Each morning begins with the same choreography. I wake before dawn to prepare my family for the day, then step into the classroom where another set of young minds awaits my attention. By evening, I am still on my feet, reviewing the next day’s lecture plan with one hand and stirring dinner with the other. And sometimes I wonder if 24 hours are enough to hold it all.
What feels like private fatigue is, in fact, part of a wider pattern. In Assessment of Depression, Anxiety, Stress, and Insomnia among Teachers (2024), Kalam and colleagues reported that 61 percent of Indian teachers experienced anxiety, 28 percent depression, and nearly a quarter significant stress. Many also showed signs of disturbed sleep, suggesting that the body itself was buckling under the weight of professional demands. Another study the same year, led by Sowmini P. Kamath and others, found that almost 38 percent of teachers suffered from insomnia, while close to half reported anxiety and nearly a third depression.
The problem extends beyond education. In 2025, a study titled, Prevalence and Risk Factors of Poor Quality of Sleep in Working Women: A Cross-Sectional Study, revealed that more than 80 percent of Indian women between the ages of twenty-five and fifty were poor sleepers. Many reported fatigue, lapses in concentration, and an overall decline in physical quality of life. And within education itself, the Teachers’ Mental Well-being Survey 2024, conducted by the National Council of Educational Research and Training, highlighted systemic issues, poor infrastructure, mounting administrative loads, and the emotional demands of large classrooms that left teachers drained well before the school day ended.
Statistics like these are not abstract numbers. They mirror what exhaustion does in lived experience. Insomnia makes teachers less patient, anxiety frays tempers, depression drains enthusiasm. This spills into classrooms, where lessons lose their spark, and into homes, where families encounter a parent already stretched to the edge. Sleep, so often treated as negotiable emerges as the fragile foundation upon which everything else rests. Without it, neither professional dedication nor maternal care can be sustained.
The remedies may not sound dramatic, but they are essential. Rest cannot be treated as optional. Even a single day away from work responsibilities can interrupt cycles of exhaustion. Boundaries are equally important. Teachers cannot be perpetually “on,” and Women should not feel guilty for saying no to extra duties, to late-night grading, to obligations that stretch far beyond what is reasonable. Protecting sleep through consistent routines and fewer digital intrusions restores balance. Small pleasures like reading, painting, dancing replenish reserves of patience and perspective. Above all, health must come before the endless pull of duty. Families and classrooms thrive when women are well, not when they are perpetually depleted.
Still, personal choices have limits. Institutions must shoulder responsibility too. Institutions need to lighten administrative burdens, improve infrastructure, and create avenues for counseling support. Yet while systemic reform is slow, women can begin by granting themselves permission to pause. That pause is not weakness, it is resilience.
Being a good teacher should not mean being consumed. Being a good mother should not mean breaking oneself to prove devotion. If India wants resilient classrooms and resilient families, it must protect the women who hold them together. That protection does not require more hours in the day, but rather the courage to defend our own well-being.
Because when we allow ourselves to pause and restore, we return not as depleted shadows but with patience, clarity, and heart, the very qualities our students and our families need most.
