Louisa noted the the contrast between the lives of Tom Kreider and Dana Shell Smith. 

Tom Kreider writes, 

I am not busy. I am the laziest ambitious person I know. Like most writers, I feel like a reprobate who does not deserve to live on any day that I do not write, but I also feel that four or five hours is enough to earn my stay on the planet for one more day. On the best ordinary days of my life, I write in the morning, go for a long bike ride and run errands in the afternoon, and in the evening I see friends, read or watch a movie. This, it seems to me, is a sane and pleasant pace for a day. And if you call me up and ask whether I won’t maybe blow off work and check out the new American Wing at the Met or ogle girls in Central Park or just drink chilled pink minty cocktails all day long, I will say, what time?

Dana Shell Smith's article, "How to Have An Insanely Demanding Job and 2 Happy Children" may be the most heartbreaking of all the responses to Slaughter. She describes her life like this, 

We are clear in our own minds that in this phase of our lives, so-called "work life balance" means work and family. Full stop. Social life is on the "nice to have" list, not the mandatory list. We haven't seen a non-animated movie in a movie theater in a decade. We collapse from exhaustion most evenings and are each settled in with a book by 10 p.m. We watch almost no TV and shop for everything except for groceries online. Fun for us, at this point, is family dinner time, walking the dog, camping with our kids for a night on the weekend, or maybe getting together with another family. 

You get the idea. Everything else is work. Friends and colleagues are surprised, and occasionally offended, when I categorically state that I do not agree to engagements on weekday evenings (with the exception of my monthly book club, which keeps me sane).

Our lives sometimes go into Shell Smith territory. It was especially horrific when we were both working with no childcare. I went for days with 3 hours of sleep. Things are more normal now, because I work when I like and have taken on almost all of the household chores. Still, things do get crazy. 

Summer relieves a lot of pressure. We're released from the homework/after-school grind. We drive places and physically separate ourselves from home chores and the phone. I can't imagine every getting to Kreidre level of chill with kids and all the obligations, but it's a nice goal.