Whether we are moms or dads, working parents or stay-at-home parents, it’s inevitable that we give up things once kids arrive on the scene. Admit it--even though, we accept, of course, that our children have brought us the greatest joy fulfillment we could ever imagine. 

Of couse, spontaneous sex on the dining room table is out--although I think people, childless or otherwise, only do that in movies. Even the hippest, most laid back parents—the ones who smugly claim that having babies doesn't stop them toting infants along to movies, on hikes or even to Europe--must must have given up something, right? Like sleep?

Like many moms, the biggest thing I “gave up” when I had my first son nearly eight years ago was my full-time job. It would probably take a team of psychiatrists to help me work through the emotions surrounding my decision to leave a stable job (that I only kind of liked) in an unstable industry (that I really loved) just as my career was getting off the ground.

But the undeniable upside was that I got to spend my days doing something that had always been a priority: staying home to raise my children during their early years.

This meant, though, that I also had to give up my working-girl guilty pleasure of sneaking off to Starbucks during my lunch break to consume a caramel Frappuccino and the latest issue of The New Yorker.

Once I became a full-time parent I stopped getting lunch breaks: I could take the baby to Starbucks and hope he would nap while I read but it only worked out that way half the time. Also, as a nursing mom, I felt obligated to provide myself and my child with a lunch that had more nutritional value than a caramel Frappuccino. By the time my son was six-months old I had a six-inch stack of unread New Yorkers. So I ignored the subscription renewal cards, knowing I would never catch up as long as I had small kids in the house.

Eventually I found other, less-time consuming things to take the place of what I had given up. Small things that offered a bit of an escape in the midst of diaper changes and loads of laundry. Guilty pleasures, if you will. For some it’s a weekly pedicure, for others it may be playing video games after the kids are in bed. Whatever it is, most of us can think of one or two things we enjoy that Merriam-Webster defines as, “something pleasurable that induces a usually minor feeling of guilt.” Or, as Urban Dictionary more bluntly puts it, “Something that you shouldn't like, but like anyway.”

One of my biggest guilty pleasures is reading novels intended for a much younger audience. Back when I was an English major, and then a publishing industry professional, I used to read all of the critically acclaimed, award-winning literary novels as soon as they came out. Now I’m lucky if I read one a year.

Instead, I read young adult and juvenile fiction by authors like Susane Colasanti, John Green and Suzanne Collins. Lately I find myself sneaking my son’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid books off of his shelf when he’s at school. I’m only slightly embarrassed that I apparently have the same sense of humor as a seven-year old boy. Why “kid books”? Because much of the young adult fiction I read is just as well crafted and compelling as anything by Jonathan Franzen or Margaret Atwood. Plus, juvenile and young adult fiction is (usually) shorter, which means I can read an entire book in one or two evenings.

It’s somewhat gratifying to know that even the famous parents among us indulge in guilty pleasures—and they are remarkably normal guilty pleasures at that. In January,  Amy Poehler--star of NBC’s Parks and Recreation and mother of two young boys--told USA Weekend she watches The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. 

First Lady Michelle Obama also relishes time alone to chill and watch bad TV.

“. . . It's just quiet, and I'm not thinking about anything for that second -- not about the kids, not about my husband, not about my schedule. If I get an hour of that during the course of a week, it feels like heaven," Obama told Barbara Walters in 2009.

So I guess I am in good company, given my own TV guilty pleasure. My tastes tend to run toward critically acclaimed dramas (Mad Men, Fringe) and quirky comedies (30 Rock, Community). But on Friday nights it’s all about The Soup, E!’s weekly roundup of the best (worst?) of bad television. It doesn’t hurt that it’s hosted by my TV crush, the hilarious and handsome Joel McHale. I call it a guilty pleasure because really, who wants to admit to sitting at home on a Friday evening watching a program on a channel whose very existence is based on our society’s collective need for guilty pleasures? Oh yeah, people like me who don’t go out on Friday nights because they have small kids at home.

Now that my boys are five and seven, I have a little more time to myself and I am slowly reclaiming some of those things I thought I’d given up for good when I became a mom. Just last week I discovered I can download individual issues of The New Yorker on my iPad. As an occasional splurge, it satisfies that piece of myself that I lost so long ago but—at  $4.99 per issue—it definitely qualifies as a guilty pleasure.

What did you give up when you became a parent? And what new guilty pleasures, if any, crept into your lives?