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Saturday 23 May 2020

To all non-working parents in lockdown

To start with, you were grateful. Profoundly grateful that you wouldn't have to juggle home school/nursery, housework, day-to-day childcare AND a job.  You could focus on the children.  Do all sorts of fun, wholesome activities together, help them learn, help them thrive, help them survive the biggest change to daily life they've ever experienced. You could be there for them.

If you were already a stay-at-home parent, you might have rolled your eyes at the drama some people were making over suddenly having to spend every waking moment with their progeny.  Been there, done that, got the bolognaise spattered t-shirt.  If you were new to being the full-time carer, you may have been glad of the opportunity to spend "quality time" with your sprogs, making up for the hundreds of working hours lost. And for fleeting moments, perhaps even whole hours, that's exactly what it's felt like.  Quality time.

Not always though.  Somewhere, perhaps on Day One, perhaps Day Thirty-Nine, the resentment crept in.  The resentment that your partner gets to hole themselves up in the office / spare bedroom / corner of the kitchen for hours on end and loftily request silence for their Very Important Zoom Call while you struggle to instruct the six-year-old and muzzle the three-year-old and wipe up the eighteenth spillage of the day. Or that they get to leave the house and venture into the outside world to speak with People That Are Not The Bloody Children.  You started simmering with annoyance that you're holding everything together and woking just as hard, perhaps harder than them, but getting zero recognition for it - financial or otherwise.  And when they failed to put that dirty coffee cup in the dishwasher, or thank you for the mediocre dinner you'd just slopped on their plate, the resentment may have bubbled over into a bust up.

Then you felt guilty. Or maybe you've always felt guilty.  Guilty that you're not having to juggle like so many others you know. Guilty that you're not bringing money in. Guilty that your children are not making early applications to university, given all the time you supposedly have to home school them.  Guilty that you want them to return to school, where they may get ill or spread illness.  Guilty that you're choosing to see the injustice and hardship rather than the opportunities and small victories. Guilty that you're blaming those hardships on your partner, and failing to recognise their contribution and the times they do share the load. Guilty, perhaps, that said partner is out helping your community or maybe even saving lives while you stay in your pyjamas. But most of all, you'll feel guilty that you are well, that your children are healthy, that your brother, sister, mother, father and grandparents haven't been picked by this cruel and capricious virus to die by suffocation. Unless they have.  In which case you'll be grieving. And I am so, so sorry.

Life under lockdown is hard for everyone, some far more than others.  For every childless couple happily learning macrame and doing jigsaws, there will be an elderly, diabetic widow on her own, or a serously ill mother trying to look after three kids, or a family in crisis, unsure when the lid will blow off the pressure cooker they now find themselves stewing in.  Many of us, comparatively, have it easy.  I definitely have it easy. Yet I still find it hard enough for minor squabbles over biscuits to bring me to tears. What can we do though?  There is literally nobody else to call on right now, except our similarly overburdened (or at least equally exhausted) partners - and not all of us will even have one of those.  

The truth is, we can meditate, try to chisel out "me time", get outside to exercise, set a routine, focus on the positives, eat more celery or any of the other myriad suggestions made by well-meaning wellness types, but we are still going to struggle because life right now is Not Normal.  If you were a stay-home-parent before, the daily battles and exhaustion will be familiar, just amplified to a nightmarish extent.  If you weren't, the shock may well have made you vow never to spend time with the kids again once this is over.  With no school or nursery or childminders, no babysitters, no grandparents, no play dates, swing parks, play groups or soft play centres, full-time parenting can feel less 24/7 and more 240/70 right now. The cracks are going to show.  You're not alone though.  I see you swearing into the fridge, and randomly screaming at tiny transgressions because you've repressed the scream for so long you can't hold it in any more.  I see you groan when the kids wake you, and cry when they won't go to sleep. I see you haul yourself up from the floor to deal with yet another minor yet infuriating disaster. I see you because I do all these things too, and I know how, when this is all you do, endlessly, without a break, without anyone stepping in to take care of you, for ten weeks, it melts your mind.

We will come out the other side of this eventually.  Schools will reopen, slowly, carefully, contingently.  And there will be chinks of light in the gloom as we cling on to the hope that a second wave won't knock our feet from under us again. This will be over one day, and we will look back and remember with less pain and more pride.  Until then, hang on, stay safe, and be kind - to yourself as well as your family.  To yourself more than anyone in fact.  Because what else, really, can we do?

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