I wouldn’t have that kind of freedom. Any leisure activities I might do would be crammed into the small windows before 8 a.m. or after 6 p.m.—at which time I’d also be juggling kids.

The other reason I have the luxury of free time is, no doubt, a supportive husband. It kind of amazes me that in all the years Dave and I have been together, I can count on one hand the number of times he’s looked visibly annoyed when I’ve told him that I’m going to the barn. Most of the time, he’s happy that I go (in part because when I don’t, I turn into a raging lunatic). I return the favor and encourage him to take time to go for long bike rides on the weekends. But there’s no question my horse habit sucks up infinitely more time and money than his cycling one. Still, he enthusiastically supports it.

But I think the biggest reason I have more free time than most other working moms—and this is the hardest part to admit—is that, when it comes to my kids, I don’t feel the guilt most other mothers do about spending time with them. I don’t think it’s ever crossed my mind as I was riding my horse (even those times when I was working nights and weekends), “Wow, I really should be home right now. My poor kids.” I have no problem when I’m reading the newspaper telling them not to interrupt me. I don’t feel bad when Dave and I get a babysitter and go on a date. And I don’t think twice about telling them I’m going to go lay down for 30 minutes, so they need to play quietly.

And as I say all that, I immediately want to start qualifying it by telling you that I love my kids and I love spending time with them. Because I do. But I don’t feel this compulsive need many other mothers have to spend my every spare moment with them.

Dave and I were talking about this over dinner last night (while grandpa babysat the kids) and how masculine this approach to parenting is. He was saying that if he were a mother with the career he has now (which involves many late nights and fairly frequent travel), he would feel incredibly guilty about all the time spent away from the kids. But he’s not a mother; he’s a father. As such, he doesn’t have that kind of guilt. That doesn’t mean that if he had a choice, he wouldn’t forgo the late nights and travel to spend more time with the children, but he doesn’t necessarily feel bad that he can’t. And neither do I.

When I write things like this, I often wonder what my children will think someday when they read it. Will they doubt that I ever really loved them? Will they print out this blog entry and take it to their therapist as proof of what a selfish, self-centered mother I was? Or will it just tell them what they knew all along: that I love them, but I also love being able to pursue other things I love away from the demands of my family? More than likely, the answer will be: both.

I know because I lived it. My father was an astronaut who loved flying above pretty much everything else in his life. He has said (and even wrote in his memoirs) that if someone had come to him and told him that he could fly into space only if he sold his wife and children into slavery, he wouldn’t have hesitated before handing them the shackles and chains, saying, “Take them.”

I see more of myself in this statement than I care to admit. Although I wouldn’t give up my children for anything (and I don’t really believe my dad would have either…ummm…would you have, Dad?), I understand that children can be one of the important things in a person’s life without being the only thing. This was my father’s approach to parenting, and it’s mine, too. But I can safely say I always knew my father loved me…even if I wasn’t the center of his life. I’m hoping my kids feel the same way.

And with that, I have to go. The kids are awake and I need to get them breakfast. I wish I had more time…