How We Do It: Time Diaries of Family Life - NYTimes.com

?I don?t know how you do it.?

It?s a book title (?I Don?t Know How She Does It?), a movie (ditto) and refrain sung of parents everywhere who are taking on the usual challenges of life and work and family and then some. How do we do it all? There are only so many hours in the day, and as parents, we?re on deck for our children for every single one of them, even as we stay on top of our other responsibilities ? work, community obligations, caring for other family members. We?re caregivers and breadwinners, and we?re still finding time to be ourselves.

For our new series ?How I Do It,? Motherlode sought out parents across the country (and in one case overseas) to ask the question literally: How, on a day-to-day basis, do you do it?

We asked contributors to keep a time diary of a typical day. Who gets up when? Who makes breakfast? Who does drop off, or who stays home? If a child gets sick at school, who takes the call?

?Be honest,? we asked, about how much help you have, and how much help you need. In our ?do it yourself? culture, some parents find it difficult to own up to needing a nanny or housekeeper. But one universal of life as a parent of young children is that every parent who ever left the house without a child in tow needs help (even the most even-steven dedicated parenting couples need to go out together once in a while). As one participant put it, paid help is a ?privilege and a luxury,? but in her case, and in many others, it?s also a necessity. Some of us, at almost every economic level, pay for help. Others find it in family or trade for it with friends. Very few of us are truly going it alone, and we all benefit when we don?t pretend otherwise.

?How I Do It? kicks off on Mother?s Day, 2013, with Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Her diary of a Saturday at home (because she?s rarely home during the week) can be read here. She will be followed by a line engineer for the Chevrolet Malibu, an NPR host (Marketplace?s Kai Ryssdal), a Walmart employee who parents her grandchildren, the former pro basketball star and sports analyst Rebecca Lobo and others. So far, one universal has emerged: even a typical day is never predictable.

How do you do it? Share your time diary on your blog (tweet it with hashtag #howidoit and @NYTMotherlode will share), or give us a glimpse of a ?typical? morning, afternoon or witching hour in the comments or on Facebook.

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Source: http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/how-we-do-it-time-diaries-of-family-life/

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