Raina fumbles for car keys in her tote bag. She looks back and checks everything is in place in the house, picks her daughter Nira who is two years old and constantly nagging her mother not to drop her to the daycare but to take her along with her. Raina locks the house; safely tucks the crying child onto car seat. She glances at her watch,” Gosh! Today I’ll be late again.”

Raina works as Strategy consultant with a leading firm. She passed out from one of the best b-schools in India and landed herself a high profile job where everything was upwardly mobile. Two years later she married Ketan whom she knew from her childhood days. Life was a roller coaster ride till Nira came into their lives. Now Raina feels intense pressure both at home and at work that many times results in guilt. At work she feels stressed and disengaged, not being able to put in extra hours which is the norm and at home, where she is too exhausted or distracted to indulge in her daily chores or play with her daughter or spend time with her husband. At work she fears a career derailment and at home she feels she is neglecting her family.

Raina wishes for a magic wand to dispel all her fears and let her lead a happy life. She is scared of taking new assignments at work place and compulsively checks with the day care for her daughter. At home she is distracted by the happenings at office and her fading career prospects.

Work Statistics

According to a survey conducted by the National Life Insurance Company, four out of ten employees in the US state that their jobs are “very” or “extremely” stressful. Those in high-stress jobs are three times more likely than others to suffer from stress-related medical conditions and are twice as likely to quit. The study states that women, in particular, report stress related to the conflict between work and family.

In the study, Work-Family Spillover and Daily Reports of Work and Family Stress in the Adult Labor Force , researchers found that with an increased amount of negative spillover from work to family, the likelihood of reporting stress within the family increased by 74%, and with an increased amount of negative spillover from family to work the likelihood to report stress felt at work increased by 47%

My question to you is What should Raina do?