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Campaign to highlight how mad WFH with kids is during lockdown

115 replies

UntamedShrew · 09/05/2020 14:56

Hi MNHQ

Please have a read of this thread: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/3902119-is-it-just-me-or-is-this-working-from-home-with-children-completely-unsustainable?pg=6

I don’t know what the answer is, I just know this is having a terrible impact on parental and child mental health.

Possibly government policy to ensure parents’ get some paid leave to care for children and that jobs are protected If they do so?
Some talk of relaxing lockdown so families can share the load?
And definitely, definitely, a meme about wine o’clock and a suggestion to get the play dough out or try bbc bite size is NOT going to cut it.

Other ideas on the thread, do have a read.

Can you help?

OP posts:
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Lovemyphone · 09/05/2020 15:53

Thank you for posting this in campaigns.

Please MNHQ have a read of the thread to see how this is taking its toll on families trying to wfh with children.

I think it's safe to say, that for many, it's unsafe to continue like this.

It's desperately needs highlighting.

Many will stay quiet for fear of losing their jobs, being 'ungrateful' or seen to be not coping.

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AnnSmiley · 09/05/2020 15:58

Just to add my weight behind this.

If no schooling or childcare is going to continue until September, we need to stop and have a serious conversation about how we support families where the parent/s need to work and young children are at home. It is completely unsustainable in the long term, and the impact on both parent and child mental health is growing more significant as each week passes.

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ProfessorRadcliffeEmerson · 09/05/2020 16:21

I totally agree- the Government is spending more time and energy on when football can start again than on working parents and children's wellbeing. Childcare is completely absent from the public debate, but without it many people can't work and will lose jobs and homes.

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absolutelyknackeredcow · 09/05/2020 16:45

Support from me too. We need to hear from this group of parents - and their children.
They are exhausted, scared and despairing.
Many many women will carry the long term scars of this crisis either in their mental health or their employment

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helpfulperson · 09/05/2020 16:47

So what do you suggest as an alternative?

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hopsalong · 09/05/2020 17:13

Adding my support, too. One possibility is that we drift on like this indefinitely with schools and nurseries shut and no clear plan for a date of reopening. (Clarity alone would make things easier for parents. See the French example.)

Eventually there'll be a spectacular front-page headline and the government will wake up to the fact that it needs to support working parents for the health of our children and to support the rights of women. Or, to put it another way, to avoid discriminating against children and women with children. The headline will be tragic. (Children dying in an accident in the kitchen while parents worked. Neonatal deaths. Suicides. Domestic violence.) But WHY should we have to wait for that when the pressure on working parents is so fucking obvious it's INEVITABLY going to have some catastrophic outcomes and many more small bad ones. (Childhood mental health problems, marriages pushed to collapse, illiterate 7 year olds, a thirty year rollback in gender relations.)

There's too much pressure. Pressure from work to produce EXACTLY the same amount of high quality work as Mr A (he's 55 with grown-up children) or Mr B (he's our age but his wife has never worked) or Ms C (the bright 20-something who could probably just about manage our job). Pressure from school to homeschool very young children. All of the old structure (cleaners, meals cooked by someone else, online shopping orders, mum at weekends) that we had painstakingly built up to deal with the still NOVEL situation of being working mothers -- gone.

Pressure of loneliness. No sympathetic natters with female colleagues, no lunches with friends, no calming weekly swim, no time with DH alone. Pressure of redundancy, salary cuts. Shame at not being a good enough mother. Shame at finding our children frittering a way yet another day on YouTube watching middle-aged men unpacking toy cars (not the programme we picked of course) when we stagger in from a Zoom call, phone pinging, to ask what everyone wants for lunch. Creeping sense that maybe it's all too hard. Pressure for elderly parents who now need us to collect medicines, deliver shopping, phone every day. Guilt about parents. Worse still if parents become ill.

Forget having it all. It's as if working mothers have been told we can't have any of it. I was on verge of being underweight before lockdown, now I've lost half a stone, I work till after midnight every night, get up before 7 with the kids, and have no leisure other than typing messages on my phone while watching my children watch TV. I'd much rather play with them. But I'm too tired. I look ten years older than I am. My GP has doubled my antidepressants (without seeing me, to a dose that the internet tells me is unusually high). I'm slightly worried about that, especially because I now drink too much (not too much at a time but a couple of glasses of wine every day). Many of my friends are in the same situation. I think. The Zoom drinks (!) have sort of dried up now because everyone is too tired and too down.
The life I am giving my children is shit and yet I can't do better.

Children are the most vulnerable people in our society and they represent its future. It's easy to fuck them over because they have no representation and (especially now schools are closed) often no-one to talk to.
A friend who's a contact supervisor told me how painful she found it at the beginning of lockdown to go and stand outside houses socially distancing/ checking in where there is a known history of abuse. She couldn't take it any more and asked for leave, with a huge amount of guilt.

This virus rarely affects children. Why should they pay for it?

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SoloMummy · 09/05/2020 17:21

Keep harping on about how difficult and unsustainable it is and we'll all be up shit creek without a paddle!

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Whitestick · 09/05/2020 17:23

I'm quite keen for my employers to know that I am successfully working at home while looking after my dc, to be perfectly honest.

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PaulHollywoodsSexGut · 09/05/2020 17:24

Forget having it all. It's as if working mothers have been told we can't have any of it

A very powerful part of a very powerful post @hopsalong

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AnnSmiley · 09/05/2020 17:36

One simple alternative is that we'd like to feel like we're even on someone's radar.

Millions of us are struggling, that's a fact. But while there are conversations in the public domain about professional sports, restaurants, tourism, the entertainment industry - absolutely nothing about people trying to hold down a full time job in their house with sometimes very young children around.

Schools and childcare providers polled parents before lockdown to find out who had keyworker parents and needed childcare. Moving forward, we need to poll parents to find out who has two or a sole parent working from home and needs assistance. Then it can be their choice to access childcare of some sort if it is offered.

We need as a society to face up to the fact that there are people who need to be prioritised as we slowly come out of lockdown, and that's people who are completed isolated, and young children who are suffering badly at home with parents either working all the time or near breaking point through trying to juggle.

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Cathster · 09/05/2020 17:36

@Whitestick please, do enlighten all the struggling parents on how you are managing so they can follow your example?

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CinnabarRed · 09/05/2020 17:41

WFH FT whilst home-schooling is killing me. My work is suffering, my team is suffering, my children are suffering. In the case of my 8 year old, suffering dreadfully. My health is suffering. Why does no-one seem to care?

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Lalallama · 09/05/2020 17:45

Agree. WFH and keeping children safe and entertained, without even starting on home schooling, is impossible. The first couple of weeks my work was very relaxed and told us to just do what work we can, but it's gradually crept back to being business as usual (or even busier) and we have to meet deadlines, attend loads of video meetings, etc.

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Invisimamma · 09/05/2020 17:46

Absolutely! The situation is a nightmare. I'm. On my own with 2 dc 13 hours a day (dp is nhs worker) trying to work and home schools. I'm very fortunate my employer is fairly flexible and I'm part time but the pressure I'm feeling is still awful.

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TooSadToSay · 09/05/2020 17:51

This situation is a disaster for women, personally and professionally. We do far more of the wifework and childcare. Who will be first for the chop in the coming recession? The thought of managing until September is soul-destroying. How many of us will have burnt out by then, or given up our jobs because we felt we had no choice? This would be a really important campaign to run, Mumsnet. We need you to speak for us.

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SpringerJS · 09/05/2020 17:53

Hopsalong I completely agree. It’s unsustainable. I would like our politicians to acknowledge the price that working parents and children are paying for this. I really hope we hear a detailed road map tomorrow; more waffle isn’t going to cut it.

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Whitestick · 09/05/2020 17:56

Cathster I am not implying being better than anyone else - I have a lot of advantages - dh is wfh too, they aren't toddlers who require constant watching, we tag team in the day to do our work/go through their lessons with them and then catch up in the evening. It's not normal at all and our boss(es) are understanding. Are other opinions not welcome? I would never tell anyone else they should not complain.

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Rainycloudyday · 09/05/2020 17:57

I don’t disagree but a starting point is to stop accepting this as a female issue. Ask, no demand, more of your husbands and partners (where they exist and are male, I mean). It is hard to do I don’t doubt if it’s not the norm in your family to date, but we need a new wave of feminism and to simply stop accepting that this is a problem for women and not one for all working parents. I truly believe that for the majority of two parent families this situation can be largely manageable, if difficult, if the men genuinely share the load. It’s only catastrophic when it’s one person trying to do everything.

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Rainycloudyday · 09/05/2020 17:58

This situation is a disaster for women, personally and professionally. We do far more of the wifework and childcare.

And therein lies the problem. Don’t accept this.

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CinnabarRed · 09/05/2020 17:59

We have to get the schools open. That’s the long and short of it.

All the scientific evidence shows that (a) children are not spreading the virus; and (b) the chances of children being hospitalised if they catch the virus is vanishingly small.

(Yes, I know some children have died, and yes each death is tragic. But so too are that tens of thousands of children suffering with their mental health at home whilst their parent’s career and job security is ripped apart.)

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CinnabarRed · 09/05/2020 18:00

@whitestick and @Rainycloudyday - there are tens of thousands of single parents, like me. Or where one parent is a key worker who has to work out of the house.

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Rainycloudyday · 09/05/2020 18:01

And I agree that shouting from the rooftops that women can’t cope because we’re primarily responsible for our SHARED children, is not going to advance the female cause in the workplace. In many cases the solution lies closer to home than the Govt.

I agree with @Whitestick that I want my employer to see that I am still performing - and that it is because my husband shares our domestic responsibilities equally.

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destinasia · 09/05/2020 18:02

I'm a childminder with keyworker children and two older children of my own. So I'm not even trying to do a "different" "office type" job - and I've still had two emails from the school complaining we haven't done enough work!

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Rainycloudyday · 09/05/2020 18:03

@CinnabarRed you’ll see I specifically referred to two parent households in my post. I’m not for one second saying this is manageable for everyone, just far more than you might think by reading Mumsnet.

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ProfessorRadcliffeEmerson · 09/05/2020 18:03

RainyCloudyDay, I don't disagree with you on the principle, but you're asking individual women to fix a structural problem in the middle of a national emergency. There are various things I could say to the woman in my team who is WFH with a three year old whose husband is a useless lump domestically (but a high earner). 'Get your husband to step up' would be incredibly unhelpful.

I also think it can be catastrophic even with two parents pulling their weight, if both jobs/employers are inflexible or if one of you has to work outside the home. It's not workable or sustainable to do two full on jobs and provide adequate care to a young child.

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