Bundles Of . . . Misery

Consider the "Mom's Letter to Santa" e-mail that went zapping around just before Christmas: the mom is hiding in the laundry room using a crayon to write her wish list on the back of a receipt while the laundry is between cycles: She wants a car with fingerprint-resistant windows, a radio that plays only adult music, a television that won't broadcast programs with talking animals and a place where she can talk on the phone in peace.

"It would be helpful if you could coerce my children to help around the house without demanding payment as if they were the bosses of an organized crime family," she writes to St. Nick.

It's Not You -- Really

Lewis himself has somehow worked through all of this with his four kids.

While he's sure he had the messiest children in town -- he once found the skeleton of a decayed mouse under his son's bed -- he's raised a doctor and a lawyer. One child is in college and the fourth is in high school.

Still, he notes, even when children are doing well, "there are always issues to deal with. One hopes that it gets better. Parenting is never done. It's an endless task. Lots of pleasure, but a lot of pain."

His advice: If life as a parent leaves you gloomy, realize that it's not you. It's your . . . situation.

"Don't think you are crazy" for feeling low, he said. This study shows that "lots of people are feeling the same way."

Meredith Small, a Cornell University anthropologist and author of "Kids: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Raise Our Children," sees cultural forces conspiring to make life lousy for parents.

"Western culture is the worst place to be if you want to be a parent," she says. "If you look at any other culture, people would think that this is nutty."

She said parents have never been as alone as they are in the United States today. In places like India, lots of people sleep in one big house. When the baby wakes up at 2 a.m., six people are available to help. Higher birth rates mean there are older children to take care of the younger ones. Worldwide, she says, 90 percent of child care is done by other children.

Even in many European countries, things are better; working mothers -- and sometimes fathers -- are paid a portion of their salaries to stay home during the first year or more with their young children. Parents get six weeks of vacation and extra time off to take care of sick kids. Good child care is subsidized by the government. College and graduate schools are paid for by the government.

Here, Small said, nuclear families aren't large enough. "Parents are tired, they are overworked, they are extended, they are irritated and they've got nobody to help them."