Ay Corona

Hey there. Did you hear the one about the pandemic? 

Remember a year ago? When Corona was still a type of beer, ‘social’ and ‘distancing’ weren’t words that belonged together and facemasks were something that women wore in the bath. 'Furlough' wasn’t a word I could define, and isolating wasn’t something that everyone did. 

If you’d said then children wouldn’t be able to school, that theatres would shut down, that I wouldn’t be able to step inside my parents house or hug my brother, or that we wouldn’t dream of leaving the house without hand sanitiser, who’d have believed you? 

School’s out - again

I never realised how much my child’s right to go to school mattered, until it was taken away. I felt so sad as I took her in on her last day before lockdown. School symbolises so much - the opportunity to learn, to discover talents and interests, to build relationships, to have independent experiences, away from your family. 

Photo by Educators.co.uk via Flickr Creative Commons

Education is a hard-won right. Laws were made banning children from working in factories so they could get an education. It’s hugely important for their life chances - children from the most deprived backgrounds may be disadvantaged, but school gives them a chance at a better life. Without school there would be no social mobility and women would find it much harder to work. 

And without teachers there would be no school. Teachers work incredibly hard and this year they’ve worked harder than ever, as well as putting themselves in danger so that children could still get an education and people with essential jobs could go to work. 

Last weekend I had an email from my daughter’s school to say it was closed. Staff had tested positive for Covid and others had to isolate so there weren’t enough adults to run the tiny village school. Since then three out of the four classes have to isolate as they had been exposed to someone who tested positive. So we’re back to home educating. And I feel totally desolate, that she can’t have this so basic thing, of getting up and going to school every day. 

So what did you do during lockdown?

When this all started, I tried to approach it positively. I would likely have more time on my hands. I could do more writing, learn some new violin pieces, improve my tech skills.

Photo by Chi Wai Un via Flickr Creative Commons

Next time I hear someone say they used the time to learn Italian or write a novel, I may punch them, except that’s almost certainly in breach of social distancing. 

Louis Theroux, in his Grounded podcast, said that the pandemic had divided people into roughly two camps: those who had too much to do  - working, families and those who didn’t have enough - people living alone or furloughed not working. Neither is a whole lot of fun. 

The worst thing for me about combining work and childcare is the feeling of inadequacy. Whatever I do, I can’t give my work or my child 100% attention. I think I overcompensate, working more than I should. And my daughter is happy and healthy and hasn’t forgotten how to read. She’s also very adept at giving technical support to her grandparents over Skype. But I’m followed around by the feeling that I’m failing at everything

What did you do during lockdown? I tried to survive. I’m still trying. I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m healthy, I don’t live alone, and currently I still have a job. I’d take that over the alternatives, any day. But I’m seriously stressed. I’m actually so stressed that at night and during work I clench my jaw to the point that it’s so damaged I can barely open my mouth. I stopped taking my inhaler because it hurt too much - not a good idea in a pandemic for a virus that affects your lungs. 

When it’s over

I miss my parents. I miss my friends. I miss my colleagues. I want to sit in a crowded bar with sticky tables and stinky people. I want to dance and sweat and not care that I can smell the person next to me. I want to stop telling my daughter to wash her hands and keep her distance from people. I want a desk that isn’t the kitchen table. I’d also like to eat a sandwich without it being excruciatingly painful.

We lost all this stuff in an instant - the instant we left offices and locked down into our homes. It will come back, not all at once, but there will come a time when life starts to settle down again. One day I will wake up with a thumping headache after drinking and dancing too much, full of regret until I realise what I just did.

"You can't go out dressed like that"

Rapy knickers and skirt-rolling: what women and girls wear shouldn't matter, but we still want to protect them.

What women wear is the cause of endless speculation. There are articles written about the clothes worn by members of the Royal family to different events and what they signify. Go into a department store and compare the amount of floor space dedicated to dressing women compared with men.

Rapy knickers?
Photo by Henry Henrietta via Flickr Creative Commons

In 1998 judges at the Supreme Court in Italy ruled that a woman can't have been raped by a man because she was wearing tight jeans which were difficult to remove, so she must have helped, proving the sex was consensual. The ruling was overturned ten years later, but move on another decade to Ireland where a lawyer suggested in 2018 that, because a woman was wearing a thong with a lace front, she was attracted to the defendent and open to a sexual encounter.

An exhibit in Belgium last year replicated the clothing that women wore when they were raped. It wasn't tiny skirts and lacy thongs. It was pyjamas, tracksuits, calf-length dresses, shirts and trousers, and even a work uniform - normal clothes for normal people who just happened to be victims of a horrible crime.

I'd like to think it was now accepted that the only person to blame for rape is a rapist. But there's still a way to go before we stop questioning women for their choices, their behaviour, rather than placing the blame squarely on the aggressors. You can't accidentally rape someone, just as you can't accidentally break into their house and steal all their stuff.

Feminism v protection

So, then, to parenting, where 'she should be able to wear whatever she likes' becomes 'I have to keep her safe' which easily turns into 'you can't go out dressed like that'. As my friend said to me recently, "I'm a feminist, but I'm a mum first." We all are - feminism is political, it's intellectual, it's interesting, it's important. But motherhood is primal.

We fight for the right for all women to wear what they like, but that doesn't mean we're happy to send our children out into the world wearing clothes that highlight a female sexuality before they've developed one.

In the shops this summer you could find loads of shorts for small boys that extended to the knee, while girls' shorts stop at the top of the thigh. Why the difference? We're not talking teenagers are, who know what they want and they will want to wear the clothes they see on YouTube or wherever they hang out, so if tiny shorts is where it's at, that's what the shops need to give them. But it's not teenagers, it's 5, 6, 7, 8 year-olds, whose parents will generally shop for them. Can't our kids stay kids for little longer? Do we have to dress them as young women?

Photo by Eric Parker via Flickr Creative Commons

Teenage girls for generations have been rolling up their school skirts to show a little more thigh and many girls in the 90s went out wearing a tiny satin nightie. I remember with fondness the navy blue PVC skirt that I dearly hope my daughter never gets her hands on (I can't bring myself to throw it out).

Girls are still rolling up their skirts, they're tying up their T-shirts to expose their midriffs, and probably lots of other things that I haven't caught onto yet. We can't stop them - they'll do it as soon as they get on the school bus, and the more we try, the more they'll do it. And rolling up a skirt never caused a women to be sexually assaulted or raped - a bloke did that.

It's normal that girls and young women use clothes to experiment with how they look, with their sexuality, and push the boundaries. And it's normal that their parents want to stop them.

Do I sound like a hypocrite? I'm saying that women and girls should wear what they want, but I'm uncomfortable seeing sexualised young girls, and I don't want my daughter going out like that. One day I know that, even if I don't speak them out loud, the words 'you can't go out dressed like that' will run through my head.

Precious moments and FOMO

I’ve turned down lots of invitations. I’ve made lots of apologies. I’m lucky I’m still getting invited.

While most parents get to spend every weekend with their offspring, I only get half. So every minute of my weekends with my child is precious.

This year is a big year for many of my friends – the year many of us turn 40. But I’m repeatedly turning down invitations because they involve daytime activities without children, and I feel that I should be there for my daughter at weekends.

It’s not about getting childcare. She and I have a supportive family with lots of people who help us out and love spending time with her. It’s simply that if I don’t see her at the weekends, and I’m working four days a week, then when will I see her? Whenever she’s away from me at weekends, the next day she looks up at me and asks, heart-meltingingly: “Why don’t we get to see each other much?” 

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve had the conversation “Sorry you've got childcare problems.” Sometimes I bother to explain that it’s no about finding childcare, it’s about being there for my daughter. Other times I just shrug and say “maybe next time.”

Fear of missing out

I’ve been conscious of the preciousness of these days throughout my daughter’s four years of life. As a single parent, there have been lots of occasions I missed out on. But while a few years ago the FOMO would have got the better of me, I’ve tried to look at what I have. It’s a kind of growing up – learning to appreciate the good things in my life and accept that I have to make sacrifices to have them. Mostly I’m OK with that. 

Photo by George via Flickr Creative Commons

For every missed party has been a bevy of beautiful moments – cuddles, tickles, milestones, the funny, profound and downright crazy things she says to me. Family life simply means you can’t do everything anymore. That’s not just something for single mums, that’s all of us. To be apart from her, by choice, on some of the few days we have together feels wrong.

I struggle to work out if I’m doing the right thing. Is this what a good mother does, or am I being a sap? Am I letting down my friends (who will only turn 40 once) and being overprotective? Am I allowing myself to be manipulated by a four-year-old?

Please just keep on inviting me. I'll come when I can. 

Shutting Children's Centres

When you've just had a baby the world can be a scary, lonely place. You have the most responsibility you've ever had in your life, with the least experience. 

For new mums with the most supportive husbands in the world, they are often still faced with nine hours a day, five days a week of being alone with a baby. Having somewhere you can go, for just half an hour a week is a godsend. So I am sad to hear that one of those lifelines where I live is to close: Warwickshire is closing its Children's Centres.

Children's Centres are small organisations that run a whole range of services to help parents with young children in their local areas. They were set up to 'improve outcomes for young children'. From breastfeeding support to first aid courses, to play sessions for babies and toddlers, and helping parents get back into work, they offer a huge range of services to their communities.

My Children's Centre and me

My new infant and I went to courses on infant first aid, introducing solid food and some play sessions. We also went to baby massage, which sounds like the most bourgeois of pastimes. But actually, when you've never had a baby before sometimes a bit of help on how to touch your baby is helpful. Personally, my baby wasn't really into it - she liked watching the other babies getting massages but didn't really want to be messed with. But for less opinionated infants, massage can help sleep, help their digestion, improve circulation and ease teething pain. It's a great tool to equip their parents to look after them.

Photo by Katherine via Flickr Creative Commons

The best thing my children's centre did for me was counselling. I was struggling to come to terms with the end of my marriage, being single and being a lone parent. It was a tough time and post-natal depression was pretty inevitable. On maternity pay with no second income, I didn't have the money to pay for counselling. But the Children's Centre ran a scheme of offering a set number of counselling sessions to people who they assessed as needing it. My counsellor was really wonderful. And it made a huge difference to me to have window of time every week when I stopped being weighed down by my situation and preoccupied by my baby and could talk through my feelings about the situation head-on with someone who was detached from me and my life. She made me better able to cope with everything that was happening, and as a result I was a better mum, which is what children's centres were set up to do.

Having a baby is wonderful, amazing and exciting, but it can also be an isolating and lonely experience, particularly if you don't know other people in your position. Other things are available, outside children's centres, but a lot of those are paid activities which are less available to single parents or families on lower incomes. Sessions run at children's centres were generally free.

Losing children's centres

It's not just about taking away massage classes for yummy mummies. It's about providing a community hub for parents and young children, giving them services they will benefit from, providing information they need about the kinds of issues that affect young families, and bringing them into contact with each other.

Without Children's Centres, routine queries about babies' wellbeing will be pushed back to the NHS, which will not be without cost. Parents have lost a major avenue to help them become better parents, by assisting with the all-important feeding issues, and monitoring infant weight gain. I don't know, but suspect that the staff working at Children's Centres are adept at spotting children who might have issues and therefore needed a bit of support. Are these children more like to fall through the cracks now?

It doesn't affect me. I had my baby. She did well and I haven't been near a Children's Centre since I went back to work. But my local centres made a big difference to me and I'm shocked that new parents will no longer have this.

Guilty mums and memes

There's an epidemic of guilt among mothers, and it's spreading. By sharing ideas we misguidedly think are inspiring, we're just making each other feel crap. Stop this right now, people. 

Where the sisterhood should be about support and compassion, all too often we're telling other mothers about our choices, in misguided attempts to help them do the right thing. But really, we're not helping them do the right thing, because they either had the same choice as us and deliberately chose a different route, or their life is different ours and they couldn't choose what we did. 

And the form this unhelpful advice so often takes? Memes. Soppy looking pictures with badly chosen fonts overlaid, employing questionable grammar to express patronising sentiment. Here's one that makes me want to vomit up my Pinot after a hard evening's mothering.

It's typical. On top of the usual responsibilities to feed, clothe, educate and keep our children safe, we're supposed to infuse their every moment with joy. Screw that.

Here's another delight for you. It made me so angry I almost missed the absent apostrophe in the first line. AND THAT'S PRETTY ANGRY. But that's typical, You can't even write a fucking sentence and you're trying to tell me how to bring up my child. I can't even write about this without including an expletive in every sentence. I'm sorry about that, I really am, but they make my blood boil. My child may have a leaky self-esteem bucket, but at least she will be able to take pride in her excellent grammar.

Rules from the other mothers

Here are the messages (paraphrased) that I've have come across, usually on Facebook via other mothers:

• Co-sleeping makes children cleverer
• Breastfeeding makes them stronger
• Nursery makes them more immune to illness in later life
• Nursery makes them grow up too fast
• Things you’re supposed to tell your child to build their self esteem
• Be there for your child when they’re small
• Be a good role model – go out to work
• Don’t rush your child – enjoy every moment with them

All of these things can be wonderful. But you can’t do everything. Some of them contradict each other. I get a better night’s sleep if I don’t share a bed with my daughter, and I’m definitely a better mum when I’m firing on all cylinders from a decent night’s sleep. My daughter wasn’t able to breastfeed. We tried, really hard. I was sad about it. I got over it. I wish the internet would.

The perfect way to bring up a child

Sometimes you have to hurry your toddler, because otherwise you'll be late for work and will lose your job and won't be able to pay the bills and buy food. Life isn't an unadulterated explosion of joy. They should probably learn that from an early age.

There’s one meme on the internet that I didn't scream at. It says the important thing is not how you feed you kids and where they sleep, but that you do feed them, and they have somewhere safe to sleep. I mean, I still hate it, because it's a fucking meme. I'm not going soft. See how they make me swear? Those things are evil. 

Because surely the point is to do our best. Even those of us that think we’re the best mums in the world will have days when we’re rubbish. And even those who think we’re the worst mums will have moments when we think, ‘yeah, I’m great at this.’ There is no perfect way to bring up a child, just many, many imperfect ways.

Most of the mums I know love their children to distraction, and would do anything for them. But won’t hesitate to admit that looking after them is hard work and half the time they just want to get through the day, put the kids to bed, check Facebook and have a glass of wine.

My advice: think before you share. Reach for the wine, not the mouse. 

When you're a parent...

Does having children make you better equipped to run a country? Does parenthood (or specifically motherhood) necessarily make you care more about the future?

There's a bit of a furore since The Times has quoted Conservative leadership candidate Andrea Leadsom as saying that having children meant she had "a very real stake" in Britain's future. Leadsom has three children. Her rival for the leadership, Theresa May, has none.

It's been translated and proliferated as 'I'm a mum, you're  not, so I'm better equipped to do this than you are.'

Is it just having children? Or does it follow that the more children you have, the better you would be at running the country? Is that why Queen Victoria was so good? If that's the case, I only have one, so I'm out of the running,

Does this apply to men? Do you need to be a father to be a good world leader? Or is there something inherent in motherhood or the act of giving birth that means women need to procreate if we want to be in charge?

Quenn Victoria, Albert and their nine children. She must have been ace at running the country.
By Caldesi and Montecchi (fl.1857-67) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Does having children make you better at running a country?

Bringing up children is difficult. You learn things you never expect to learn. And the post-child you is undoubtedly different to the pre-child you. Although the same can be said for any profound life experience. 

As a direct result of having a child, I possess a whole new set of skills. This week I added how to remove dairy products from a range of soft furnishings to my knowledge base. Don't underestimate how useful this is. But it's unlikely to qualify me to be Prime Minister, 

Being a parent teaches you just how far you can function without sleep (useful for those high level all night political negotiations), but then so does going to Glastonbury. Remember that time John Prescott had eggs thrown at him? If he'd been my Deputy Prime Minister I'd have been right there with the baby wipes before you could say 'omelette'. And I expect that controlling a gaggle of unruly five-year-olds would equip one with skills that could come in useful when bringing a rowdy cabinet meeting to order, 

Being a parent is difficult. being Prime Minister is difficult. The similarity pretty much ends there.

Does having children make you more interested in the future?

I agonised for years whether or not to bring a child into the world. One of my main reasons for not having children was my concern over the state of the world into I would be bringing them to. 

I'm glad I overcame my scruples, but I still think they were valid. As our own country is in political, economic and ideological turmoil, when terrorism strikes at our neighbours, and people are killed for being gay, black, white, I wonder about the world I have brought my beautiful, innocent daughter into.

Caring about the future, for ourselves, our country, our planet can be a reason not to have children. But caring about these things is certainly not the exclusive domain of  parents. Whether Leadsom's comments were intended, or were distorted, they've been taken as a version of the hackneyed patronising phrase 'when you're a parent...' which assumes that once people become parents they magically gain a wider, clearer view of whatever is up for discussion at the time. It's just not true.

Hands-on parenting

The phrase 'hands-on father' was something from my childhood.

In the past, fathers had very little to do with child-rearing. Then we had feminism, and gradually 'being a dad' became more than just a label. It became about actually doing stuff with children. Looking after them, even.

For those of us who grew up in the 80s, dads had different levels of involvement - some were 'hands on' while others literally never saw the inside of a nappy.

But that was 30 years ago.

Using your hands

The other day, my friend described someone as a "hands-on dad". We got to talking about this.

"No one ever called anyone a 'hands-on mum'", she said. "You're just a mum."

Parenting a child is first and foremost a hands-on task. You can read as many books about child development as you like, you can even put some of the theories into practice. But you still have to carry them about when they can't walk, bathe them, change their nappies and put food into them in a very hands-on kind of way.

I write this whilst simultaneously using my hands to entertain a toddler, keep her away from the wrapped-up Christmas presents and prevent her from injuring herself on the furniture.

Men can't breastfeed. And they might not have the same connection to a tiny baby that the mother who carried it for nine months has. But apart from that, a lot of the work of child-rearing can be shared.

Stay-at-home dad Michael Verhoef
with his eight-week-old daughters. 

Choosing to help

If a father isn't going to be hands-on, that basically means that the mother has to do all the work.

Describing a dad as 'hands-on' suggests that this is somehow an option. And as 2014 draws to a close, it really shouldn't be.

There are lots of dads out there who are fantastic with their children, who don't think twice about changing nappies, clearing up widely dispersed Weetabix, averting suicide attempts and reading That's Not My Duck seven times in a row. Better still, there are dads who do these things and don't expect their partners to thank them for it. They are real - I've met some of them.

Then there are the dads who do those things but expect some kind of recognition - like looking after their own child for a day deserves a medal. And then there are the other ones, who do pretty much diddly squat for their own children. After all, that's women's work.

I hope the day comes when the phrase 'hands on father' ceases to be used, because most fathers fulfil this brief. I hope it comes soon.

New men

In the 1980s and 90s they used to talk about ‘new men’ a lot. I guess I thought we stopped talking about new men, because most men checked that box these days. Or not.

What’s a new man?

The New Man was a 1980s idea, it was someone 'who rejects sexist attitudes and the traditional male role, especially in the context of domestic responsibilities and childcare, and who is (or is held to be) caring, sensitive, and non-aggressive' (Oxford English Dictionary).

So they respect women as equal to themselves, will do the washing up, cook dinner and take care of the child. They sound lovely. What's not to like?

The trouble is, if the ‘new man’ comes in and does all that – cooking, cleaning and bringing up baby, then when he leaves, he makes it worse than it was before.

Becoming an old man

All too often, a new man becomes an old man. In the words of feminist journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown at an event recently, 'then the new man buggers off with the young blond'. I know the feeling.

Lots of women have brought up children by themselves, as their beloved was away earning money, fighting wars, or simply pissing it all away in the pub.

Some women today find blokes who are happy to do their share, and respect them as equal partners. That is lovely. Except when they leave it is much worse, because then, suddenly the woman has to do all that stuff that she’s not used to doing alone. It’s a #firstworldproblem but it’s still pretty shit.

It's not just the men who leave their partners. It's any man who doesn't pull his weight when a child comes along, having given the impression that he sees his partner as an equal, wants to be a hands-on father and doesn't believe that all domestic work should be undertaken by women.

Setting the cause back

By appearing to support female independence and equality, but then taking action to destroy these things, men are setting the feminist cause - the fight for equality - back. And they should be vilified for this.

Shouldn't we have reached a point now where we can expect men to support their wives, mothers and daughters' rights to equality and independence.

This is not to say men shouldn’t embrace any of the tropes of new-manness, for fear of leaving women in the lurch. But failing to take your domestic responsibilities seriously, and leaving women to cope either alone or with little or no support, shouldn't be acceptable. Surely we've come further than that?

Women who parent alone

When I learned I was going to be a single mother, disbelief was succeeded by an all-consuming terror. I was bringing a person into the world, whom I alone would be caring for. There would be no one to help. WTF? The terror has still not gone away.

However, since I've become a single mother, and observed the mums around me, I've realised I'm not as different as I thought from my friends.

Parenting as a couple

I'm not saying that single parents are better off than couples. From where I'm sitting, I doubt many single parents wanted to be going it alone - I know it's tough, and I'm only just beginning.

Two-parent families have many advantages over single mums like me:

• Mums can go out while dads babysit (once they're not needed for breastfeeding)
• They can talk the daily decisions through
• Once the children are in bed, mum has someone to spend the evening with

And I can't pretend I'm not jealous of couples who can spend leisurely weekends together, enjoying being a family.

But the advantage they don't seem to have, most of the time, is sharing the work of feeding, changing and bathing.

Sisters doing it for themselves

Generally the work of childcare - call it a burden or a boon if you like - falls on women's shoulders.

There are couples who truly share the load, but these seem to be in the minority. In most families, child rearing does seem to be mainly 'women's work'. Maybe this is the way it has to be and will always be, but it does leave me realising that my life isn't quite as different to my friends' as I had thought it would be, in those early days of shock and fear.

Couples who decided, before their little angel came along, that they would take turns to get up in the night, soon find that she wakes automatically, while he does not. So she may as well deal with the baby, since she's awake anyway.

One Dad I heard recently is too afraid to feed his baby, as the baby has bad reflux and could choke. You can sympathise with his fear, but it's a good job the child's mum has balls, or the child wouldn't get fed at all.

Other dads work long hours, getting home too late in the evening, or they regularly travel away from home, so they can rarely see their child in the week, and so provide practical support, which means they can do little to support their partner at these times. This isn't necessarily their fault, but is another reason why women are often left to parent alone.

I've been reading Misconceptions by Naomi Woolf, which explores experiences of pregnancy, labour and early motherhood. The book recounts stories of women, in what they'd considered to be equal partnerships, who found themselves taking on most of the work and responsibility of parenthood. It also observes that it's usually women's careers that take the hit when a couple decide to have children.

We may think we live in a relatively egalitarian society. But although women's lives and opportunities have come a long way, when it comes to babies, most of the time women end up feeding, changing, bathing and putting children to bed alone, whether they are single mums like me, or part of what they might once have considered to be an equal, 21st century relationship.

At least I'm not the only one doing it on my own.