L) The longer I spent on the job, h

L) The longer I spent on the job, however, the more acute the symptoms of fatigue became and the less resistant I grew to the break that was clearly in my best interest. I left the second child at 18 months old to attend a close friend’s wedding; I left the third and fourth at 14 months old to celebrate surviving their babyhood. Since then, I make sure every year to plan some sort of trip that is solely about me. And I expect my husband to accommodate it, as I do his travel. The average worker’s holiday lasts just over four days. Don’t stay-at-home parents need a comparably unbroken period of annual leave?M) For as we all know, it is the relentlessness of childcare, the 24 hour cycle of it, that grinds you down. Two or three nights away—it doesn’t matter where you go—can recharge your batteries and rejig (调整) your priorities in a way that a two- or three-hour visit to the salon cannot. The point of a vacation generally is to offer a sustained respite (缓解) from the stress of the activity that takes up the majority of your time—so that you can return to it with the potential to do better. Such respite is even more crucial to one’s overall well-being when the work is of an intense, round-the-clock caliber (能力), as parenting undoubtedly is.N) When I get back from this trip, my children will be as thrilled to see me as I am them. There will be no damage to their little psyches, no trauma or long-term sense of desertion. They will regale (使快乐) me with details of what they’ve done in my absence, delighted by the gaps in my knowledge, and ask me questions about what I’ve done in theirs. They will hug me extra tight, but in a day or two they will forget I was ever gone. The best part, though, is that I won’t.