When Both Parents Work: Raising My Twins, and the Woman Who Holds Our Home

Let me be honest about something many working mothers feel but few say out loud: when both parents work, raising children is a daily act of trust, planning, and a little bit of guilt. I run a company. My husband runs his. And somewhere between our meetings and factory floors, two small people — my twins — are growing up, minute by minute. Holding all of it together is not a one-woman job. It takes a team. And the most important person on that team is not me. It is Naimee.

The truth about working parents

By the time I get home, I am often completely bogged down. My days are spent handling labour and general administration at the factory, dealing with suppliers and dealers, and — on top of all that — managing investors. It is taxing in a way that does not switch off when I lock the office. So I made one rule for myself that I never break: the moment I am free from the company, I come straight home. Not to a dinner, not to a detour — home, to my children. Tired as I am, those hours are theirs.

But I cannot be there every hour, and that is the part no one prepares you for. The hardest daily battle is a small glowing screen. Making sure the children are not watching TV or sitting at the computer all day is genuinely tough when you are not in the room. So I keep a tab the only honest way I can — I call, and I talk to didi. Through the day I check in, ask how they are, what they are doing, whether the routine is being followed. Because the real truth is this: when both parents work, the day rests on the shoulders of the person who is home.

Naimee — the heart of our home

We are lucky. Truly lucky. We found Naimee, and I often say she is the man of our home — the steady one who keeps everything standing. She is highly intelligent, warm with the children, and firm where it counts. She keeps the twins under loving, strict control without ever losing their affection — which, anyone who has raised children knows, is a rare and precious skill.

I have learned that the single most important factor in this whole arrangement is not the schedule or the rules. It is the relationship — how much trust and warmth Naimee shares with me, and how much love she shares with my children. That bond is the foundation everything else stands on. A routine is only paper; it is the person who brings it to life with heart.

She is family — and she belongs to us now

I want to say this plainly, because it matters: we treat Naimee as our family. It is important to me that she feels she belongs to us, because she does. Naimee Orang is from Assam, far from Delhi, and she travels home to her own family only about once a year. And here is the small, tender proof of what we have become to one another: when she goes home, she begins to miss us — the children, this house, our ordinary days together. That missing is the surest sign that she belongs to us now, just as we belong to her. A home is not only the people you are born to; it is also the people who choose, every day, to hold your children close.

The real entrepreneur of our home

And Naimee is so much more than someone who looks after the children. In our home, she is the real entrepreneur — she runs the place with the same instinct for detail, timing and care that I try to bring to my factory. She is wonderful in the kitchen; the food she makes is genuinely too good, the kind that makes the children come running and makes a tiring day feel lighter the moment I walk in.

There is one small thing about her that moves me more than she knows. Naimee grew up non-vegetarian, but living with us she quietly chose to turn vegetarian — for our sake, to fit into the rhythm of our home. When we go out, we still try to order non-veg for her, because we never want her to give up anything on our account. But she just smiles and says she is not very fond of it any more. That little change, made without being asked, tells you everything about how fully she has made our home her own.

The rhythm that holds it together

Children, especially mine, thrive on rhythm. So we keep a fixed routine through the week — predictable mealtimes, study time, play, and sleep. The structure is not about being strict for its own sake; it is what lets two working parents and one wonderful didi stay perfectly in sync. The weekends, Saturday and Sunday, open up — that is when the twins go to their classes.

The classes do something quiet but powerful: they fill the weekend with movement and creativity, so screens never become the default. A child who has danced, played tennis and rehearsed a scene does not miss the television.

Twins — double the love, double the everything

People assume twins must be twice as hard. The truth is funnier than that. In some ways they are easier — they have each other, they entertain each other, they grow together. And in other ways they are absolutely tougher — two routines to align, two moods to read, two of every need at the very same moment. On a good day, it feels like a beautifully choreographed dance. On a hard day, it feels like I have sprinted a marathon before reaching the office. Mostly, it is both, on the same day.

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What I have made peace with

I have stopped chasing the myth of the perfectly present, perfectly relaxed mother who does it all alone. That woman does not exist, and pretending to be her only steals from my children the version of me that is real. Instead, I have built something more honest: a strong routine, a daily line of contact with the person who holds our home, weekends full of dance and tennis and drama, and an unbreakable promise to walk through my own front door the moment work lets me go.

To every mother carrying a career and a home in the same two hands — you are not failing because you need help. You are succeeding because you built a team. And if you are as fortunate as I am to find your Naimee, hold on to her. She is not staff. She is family. She is the heart of the home.