Harder Than You Thought?

In an Esquire magazine interview this month, CBS Anchor Katie Couric has this to say about her life:

"It's a little harder than I thought it would be. ... I didn't dress up in a blazer and sit at a desk when I was a little girl and read the news, so my life has unfolded in a way that I haven't really had that much control over. ... I had sort of a perfect life until I was forty. Jay used to say I was born on a sunny day -- everything just sort of went right for me. Everything changed when I turned forty."

I love how frank she is -- about her success, about the tragedy of her husband's early death, about being a single working mom. Her candor reminded me of a conversation about becoming a parent I had with my husband awhile back. We were walking down the street behind our house, holding hands during a rare minute away from our three kids. Our life is no Hallmark card but we definitely have it easy as parenting goes -- healthy kids, financial stability, wonderfully boring lives. But even "sunny day" parenting is not for wimps, I know now. Thinking about that day 10 years ago in our tiny New York apartment when we cried together over our first positive pregnancy test, I asked him, "Did you ever think it would be this hard?" He looked at me wide-eyed and said, "Never in my wildest dreams."

So the topic today: What about combining work and parenthood is harder than you thought? What's easier? What's the one thing you never, ever could have been prepared for? If you could go back in time, what advice would you give yourself -- before you had kids?

By Leslie Morgan Steiner |  January 19, 2007; 8:00 AM ET  | Category:  Free-for-All , Moms in the News
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