Well said, @Ohtherewearethen.
I would bloody love to be on maternity leave right now, or at any other time, to be honest, because that would mean that I had managed to have a baby. Unfortunately all four of the babies my husband and I managed to conceive in the last year died in my womb.
A friend of mine had a preemie last year. You want to know what losing your maternity leave really looks like? Spending the first three months of it going to the hospital every day to look at your tiny intubated baby through the side of an incubator. (In a country where maternity leave is only 16 weeks and most women go straight back to work after that.)
Coronavirus is shit. It is. Nobody is saying that new mothers should be joyful about it. (Although if there is a silver lining, such as their partner being furloughed and basically getting a few months' paid paternity leave, or annoying in laws not being able to visit, then great.)
But it's shit for everyone. The government has had to spend huge amounts of money trying to make sure families aren't left penniless and trying to stop businesses from going bust. Many people have already lost their jobs and livelihoods, and there's probably a lot more to come.
People who live alone are really suffering mentally from the fact that they've had no face to face contact with anyone apart from the cashier in the supermarket for the last two months.
People in long distance relationships have no idea when they will next be able to see their partner. People who live far from their families don't know when they will next be able to see them.
People have had to cancel their weddings. Kids who have spent years studying for their GCSEs and A-levels have had their exams cancelled and don't know what that will mean for their futures. A whole cohort of people expecting to go to university in September are being told it'll be online only and they'll miss not only the teaching they're paying ten grand a year for, but also the whole social aspect of going to uni. 19 year olds who've spent the last six months working their arses off to save up to do some travelling before uni have seen their plans laid to waste and now they're sitting at home, unable to even work and save some more money.
People are dying alone in hospital with no loved ones by their side because visitors have been banned.
Women in their late 30s and early 40s who have been trying for a baby for years without success have seen their fertility treatment postponed or cancelled and are now terrified that by the time things get back up and running their window of opportunity will have closed forever, or that their treatment will no longer be funded because the NHS is broke.
The emotional and financial impact of this for everybody is on a scale that we have never seen before in our lifetimes. Our children will be paying for this in years to come through their taxes.
And yet some women on maternity leave want to add to that bill by demanding extra paid time off so that they get the chance to go to baby yoga. I mean, fuck me. Get some perspective.