This might come as a surprise to you but I am not a woman nor have I ever been one.
This article brought me to reflect how much the average religious ["Charedi"] women might well suffer from stress and anxiety [without knowing for sure because I rarely have personal conversations with women]. She is having from 6 to 14 children. She is often holding down a full time job and is the primary bread winner. She is also cooking, baking, cleaning, shopping etc etc. etc. So she is a full time mother, wife and whatever her profession is. That is two jobs that are 24/7 [actually being a mother and wife is about 25 jobs - cook, teacher, psychologist, driver etc. etc.] and another one that is 6 or more hours a day.
Questions:
1] Is this normal?
2] Is this healthy?
3] Isn't this asking too much??
4] How do her other responsibilities affect her performance at the job he is presently involved in? Meaning for example - how much is she developing her relationship with her husband if she is overburdened by her children and professional responsibilities? Does she look good and have energy for him after a looong day's work or is she just tired and harried? Do they have a satisfying sex life?? Probably not because she is too tired and neither of them goes away happy.
This then causes other Shalom Bayis problems which then filter down to problems with the children.
This is all compounded by the fact that [hold on tight because I might offend feminists out there] she is a woman who by her very nature is naturally inclined to heightened levels of sensitivity and various emotional states [depending on her personality].
Here is my suggestion [which I fear will be practically ignored for all intents and purposes, like I feel so much of my writing is]: A study be conducted [if it already hasn't] on this phenomenon with concrete solutions offered to amend the problems.
The bottom line is that "rachmanus' is called for on the overworked and overstressed Jewish mothers and wives.
