divorced, fat and frazled

Veronica is a divorced mother with two young children and she complains bitterly about wasting hours commuting to and from work each day and being so stressed by work that she is eating twice a much in order to keep up her energy and make her feel better.

"I've put on a hell of a lot of weight since my divorce," confesses Veronica, "and I'm fed up to death with the daily dramas at work and at home. I'm fat and frazzled!"

She suggested to her boss that she could quite easily take her work home and be in the office once or twice a week, rather than five days a week, but her suggestion fell on deaf ears.

"At 160lbs it was not as if I was the office pin-up girl,” laughs Veronica, “and I certainly didn’t fulfill any pivotal interpersonal role that necessitated my being there in person.”

Veronica works eight hours a day in the noisiest environment imaginable doing painstaking editorial corrections. She is constantly interrupted and stressed and goes home tired and bad-tempered - more so because of another two-hour commute in heavy traffic.

As part of the divorce settlement Veronica gained a full-time nanny who acts as a substitute mother during the day, but by the time Veronica gets home and takes over the care of the children they often have to bear the brunt of her tiredness and bad temper.

"It isn't a good scene for my children," admits Veronica, "and when I'm overwhelmed with guilt guess what I do? I stuff myself with comfort food - that's what I do!"

Her performance on the job as a result of this stress is not 100%. She figures that what she achieves in eight hours at work could quite easily be achieved in five, possibly four, hours at home and she would not only save three hours of working time each day but also a further four in commuting time.

Veronica feels very guilty about not being able to spend more time with her children and the nanny wants more time off, too.

“My weight problem is due to all the stress I have had to put up with since the divorce,” explains Veronica, "and I can't see an end to the downward slide I'm on."

“The more stressed I get, the more I stuff myself with fast energy foods like cake and chocolate. If I could work from home, not only would I remove some of the stress but I’d also be more likely to eat carrots and celery between meals than sweet stuff.”

Veronica was even prepared to be paid hourly rather than receive a salary by working at home. She would be producing the same amount of work, possibly more, but what she failed to take into account was the strange notion that if people were not seen to be working they would be assumed to be not working.

Bearing in mind that she would have turned up later in the week with a pile of edited manuscripts similar to the pile she would have amassed over a week at her workplace, it confused Veronica how she was supposed to have accomplished that task without working but that was the impression she gained from management's response to her request to work from home.

Most of the staff at Veronica’s workplace are married working mothers who also grumble about their lot. It was generally understood that if everyone wanted to negotiate more flexible hours, or wanted to work at home, there would be nobody but management at work.

Veronica's new single working mother status did not entitle her to special treatment.

Research seems to prove that mothers who work from home are often less available for their children than a mother working outside the home - and they are not necessarily less stressed or slimmer either.

So, had Veronica been granted her request she may very well have ended up doing twice as much work, giving her children less attention and gaining more weight than ever as a result of losing the exercise she gained from commuting to work each day.

A part-time job would be a far better proposition for Veronica. Getting out of the house, and away from the children, for a few hours a day is really important for the health and well-being of both mothers and children.

"If I worked part-time though," sighs Veronica, "I'd lose the right to have a nanny. My ex pays for the nanny and he sure wouldn't be prepared to pay that money if he knew I wasn't working full-time."

"Life's so difficult - I wish I could just stop working altogether, park the kids with my mom and give myself the freedom I need to get back to being the slim, calm and collected woman I was before I got married."

"I can't cope with all these dramas!"