To Elle Magazine RE: Article "Find Your Bliss"

Rachel Combe's article in June's issue titled "Find Your Bliss" was interesting until I got to the part of the article discussing parenthood.  I wonder what "studies" she researched which said that "mothers get more pleasure from almost anything other than taking care of their kids.  The birth of a child causes a dramatic drop in marital satisfaction that doesn't recover until the children leave home."  I am a stay at home mom, I relocated with Teach for America after graduating magna cum laude , taught for three years, and decided to care for my child myself.  Yes, sometimes going to the bathroom is a challenge, maybe my nails are kind of haggard (which never would have happened before baby), BUT I do not find myself in the midst of caring for her thinking that I would rather be doing just about anything else at that particular moment.  On the contrary, I often find myself utterly grateful that I am privileged to be able to take the time off from my career to be the one who is caring for her and witnessing too many small miracles a day to catalog.  Was it a challenge on our marriage when our daughter was born?  Yes.  It was a challenge in the bedroom-but that has completely recovered and even gotten better.  Added to that, there is something very amazing about working as a team to care for a brand new human being who has entered your lives without an instruction manual-that aspect of our marriage received a big boost.  

It was an offensive article made even more so by the way the author goes on to see both sides of the argument for finding pleasure in running.  Really?  You can find the time to defend the pleasure found in a jog but can't be bothered to address the joys that most certainly do come with having a family?  

I thought that as women we had progressed beyond the feminism which declared that women were only allowed to be satisfied if they were defying tradition.  I thought we had come to a place in which a woman's decision to be more "traditional" and have a family was as respected as the choice to put career first because the point is that as women we can choose our own happiness.  Apparently Ms. Combe hasn't received that memo-her remark regarding getting our tubes tied because of what some studies say was imbecilic.  Her lack of respect for parents everywhere is just flat out insulting.