FEATURE
Parenting Just Got Harder By Roxy Costello-Ross As if working a full-time job and looking after children wasn’t stressful enough already, many working parents had to take on new roles during then pandemic; dealing with financial uncertainty, becoming full-time teachers to their children with new online classes and homework and, in the process, re-educating themselves on algebra that they haven’t seen or used in years, learning how to use Zoom, as well as dealing with the general stress that comes with a worldwide pandemic. For a lot of employees, the line between home and work were blurred. This quick merging of worlds caused a lot of parents to feel the pressure of perfectly juggling all of these new responsibilities, and it was these unrealistic expectations that lead to an inevitable increase in parental burnout and mental health issues.
Often, we ask too much of working parents without providing them access to better mental health support in the workplace. Many parents would benefit greatly from the knowledge that they are supported by their bosses and having the reassurance that it would be okay to take time off if they needed to. The first lockdown may have been a relief for some as they got the chance to slow down and spend some time with family but as restrictions lifted and they had to go back to work while their kids were still off school, the feeling that they were letting their children down by not being there to help with schoolwork may have become overwhelming. As well as
❛❛ The importance of looking
after the working parents in this country has never been more important, with more parents reporting harmful exhaustion during the pandemic ❜❜
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this, not being able to return to normal work hours with the kids still at home caused uncertainty in a lot of working parents, causing severe apprehension that their job wasn’t as secure as it once was and that they could be replaced by someone more available. A report by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) confirms this, after taking a survey of over 50,000 working mothers they found that 25% were afraid to lose their job and 48% felt they would be treated negatively as a result of childcare difficulties. Nine out of ten also said that their mental health had been negatively impacted as a result of the disruption due to school closures.
