Moms ‘most stressed’ at 8.25am

Getting children out of bed, packing up their tiffin boxes and helping them with their school uniform is a familiar start for most working moms in Bangalore. Most of them get frazzled even before they get out of their houses.

But here’s what they don’t know. It is at exactly 8.25am—as they try
to get their children to school on time—that stress levels reach their peak, a study of 2,000 working moms done by Britain-based transport firm Uniroyal says.

This is said to have caused 40 percent of moms to feel so stressed that they have snapped at their children even though they were not doing anything wrong, or suffer road rage. Bangalore moms agree. “Mornings are crazy. Not just I have to get my daughter up and ready for school but I also have to get back to work in time. Evenings are worse too. I have to race against time to reach my daughter’s school to pick her up,” says Dr Shamita Saha, a working mom.

According to Tracey Hyem of Uniroyal, four in 10 working moms are stressed before they even reach their desks. “Many mothers believe the school run is enough to make even the most patient people lose their cool,” she said.

“Waking my child up for school is the biggest problem,” says Reema Joshi, a Bommasandra resident and mother of a preschooler.  “The morning routine messes up the entire day. I usually have a hard time organising the rest of the day because of this,” she says.  Thirty-eight per cent said making sure their child had the right kit, letters and lunch money was enough to have them tearing their hair out. More than a third said getting the children dressed in the morning was tricky, while 21% struggled with breakfast and 27% dread inevitable traffic jams.