@MrsHuntGeneNotJeremyObviously
I think it's a bit unfair to criticise sahm for missing some time alone to do things without interruption or having to be considerate of others. We all build things into our days to make them more pleasant - for someone woh that might be going to pret for lunch or mooching around the shops/going to the gym at lunchtime and for a sahp it might be singing to Spotify while doing the washing up! These are little things that just make life nicer.
It's hard to still have all the boring elements of life but not be able to do the little things that improve the situation. Combine that with no social lives/anything nice outside the home for the last year and it's natural for people to miss what they used to do.
Also some people need alone time more than others in order to be happy.
Quite.
I'm a SAHM as one DC has additional needs and couldn't cope with childcare around our working hours which rules out returning to my old career in the near future. For various reasons it made sense for me to relinquish my job and DH to carry on.
But even when I worked, I'd get a couple of quiet hours at the end of the main part of the day. I always, until 12/3/20 had some window of time alone to meet my needs.
The perk of stopping work was gaining time. Some of it was quiet time, but some of it was put to other positive purposes and the past year has ripped that all up.
So I get DH randomly bringing a huge desk home in mid-March 2020. Fortunately there is a room for it. Unfortunately due to accoustics it's very audible across the house so I constantly hear his calls and have to be careful about the noise I make as apparently loud singing or vacuuming aren't the most professional background noises. When that room was our bedroom, we didn't need baby monitors because if the way sound carries. Also, all my voluntary stuff stopped, one continued online. Very little external company, no bubbles. In one week, the things that gave my life external purpose were lost.
If DH gets a quiet phase he comes and talks at me. Sod's law it's a time like trying to get DCs out of the house or collecting them or trying to start something. I then have a 7 yo chatting away about pokemon and an autistic 10yo going into great depth about military strategy. Lockdowns have also sent their bodyclocks later so they're not truely settled for the night until gone 10pm. By this point DH is now watching geo-political documentaries/ current affairs in our bed, so my quiet reading time that we had prior to getting a lockdown TV has also gone.
DH is good at wriggling off and getting "alone" time in the house. "MUM!" is the default war cry of the DCs and they can squabble at any random time. It's much easier if you are not the default parent.
I can't just piss of and return to work. DH will return to the office, and does site visits which are less frequent than usual. The DCs are that age of needing a parent avaliable, but not hawklike, but it still is not compatible with a parent concentrating on work, so while DH is around, he's not present enough to meet their needs while working.
It is frustrating because I had made choices of a lifestyle that worked for me and the family and the whole bloody lot got stripped away in 10 days last year dictated to by DH's work or the government giving 13 hours that I'm now wasting my days trying to inflict home learning on very stubborn children. It sounds trivial but it really pissed me off that over the winter, I couldn't even please myself by putting on a radio because of the effect on everyone else and their needs. Oh and there's nothing guarenteed to really get my family chatty quite like putting earphones on!
It's a bloody good job that I love them!