Family Stress

Men and women working in professional roles today often feel nothing like Ozzie and Harriet.

They have way too many things to do, but no matter how much they get done, they feel like they’re never doing anything well enough.

Recent studies show that couples, in which both husband and wife are college graduates, feel stressed because they find it so difficult to balance the multiple demands of work, marriage, children, and personal wellbeing. While men and women feel stress, a Pew survey show s that it is the women who have to manage more of the responsibilities outside of the workplace.

Men and women tend to focus on different things. For women, it’s often the conflict between their roles as leaders at work and as wives and mothers at home. As Michelle Obama told an audience on the 2008 presidential campaign trail, her husband, Barack, “…has seen me worry that when I’m at work, I’m not spending enough time with the kids. And when I’m with the kids, I’m not spending enough time at work. Never feeling like I’m doing anything right—always feeling just a little guilty.”

For men, a common problem is feeling as if they’re not achieving enough at work. As one of my clients put it, “No matter how hard I work, I never seem to be able to keep up. If I’m doing one thing, I am constantly interrupted by my iPhone or by a hundred email messages in an hour or by text messages. The faster I go, the further behind I get … I fear that this all will come crashing in on me someday. I know I should also be attending to my health, but I have no time to exercise or eat well.”

My Best Advice

My role as a psychologist is to try to help these couples. Here are some of the best ideas I have learned and can pass on to my readers (I encourage you to comment and add your suggestions to this list).

In order to take care of others, you must find ways to take care of yourself.
Exercise seems to be crucial, but we face the dilemma of finding time. I encourage simple activities such as walking or using smart phone apps like “7 Minute Exercise.”
Get enough sleep: this means getting off the computer or cell phone, which wastes evening time and interferes with sound sleep.
I believe in limiting work to a total of 50 hours; anything more than that demonstrates inefficiency and is probably a waste of time.
Get yourself to work less by remembering that in the long run you will feel good about time spent with you spouse and your children. ” Nobody ever said on their deathbed that they wish they had spent more time at work.” The most common regrets among older people are that they did not spend more time with their family and friends.
While work is important, the failure of a marriage or the experience of having a child in trouble is far more devastating than the failure to get a promotion or even the loss of a job.
Try this experiment: spend more time with your family and less time at work, and see if you’re more productive, even in the work setting.
Lower expectations for yourself. You don’t have to be perfect to be a good parent.
Practice saying ‘No’ to invitations which may seem obligatory but most likely are not.
Avoid going into debt. Learning to live on what you make will reduce stress. Furthermore, you will probably not miss the stuff you thought you had to buy.
This is true too for the holiday season where going into debt to buy gifts will only increase distress for next year.
To whatever extent is possible, advocate for better policies in your work setting. For example, mandatory maternity and paternity leave enables employees to adequately bond with their children, which is the best possible use of time.