Today's NYTimes Magazine: Lisa Belkin's article in The Way We Live Now - "Living to be a Parent: Is child-rearing the new self-actualization?"

What a relief to see Lisa Belkin's wise article in today's NYTimes Magazine, in "The Way We Live Now" section, (page 15). At last someone has pointed to what parenting seems to have become for many over the last few decades: self-actualization. Apparently, according to Belkin, a study released earlier this summer readjusted the 1943 Hierarchy of Needs (Abraham Maslow outlined this in his paper "A Theory of Human Motivation") - that we all learned about in Intro to Psych., freshman year. Until now, the top of the pyramid was "self-actualization", but now a group of academic psychologists have replaced it with "parenting". As Belkin points out, it's tough to see this without the glaring value judgement....

Please see her excellent reporting here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/magazine/12fob-wwln-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine, and her blog: http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/