How the hell are parents meant to work?

[worzelsnurzel123]

With this latest blow from schools and yet further delays, I predict employers will cease to be “ fair” and they will run out of the patience BJ vaguely muttered about hoping they’d have. So what are the options?

1. Resign from jobs? This could have massive impact on income, likely to affect women and the future of women’s’ rights and progress in the workplace, creation of mental health issues and socio economic problems
2. Will some parents be pushed in to feeling the have no choice but to leave kids home alone? Esp those who are borderline age group eg 8-12. Not ideal at all. Clearly this will impact on MH, safety, parental work performance.
3. Leave kids with grandparents who are likely to be over 70 in many cases, shielding or vulnerable. Risks of passing the virus on would lead to guilt , worry on both sides.
4. Wait for everything to fuck up work wise, scrabble for child care here there and everywhere, lose employers good will due to time off needed and eventually get dismissed for poor attendance, breach of conduct and or poor performance

This is a disgrace. An absolute disgrace

Your child must be a unicorn and you are a particularly disengaged parent if you can't find something suitable for your child with the resources available, especially twinkl. If that's the way you look at it, the national curriculum isn't tailored for your child.

Honestly, you can piss right off with that.

My child’s teacher is woefully disengaged. 2 worksheets a week, no feedback, that’s disgraceful. Yes I’ve complained, I got stonewalled.

I am working long hours in a job where I will shortly be struggling to prove myself against people who don’t have childcare issues when redundancies are being tabled.

I’m beyond sick of the gaslighting going on at the minute, where parents are picking up on crap school provision on top of all the other stresses they’re dealing with right now.

So I see three potential routes forward for schools

Commit to being back to close to normal as soon as possible (my preference)

Commit to delivering agreed standards of remote teaching that do actually equate to the education they’re supposed to provide.

Dismantle the school system entirely, focus on centralised resources, reallocate funds to support is parents better.

This halfway house being delivered at the moment is utter bullshit though.

I mean you still haven't told me how I can so ..

In the world according to Develsko you're supposed to claim UC (never mind that if your family income is higher than about £22,000 you're ineligible and that it rarely pays all your rent if you're privately renting and nothing towards housing for mortgage holder).

It's all very well banging on about how male partners should be sharing the load equally

The other problem is, what if they just won’t? Whose going to make them?

They’ve been primed to believe their career is more important, as have their bosses.

Men are much better at leaving their children in the lurch than women when it comes to custody and financial support. They obviously don’t take their obligation to their children as seriously as women do.

What makes anyone think this is any different?

Is anyone else’s brain a bit broken by the idea that wanting to work, to provide for your children and not have to rely on the state, seems to be now a bad thing in certain people’s eyes?

The thing about UC, however, is that the goal of it is for people to work enough to not need them, both of you if you're in a couple and not earning enough and have kids of school age. You are actively penalised for not seeking or taking enough work to get off benefits because, well, they're not meant to support you to have family time.

@LaurieMarlow

Is anyone else’s brain a bit broken by the idea that wanting to work, to provide for your children and not have to rely on the state, seems to be now a bad thing in certain people’s eyes?

Yes. Very much so. I actually find it quite offensive.

It's very depressing Laurie

Is anyone else’s brain a bit broken by the idea that wanting to work, to provide for your children and not have to rely on the state, seems to be now a bad thing in certain people’s eyes?

Not to mention a stupid move unless you have to because a) the kids grow up and you lose even child benefit b) the goal of UC is to get people off state reliance and you are sanctioned for trying to skive out of that c) work pt forever and you often find you will never be able to retire. The tax credits if you are on them will go the way of the Dodo bird in the next couple of years (and then quite a few people have found when they have been moved onto UC that they owe the HMRC for overpayment of them. So you're skint and in debt, too.

@LaurieMarlow

Is anyone else’s brain a bit broken by the idea that wanting to work, to provide for your children and not have to rely on the state, seems to be now a bad thing in certain people’s eyes?

That and the idea that wanting a functioning state education system makes us lazy spongers. All this time I've thought teaching was a challenging professional job, but it turns out you can do it by throwing a couple of Twinkl phonics colouring sheets in the kids' direction while you get on with a full-time job doing something else. That'll save a ton in taxes going forwards!

That and the idea that wanting a functioning state education system makes us lazy spongers.

Yup. There is so much blatant gaslighting of parents going on right now. It’s appalling.

but it turns out you can do it by throwing a couple of Twinkl phonics colouring sheets in the kids' direction while you get on with a full-time job doing something else.

Ah, but you're not supposed to be working FT.

And also be fully capable of teaching subjects like physics, calculus and music at secondary level.

I emailed my MSP to complain about the blended learning (pish) planned for August saying that they should reopen schools as normal. Someone in his office cocked up and accidentally sent me a message intended for another. It said they've had a few of these type of emails and need to formulate a standard reply including "Priority has been for the populations safety and that priority is never going to change, safety first" FFS

When we suggest some volunteers can help with teaching over the summer we are told it’s an insult to the profession and that they are highly trained. Yet when we say the teachers aren’t supporting our children’s’ remote learning we get told to get on with it and teach them ourselves. So which is it to be?

How mumsnet view has changed from saying you’re vulnerable if you don’t work, to “stay at home look after your children”

Safety is important though. Nobody thinks that people struggling to balance homeschooling and work are lazy for wanting to see the education system back on its feet but there is absolutely no need to turn against the vulnerable who need the protection - just like you didn’t choose this situation, the people more at risk didn’t either.

A lot of people are feeling alienated by Mumsnet because of so many posts implying that the vulnerable are a burden. This article specifically names Mumsnet! www.independent.co.uk/voices/coronavirus-lockdown-school-parents-vulnerable-children-mumsnet-a9558376.html

@lickyicelollies - so unprofessional of MSP office not to mention a GDPR breach no doubt. Well hopefully the decrease in distance requirements will put paid to this blended learning nonsense.

need to formulate a standard reply including "Priority has been for the populations safety and that priority is never going to change, safety first" FFS

Find one of your list MSPs from a different party and write to them.

I'm sure many Mums would love to be SAHM without any financial worry for the immediate and long term future but back in the real world that's never going to happen. Truest thing I've read is women are expected to work like they dont have children and look after children like they don't work.

[quote TheSwanAndTomato]Safety is important though. Nobody thinks that people struggling to balance homeschooling and work are lazy for wanting to see the education system back on its feet but there is absolutely no need to turn against the vulnerable who need the protection - just like you didn’t choose this situation, the people more at risk didn’t either.

A lot of people are feeling alienated by Mumsnet because of so many posts implying that the vulnerable are a burden. This article specifically names Mumsnet! www.independent.co.uk/voices/coronavirus-lockdown-school-parents-vulnerable-children-mumsnet-a9558376.html[/quote]
Well yes... and no. I don’t think anyone wants to throw the vulnerable under a bus. They simply don’t want the collective attempts to protect them to have a disproportionately negative effect on everyone else. Which it is starting to do. I’m afraid it will get to the point where the lives of the vulnerable and the shielded will have to change whilst everyone else tries to carry on. We can’t hold the world on pause forever. The author of the article talks about how people might feel “displaced “ by what’s happened but it’s much much more than that. For many the impact up to and including lack of health care leading to deaths in family, suicides, mental health problems, financial collapse, loss of jobs, business, homes, relationships. It’s not simply a case of feeling a little “ out of sorts.”

@worzelsnurzel123 I see your point but all of those things are true for people with illness and disability too. For example, suicide rates are already much higher for disabled people versus the general population and government actions have increased this - metro.co.uk/2017/12/29/attempted-suicides-by-disability-benefit-claimants-rocket-in-just-seven-years-7190334/

Disability in children is a leading cause of relationship breakdowns and mental health problems in the children and in their parents. www.relate.org.uk/sites/default/files/the_way_we_are_now_-_under_pressure_report_0.pdf

My point is, the fears and disruption that are causing so much anxiety are understood more by the vulnerable than most - they are allies, as that article says. Working together to ask the government to acknowledge and remedy the many consequences of unexpected events on society would be beneficial for everyone -whether that unexpected event is school closures, a pandemic, individual disability or long term illness - if everybody bands together, the outlook for everyone is brighter.

Working parents can advocate for the vulnerable and the vulnerable can advocate for working parents, unions can advocate for all of us - we must not turn on each other.

Good to see @devlesko is still spouting the same old bullshit with her head in the fucking sand.

Jesus, this is depressing, it's like feminism didn't happen.
The kids aren't going back to school anytime soon, you can roll over and give up your careers, forsake your kids education, or share with your partner if you have one.
I know which I'd rather do.
I can't believe this statement

The other problem is, what if they just won’t? Who's going to make them?
Is the bar really that low these days, it's like the 1950's.

you can roll over and give up your careers, forsake your kids education, or share with your partner if you have one

Right, but doing that would mean we lose our house and you still haven't told me how to pay all the bills on one wage so?

I am sharing with my partner but your suggestion of both going part time isn't feasible.

Don't bother, devlesko doesn't understand that other people are in different situations than her. She thinks everyone can let by living off the state as part of a travelling circus or whatever.