I am a mother too. A human. At times, balancing on the edge of exhaustion.

Last week's tragedy left a hole in our hearts. A deep, aching one. Silence in better than empty words in such circumstances. The heart aches especially by women who are carrying too much, running on empty, and saw themselves in her story. Women who thought, "That could have been me." Because it could. And that truth is what makes it so unbearably heavy. Behind every packed lunch, every clean uniform, every smile that says "I'm fine", there's a woman who is tired, doing her best to hold it all together. They love their children fiercely, but also ache for rest and crave space to simply be.

I don't work a typical nine-to-five, but I deeply empathise with the mothers who do. Honestly, how is it even possible in the system we live in? The day starts before sunrise with packing lunches, finding missing shoes, getting everyone out the door. Then the mad rush through traffic, only to be sitting at your desk by nine, pretending to have it all together. Work your way till five o'clock. But school ends at two. That three-hour gap is an impossible equation that too often gets solved through guilt and relying on grandparents for support. When you finally clock out, that's not the end. The second shift starts.

Homework, dinner, laundry, after-school activities, prepping for tomorrow, making sure everyone's clean, fed, and emotionally okay. Then, maybe, just maybe, there's time to breathe and to make yourself a cup of tea before you collapse into bed, ready to do it all again.

Don't call us superwomen just because we manage. We don't want the title. We're humans trying our best to stay afloat in an avalanche of tasks, deadlines, and endless to-dos. We're not asking for praise; we're asking for balance, for understanding, for a system that doesn't demand the impossible. And through all of this, we act surprised when women make the conscious decision not to have more children. As if it's a mystery, when in reality it's a response to stress, to impossible expectations, to a system that asks everything and gives so little back. It's not a lack of love or desire for family, as the research of my colleagues Prof. Anna Borg and Prof. Liberato Camilleri found out in their study last year. It's self-preservation in a world that offers no room to breathe.

It's no wonder so many mothers feel like they're running on fumes. The system wasn't designed for working parents. It was built on the assumption that someone else would always be home. But times have changed. Work hasn't. Too often, when the system fails, the blame falls on women. A few days ago, we read headlines about children being sent to school without lunch. Such stories made to sensationalise and invite the usual chorus of cavemen finger-pointing at working mothers. These comments add to the frustration for the total majority of women who work and always send their children to school clean and with fresh healthy lunch.

When things don't add up, she's the one expected to compromise, to scale back her ambitions, reduce her hours, or somehow "manage better". But the solution isn't to make her step away from work. The real question is: how do we reshape the system so that life-work balance isn't just a glossy phrase used in HR and electoral campaigns, but something that actually exists in practice?

Life-work balance should mean being able to do meaningful work and have a meaningful life without one constantly stealing from the other. It's about flexible schedules that reflect real family rhythms, schools and workplaces that communicate, and a culture that values care as much as productivity.

Because balance isn't a luxury; it's a foundation for well-being, creativity, and sustainability. It's what allows people, especially mothers, not just to survive, but to thrive. Until we stop treating balance as a perk and start treating it as a right, the burden will keep falling on women to make an impossible system somehow work.

Women deserve more than applause and flowers on women's and Mother's Day. They deserve a system that supports them, a culture that values their humanity, and moments of true rest. Their exhaustion is not a badge of honour. It is a signal for needed action to balance out the system, even for the sake of the economy if we want a higher birth rate. And my heart aches because too often, there is an eerie silence about this reality until tragedy strikes.

Prof. Valerie Visanich is an Associate Professor in Sociology