The Bottom Line
"Three Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work and Family" is an anthology of short stories by dual-career parents about how they manage to make the juggling act of parenting, marriage, and work all balance while maintaining some sanity in the process. Through these stories, working parents definitely feel a connection with the stress, the struggles, the love, and life with kids with the various authors and their humorous and poignant stories.
Pros
- Collection of stories and observations from working parents
- Easy reading with convenience of reading short stories by different authors easily
- Humorous and poignant at the same time; parents most definitely can relate
Cons
- As long as you don't expect more than first-person short stories, none!
Description
- Stories encompass the highest of highs (birth) and lowest of lows (loss of a child).
- Topics: discipline, exhaustion, stress, sex, travel, nannies, identity crisis, and fatherhood.
- Each author portrays a first-person account of parenthood, marriage, and work.
Guide Review - Book Review: Three-Ring Circus
As a working parent with three children, I fell in love with the book's premise before I even opened the cover. "Three-Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work, and Family" is aptly named, and its unadorned simplicity in its approach adds to the charm. As a self-described over-scheduled and stressed-out parent, I seldom have time to read a complex or lengthy book. But this book was an effortless read. The true anthology of 27 short stories by working parents had me smiling, laughing out loud, hollering "how true" and often reading passages to my husband throughout. Although it would be easy to just read one short story at a time, I read all 215 pages in a single sitting. For me, that says it all. This is a book that is as appropriate for a new parent as it is for one whose last child leaving home or even for grandparents. While initially ambivalent about the book, I closed the last page, poured myself a glass of wine, then had a meaningful conversation with my husband about parenting and how the book made me feel better just knowing I was not alone in my feelings and struggles about raising children. To me, that sums up "a recommended read!"
