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The Idle ParentDrink as much beer as you can and then lie in bed.

By Tom HodgkinsonPosted Thursday, April 23, 2009, at 7:08 AM ET

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All over the world, the sane take a nap after lunch. I don't need to convince you, idle reader, of the many pleasures and many benefits to health and well-being of an hour's kip each day. It is so important—particularly when the kids are small—that I would go so far as to say this: If you have a job that makes it impossible to have a nap—a full-time job far from home, for example—then quit that job. Your health and happiness, and that of your family, are more important than the profits of the corporation that you slave for. You don't need much money. "Eat nettles!" as Austrian artist Hundertwasser suggested. There is a host of books out there that can show you how to live well and plentifully on small amounts of money, and your own imagination is a wonderful resource.

Taking a nap with your little kids is also a great pleasure: It's like sleeping with a small hot-water-bottle, teddy-bear creature. And they do look cute when asleep. Father can put his feet up by the fire and nod off while reading "Ode on Melancholy," retreat into dreamland, and wake refreshed. All right—you do not work at home. And you can't quit your job. Then take a pillow to the office. Sleep in the back of a church in your lunch hour, stretched out along a pew in the delicious cool. Nap on a park bench or under a tree. Indulge in daytime sexual reveries. Do not power nap, which is taken not for its own pleasure but in order to serve the capitalist machine and make you more productive.

Idle parents take our naps because we enjoy our lives. And it is for that reason that partners should make it a rule to ensure that the other one enjoys as many naps as possible. We should not begrudge our wife or husband his or her siestas. It is all too easy to slip into that slavish, resentful morality whereby we imagine that the other person has somehow got it easier. I can't stand that dreadful evening standoff where each partner tries to convince the other that their life is harder. We should be overjoyed when our partner naps: She is not slacking off, she is being merely sensible. We need sleep!

Sleep-deprived people lack reason. They are dark shadows of gloom. They become tetchy and irritable. Everyone seems an idiot, and the world is hostile. One friend says he gets into a sort of murderous rage, and he doesn't realize that his fury is directly caused by his lack of sleep until he finally gets some rest. Sleep is a care-charmer. So follow the Spanish, the Mexicans, the Africans. Wherever people have a greater degree of control over their everyday lives, they nap. Sleep will make you strong and beautiful. We are always banging on about how rich we are in the West, yet we cannot organize our time efficiently enough to allow ourselves a nap in the day. What fools. Let us sleep. As soon as the first baby is born, prioritize the nap. Make those first couple of years together a pleasant sleep-filled haze.