I sympathise hugely with individual women who had looked forward - perhaps for years - to this time, and been so disappointed in it. It is shit and unfair. I had a difficult mat leave with DC1 and a lovely mat leave with DC2 and with DC2 I did do baby swimming etc which we both loved and I’d be sorry not to have had. (I am actually quite sad for her just now that she’s missing her lessons - recognise it’s tiny in the grand scheme of things, but we still loved it and I miss it for both of us.)
But I don’t support the petition and I do cringe a bit and I do think it embarrasses what the point of mat leave is really about. But perhaps the petition is more about people expressing hurt and frustration and they’ll look back and think the same thing too.
I think there can be a tendency to picture the first stages of parenthood/childhood (ie having a youngish baby) as the most difficult, the most tiring, the most important, blah blah. I think actually often it’s new mothers who - understandably - struggle to think beyond their own experiences. And I think that attitude underpins some of this ‘lockdown babies special sympathy’ thing - the idea that parenting through lockdown is harder with babies than with toddlers or primary school children or teenagers or young adults. The truth is, it’s shit for most of us to a greater or lesser extent and our children have mostly lost out on what 2020 was supposed to be for them. The year where your child is 0 is not intrinsically more valuable and a harder loss than the year where your child is 2 or 8 or 15.
Two people close to me have had lockdown babies (one in late Feb, one in early June). One is gutted and perhaps is strongly supportive of this petition (thankfully she hasn’t shared it with me directly), the other has found that actually having her DP working at home etc has really suited her and she’s spent her time so far much as she would have done anyway. Neither are wrong, they’re just different.