Modern life is overwhelming

Then you tell them to stop 😅

Exactly. Life hasn't really changed at all... if anything, the systems and tech we have now make everything much easier.

The more I buy the more one of my dc drinks! And I can only fit so much into my fridge

I know I’m overwhelmed. I know that much!

I thought it would ease off with the kids at secondary but it hasn’t.

Why are people not buying enough milk in their shopping? I just buy it all at once 😅

Great post @crackofdoom and I completely agree.

I am so glad that my DCs are late teens early twenties .
Your list reminds me of how exhausting I found their primary school years
The day my last dc finished primary school was one of the happiest days of my life .
I actually had time for me

@crackofdoom Totally agree . I was on a school committee and probably got a reputation for raising this issue at most occasions. Constantly saying that isn't this an unnecessary burden on working parents for things like wear this or that , make a hat or volunteer for stalls , supervision . Not saying that none of it can be done but it all seemed so excessive and never ending .

I'm searching for a handy term to describe all this stuff...like "patriarchy by default".

Now, I'm sure nobody at primary schools sits around going "OK, how can we make life difficult for mothers (because let's face it, it's mostly mothers this falls on)?". But- I'm sure they also never ask themselves "OK, what is the impact of all these demands going to be on mothers?" either.

It's like Covid, when the question "Well, just who is going to be sitting at home home educating all these kids?" never seemed ti be asked. But we all know who it was, don't we? Fave fact from my lecturer friend- the amount of research papers submitted by female academics plummeted over lock down, while the amount submitted by men largely remained the same.

This morning I was called up by school and had to do the walk of shame to school with a change of clothes for DS because I forgot non uniform day. Something to do with the fact I worked 13 hours yesterday and all notifications are now on a stupid glitchy app that won't even open half the time. This whole non uniform shindig is part of some multi day fundraising drive encompassing bake sales and tombolas (donate a prize!) to raise money for....hoodies for the (expensive) school camp. Here's a radical thought: how about they don't have these stupid hoodies most of the kids don't even bloody care about anyway?!

This whole model only works if you consider womens' time and labour to be essentially worthless.

Agree. Both mentally and physically. I think though with the current rate of diagnosis its more of an issue for us now days.

As pp said tech doesn’t seem to have made my life easier

Yanbu. Everyone I know is struggling to cope at the moment....primary school aged children

YANBU I can’t even check out a basket because things sell out under me and I have to wearily search again for replacements.

I work in tech. AI can code something for me in minutes, then it takes me a few hours to understand what it just did and to remove bits that don’t make sense and then even longer to fix bugs because I don’t understand what is happening in the first place.

Then the QA has more work than ever to test, so you start doing something else. Then you end up with multiple things on the go. And after all that it takes about the same amount of time to actually finish anything.

Yes! I have two and it’s something on every other day! I swear they make up a lot of this nonsense too. They often wear specific colors for nonsense made up days.
My kids are in private school and they are forever fundraising for some charity and we the parents need to buy this and that!

My mum didn’t work when I was young & stayed p/t. That made a big difference to having time during the day for us to do other stuff when we were at school.

I also think school was far less demanding & she didn’t need to supervise us all the time.

@Teainapinkcup Mothers of children with autism or extra needs has always been a much more demanding role . It can be so isolating as well and nothing can prepare you for what is necessary. And because each child is different it is hard to access exactly what your child needs . Hardest job of all I think . 💐

DH had to run out for milk this morning super early as we had run out. This is despite us both going to shop yesterday.

Im finding things overwhelming at the moment, there is just so much to juggle.

OMG yes. I’m utterly exhausted. Once the kids are in bed there is just no energy at all left. Drop off, work, WhatsApp group about parties/events/school, sporting activities, competitions for sporting activities, what uniform variation it is for the partic day, assembly’s, homework, spellings, swimming lessons. Paying for all of this plus after school club, before school club and countless other things for school. Washing, meal planning, present buying, booking holiday camps before the scramble.
Rinse and Repeat.

Yep. And AI is turbo charging this. Because it reduces the amount of time it takes to get white collar work done (desktop research, writing, formatting) it should in theory save time but it just increases the expectation that you will get more done faster.

Doesn’t impact school comms (yet) but its the general principle that the more “time saving” technology you have to get tasks done the more expectation there is that you will run on a hamster wheel to show you can keep up with the technology.

Yes and mums of special needs kids have to work hard most of a 24 hour day, stay at home autism mum mode is relentless. That is harming people now days in a significant way. This is not talked about much...

Definitely got harder for people . Everything being on online is not necessarily a great idea . The steps I have to go through to set up different accounts for different things, apps is annoying. And for anyone over 60 , it can be a new thing to learn again . Not always easy . Then there is Internet set up for TV ,etc. No landline now .
Work wise it used to be very much 9-5 , decent breaks and not such a toxic situation. You paid your bills with cash or cheque which you could post with a very affordable stamp . No need to trawl for quotes for insurance, or holidays , just went to local business. School did not have to follow the exhausting curriculum which is why teaching used to be a enjoyable job . And certainly didn't make the kind of demands of parents that are normal now . Sending of notes were normal and kids had to be responsible.
I see people struggle to cope with it all and feel sorry for this generation especially the women because one thing that hasn't changed is the idea that household a things are still their domain. I know my DS is an equal partner in his relationship and he does sometimes comments on how much I did compared to his father despite working too.

But everything being done online has just ended up increasing the amount of things needing to be done.

My aunt was telling me about being a lawyer around the time that emails were invented. Previously you would have to send letters and get the typist to type it for you and then wait for a reply. Once lawyers got computers and email they could send their own emails but it just created more work.

Like how is it that it takes longer for lawyers to manage the sale of a house now that it did before email was invented?

Similarly the amount of time it women spend on housework per week has stayed pretty constant even though we have washing machines and dishwashers.

Tasks always manage to expand to fill the time we have.

I think it has got worse. I don’t remember my Mum dealing with 20
notes from school a week.

I think there a peak time in primary and early secondary with primary school being very bad and lots of groups and lessons kids aren't older enough to manage themselves.

I found a year wall planner someone everyone could see made ite asier for everyone but DH who occaionally still managed to double or triple book things till I stopped trying to fix for him.

Covid made it worse in that family appointments for teeth and eyes all got seperated out - luckily kids did get old enough to self manage those.

Generally found bus and train apps have made my life easier - also like on-line shopping - but DMum complains about endless parking apps and naviagting her GP and persciptions and council all on-line - though some of that doing it at all.