Single Mothers During Lockdown – How is this possible?👩👧👦
- WTF
- May 4, 2020
- 2 min read
Updated: Mar 7, 2023
We are all facing different obstacles during this time, but one that stands out for me from the rest is the single mothers. How do you manage to be everything for everyone when you are just one person? When is there ever an off moment for yourself?
The solo parent who has asked not to be named, is finding the demands of single parenting tough during lockdown. Put yourself in this situation where you need to work full-time from home, clock in your time with your employer, attend online meetings as normal and keep your admin up to date. All of this while having two children (1 and 8 years old) that needs your attention as you cannot leave a one year old to his own devices, which means you are a full time creche as well. He cannot change his own nappy or make himself a bottle. So, what do you? Do you tell a one year old to wait till lunchtime to change their nappy or make them a bottle? Then there is the 8-year-old that has online classes and homework that you need to assist with. This takes the normal person up to 4 hours a day, so where will a solo parent get this 4 hours from?
All of this and your children still needs affection and some form of entertainment that they would normally get at the day mother or creche.
The other obstacle is when are you supposed to go to the shops? The only option here would be to lock the children in the garage and tell them you will be back in a hour as you need to go buy their essentials, what are you suppose to do with them? This is an impossible task as there is just no logical explanation or method to do this even if you are superwoman. This is besides the cooking, cleaning, and washing that still needs to be attended to. "You cannot be a full-time mum, patient teacher, perfect homemaker and full-time employee all at once".
Single Mothers worry at the best of times about competing with their child free colleagues who can put in as many hours as it takes, now strip away the childcare and they feel more exposed than ever. This epidemic has gone back into the dark days before childcare and when woman were not allowed to work.
All of us are struggling in some way, flitting between being optimistic and acknowledging that these circumstances could drive anyone crazy. But lockdown is especially brutal for solo parents.
Single parents, the vast majority of them women, are as ever at the sharp end of this, and lone parent charity Gingerbread warns that many feel increasingly “alone “
This is just a shout out to all the single mommies out there that you are the bomb and no one is stronger and braver than you are during this time.. You’re doing what you can with an extraordinary situation. That’s enough.
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