Working parents – Why does not feel like it’s getting better?

[Anonymous]

The depth of the pandemic, with the kids home for online school and trying to work and run a school at a daycare, be short order cook, all of that. Was horrible. On top of that, worry about getting sick and maybe one of us stone, some of us are high risk

No life is almost back to normal, and the kids are going to school, they do some activities for nothing insane, and now we get to work from home most days. In many ways it should be better, but I feel like the dishes are always piled up, the house is always a mess, and we are more burned out than ever.

Maybe we were just frogs in a pot of water, I didn’t realize how tough it was before the pandemic and then with that lull when life was returning to normal but not quite made us not prepared for reality.

[Anonymous]

On some level, I think you're right.

I'm hugely relieved that so much is back to normal, but the pandemic put our usual summer camps out of business, so we're scrambling for care just as we're starting back in the office. So there's still some stress.

[Anonymous]

I do think we all forgot a little bit how stressful it was before - when I think back that my husband didn’t used to get home until 7pm most nights when our son was 0-1 it boggles my mind. Now he cooks dinner every night and just does some work after the kids go to bed. But I think we’re inclined to always find stressors, so maybe it’s remembering and reframing a little

[Anonymous]

I think people tend to wildly underestimate the drawbacks of WFH. Yes, you save commute time, but at the expense of no longer having a clear division between work and home life. For most people, working in the office meant they weren’t distracted by the sink full of dishes, the pile of laundry, or other household chores every time they got up to go to the bathroom. When they were at the office, they largely turned off the “home” brain and just focused on work. When they WFH, the mental process of prioritizing and focusing isn’t just about the day’s work tasks, now home chores are competing at every turn because you could take five minutes to start a load of laundry or take ten minutes and wash all the dishes. It requires more mental energy to stay on take than it did in the office.

And then at the end of the day, lots of people aren’t cleanly turning off their computers and going home to focus on home life. They have the computer on the counter next to them while they make dinner, or they skip washing the dishes afterward in favor or knocking out one more work item. It means your brain is pulled in twice as many directions every waking moment than it used to be, and that is exhausting.

[Anonymous]

OP, for me it’s that I feel like I haven’t had time to recover from the months we spent trying to juggle work and kids, both, all the time. DH’s and my workloads both increased during the pandemic, and because we could WFH, people assumed caring for children was tenable. That time was very, very stressful and then while eventually our kids returned to childcare and school, it’s not like we had a month off work or whatever to just decompress from it all.

That doesn’t even touch all the emotional strain of the tension around masking in schools, Omicron in schools, etc. I just want to hit pause for a month or two, but that’s not possible. So instead, we plod on, trying to recover bit by bit.

[Anonymous]

For me, aftercare never came back. Found a series of nice babysitters and lost them to full-time jobs. And, everything is always chaos with covid exposures or positives and constantly replanning or moving to B plan or C plan.

[Anonymous]

How many kids? What ages?

I have personally found it much better this year than last. Normal school and daycare hours mean I get actual alone time where I don't have to be working, plus the kids are getting the socialization they need (and frankly more and better academic stimulation, plus activities). I work out more, which is the single best thing I can do for my well being. And I'm doing a better job at work. I still feel stretched (I'm still a parent of two kids with a FT job and I don't think that's ever super easy) but nothing close to what it was before.

It has also helped that my kids have gone from toddler/preschool to preschool/elementary. They are both so much more capable of doing things on their own, managing their emotions, rolling with difficulties, than they were in April 2020. People kept saying to me "oh at least they are too young to really understand" during the first year or so of the pandemic and it made me want to scream. Sure, they didn't understand that it was a global pandemic (well, actually, my preschooler kind of did actually), but they did understand that they weren't allowed to see their friends at daycare or school, that we couldn't visit grandma and grandpa for months, that they had to wear masks inside stores, etc. Things got better by summer in 2020, but then school closures last year just plunged us back into crazy town. It's so much better now. So, so much better.

[Anonymous]

I feel the same. I drained a lot of PTO due to lack of childcare, illness, and then moving during the pandemic and still haven't had a chance to take enough of a break to recharge. We've been in our new house for two years this summer and it still looks like we just moved in. My family of origin also fell apart over the past two years and I went from having my parents as a support system to zero support at all - which happens to everyone eventually but amidst everything else I'm really reeling. The way I describe it is I was in a hole nearly six feet under, and even though I've crawled almost all the way out, it's still the same hole and still feels like a hole. I wake up in the morning and the work is still there and the expectations for getting it done don't change.

[Anonymous]

I agree everything feels less manageable. I really don't know why. I have stepped way back at work, kids are older and more independent, but I am still just plain exhausted and burned out.

[Anonymous]

I was thinking this exact same thing a few days ago.
By all reasonable measures things should be pretty easy and good right now.
Yet I'm still very much down and... not necessarily unusually stressed... but strung out might be the better word.

I'm really hoping the sun and nice weather help. While things may have been "normal"-ish this winter, we still didn't ahve a lot of the fun things we had pre-pandemic. Maybe those things will help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think people tend to wildly underestimate the drawbacks of WFH. Yes, you save commute time, but at the expense of no longer having a clear division between work and home life. For most people, working in the office meant they weren’t distracted by the sink full of dishes, the pile of laundry, or other household chores every time they got up to go to the bathroom. When they were at the office, they largely turned off the “home” brain and just focused on work. When they WFH, the mental process of prioritizing and focusing isn’t just about the day’s work tasks, now home chores are competing at every turn because you could take five minutes to start a load of laundry or take ten minutes and wash all the dishes. It requires more mental energy to stay on take than it did in the office.

And then at the end of the day, lots of people aren’t cleanly turning off their computers and going home to focus on home life. They have the computer on the counter next to them while they make dinner, or they skip washing the dishes afterward in favor or knocking out one more work item. It means your brain is pulled in twice as many directions every waking moment than it used to be, and that is exhausting.

OP here, I was thinking something similar. Basically I used to have discrete stressors -- when at work worried about work things, when at home worried about home things, but now I'm worried about twice as much for twice as long (ie every waking hour).

On a teleconference, and go up to get a cup of coffee or lunch (because there is no cafe) and see the pile of dishes or disheveled living room -- maybe I can multitask and clean while I'm on the call, but not all the time but I definitely get reminded of those looming todo items every time I walk by rather than blissfully out of mind while I sit at my tidy office. likewise, i was always behind at work even before, but now I have much more opportunity to put in a little more time rather than doing that pile of dishes in the evening.

For us personally, we have 3 kids in 3 different schools (which is how it has always the way) but my oldest could maybe go to school on their own but they figure a 7th grade can walk 1.3 mile along a busy road rather than getting bus so I'm stuck driving all 3 kids both ways when I had expected the oldest to no longer need a ride.

[Anonymous]

Homes were not meant to be offices. Now we all live in our places of work. It feels horrible because it is.

[Anonymous]

I’m 15:28, and I agree that endless WFH adds to the stress. I love my DH, but we both need interaction with co-workers at least a few days/week. I don’t want to be working from the couch all the time (our house isn’t big enough for a proper office) - it’s harder to relax when not working.

The other thing I’ve found hard is the pandemic revealed the staggering contempt so many people have towards working mothers (school isn’t daycare, I’m looking at you), and that’s been hard to move past.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think people tend to wildly underestimate the drawbacks of WFH. Yes, you save commute time, but at the expense of no longer having a clear division between work and home life. For most people, working in the office meant they weren’t distracted by the sink full of dishes, the pile of laundry, or other household chores every time they got up to go to the bathroom. When they were at the office, they largely turned off the “home” brain and just focused on work. When they WFH, the mental process of prioritizing and focusing isn’t just about the day’s work tasks, now home chores are competing at every turn because you could take five minutes to start a load of laundry or take ten minutes and wash all the dishes. It requires more mental energy to stay on take than it did in the office.

And then at the end of the day, lots of people aren’t cleanly turning off their computers and going home to focus on home life. They have the computer on the counter next to them while they make dinner, or they skip washing the dishes afterward in favor or knocking out one more work item. It means your brain is pulled in twice as many directions every waking moment than it used to be, and that is exhausting.

OP here, I was thinking something similar. Basically I used to have discrete stressors -- when at work worried about work things, when at home worried about home things, but now I'm worried about twice as much for twice as long (ie every waking hour).

On a teleconference, and go up to get a cup of coffee or lunch (because there is no cafe) and see the pile of dishes or disheveled living room -- maybe I can multitask and clean while I'm on the call, but not all the time but I definitely get reminded of those looming todo items every time I walk by rather than blissfully out of mind while I sit at my tidy office. likewise, i was always behind at work even before, but now I have much more opportunity to put in a little more time rather than doing that pile of dishes in the evening.

For us personally, we have 3 kids in 3 different schools (which is how it has always the way) but my oldest could maybe go to school on their own but they figure a 7th grade can walk 1.3 mile along a busy road rather than getting bus so I'm stuck driving all 3 kids both ways when I had expected the oldest to no longer need a ride.

That’s crazy. Why don’t your kids ride the bus?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, for me it’s that I feel like I haven’t had time to recover from the months we spent trying to juggle work and kids, both, all the time. DH’s and my workloads both increased during the pandemic, and because we could WFH, people assumed caring for children was tenable. That time was very, very stressful and then while eventually our kids returned to childcare and school, it’s not like we had a month off work or whatever to just decompress from it all.

That doesn’t even touch all the emotional strain of the tension around masking in schools, Omicron in schools, etc. I just want to hit pause for a month or two, but that’s not possible. So instead, we plod on, trying to recover bit by bit.

This. A month or two off to recharge would be really, really nice.