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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The amount of angst cause by dishes and laundry is astounding. It doesn’t matter. In 10 years it won’t matter. Change the things you can and accept those you cannot. Focus on what matters and your life will improve 10 fold.

But like, even if it doesn't matter in 10 years, do you suggest that people just let the laundry pile up and wear dirty clothes and put dishes in the sink until it is full... ???

I get what you are saying to a point, but it isn't actually a solution.

There is a place between perfect and squalor. Sometimes good enough is good enough. Wipe down the counters once a day. Put dishes away at the end of the day. Sort the kids laundry into baskets and let them dress themselves out of the baskets. These are not things important enough to make you unhappy and ruin your relationship.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Agreed. I have a colleague who took a month off recently (unpaid) to try to recover. I was talking with my boss that we could all use a pause like that. We ended up luckily not having to juggle work and kids for very long and none of us have gotten covid yet, but the mental strain is definitely still there, and in the back of my mind is always the prospect of the whole family being stuck at home for 10+ days if someone gets covid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The amount of angst cause by dishes and laundry is astounding. It doesn’t matter. In 10 years it won’t matter. Change the things you can and accept those you cannot. Focus on what matters and your life will improve 10 fold.

But like, even if it doesn't matter in 10 years, do you suggest that people just let the laundry pile up and wear dirty clothes and put dishes in the sink until it is full... ???

I get what you are saying to a point, but it isn't actually a solution.

There is a place between perfect and squalor. Sometimes good enough is good enough. Wipe down the counters once a day. Put dishes away at the end of the day. Sort the kids laundry into baskets and let them dress themselves out of the baskets. These are not things important enough to make you unhappy and ruin your relationship.

+1

Good enough is the standard. Also, limiting your phone use really helps. I do a little cleaning each day, maybe 30 minutes beyond dishes and other daily tasks and my house is looking pretty good! And kids have to have chores. We can’t do it all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The amount of angst cause by dishes and laundry is astounding. It doesn’t matter. In 10 years it won’t matter. Change the things you can and accept those you cannot. Focus on what matters and your life will improve 10 fold.

But like, even if it doesn't matter in 10 years, do you suggest that people just let the laundry pile up and wear dirty clothes and put dishes in the sink until it is full... ???

I get what you are saying to a point, but it isn't actually a solution.

There is a place between perfect and squalor. Sometimes good enough is good enough. Wipe down the counters once a day. Put dishes away at the end of the day. Sort the kids laundry into baskets and let them dress themselves out of the baskets. These are not things important enough to make you unhappy and ruin your relationship.

+1

Good enough is the standard. Also, limiting your phone use really helps. I do a little cleaning each day, maybe 30 minutes beyond dishes and other daily tasks and my house is looking pretty good! And kids have to have chores. We can’t do it all.

Yes. My son was 8.5 at the start of the pandemic. We had some really rocky times then and from Dec 2021 until last summer. In the midst of all of that, we dialed up expectations related to chores. The work had to be done each day before he got any screen time. I got very tired of being the reminder/enforcer in the house (which is a whole other issue), but now that he is almost 11, it is finally starting to pay off. He just does it; doesn’t argue; doesn’t need many reminders. Maybe it’s maturity. Maybe it’s us getting into a better groove. Who knows. But, I say this to encourage others who are struggling. Be consistent and stick with it.

Btw — his jobs are unload the dishwasher, take out the trash and recycling, tidy his room, carry laundry to laundry room and sort it, swifter the kitchen and bar area, and tidy his bathroom the weeks that the cleaners don’t come. He also has to put away his laundry. And my favorite category — other tasks as assigned. He has activities three nights/week and these chores don’t take more than 10/15 minutes per day, but they are a big help over the course of a week.

We also have a cleaning crew come every two weeks. It is a sanity saver. When they didn’t come during the height of the pandemic, our house was a wreck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The amount of angst cause by dishes and laundry is astounding. It doesn’t matter. In 10 years it won’t matter. Change the things you can and accept those you cannot. Focus on what matters and your life will improve 10 fold.

But like, even if it doesn't matter in 10 years, do you suggest that people just let the laundry pile up and wear dirty clothes and put dishes in the sink until it is full... ???

I get what you are saying to a point, but it isn't actually a solution.

There is a place between perfect and squalor. Sometimes good enough is good enough. Wipe down the counters once a day. Put dishes away at the end of the day. Sort the kids laundry into baskets and let them dress themselves out of the baskets. These are not things important enough to make you unhappy and ruin your relationship.

+1

Good enough is the standard. Also, limiting your phone use really helps. I do a little cleaning each day, maybe 30 minutes beyond dishes and other daily tasks and my house is looking pretty good! And kids have to have chores. We can’t do it all.

Yes. My son was 8.5 at the start of the pandemic. We had some really rocky times then and from Dec 2021 until last summer. In the midst of all of that, we dialed up expectations related to chores. The work had to be done each day before he got any screen time. I got very tired of being the reminder/enforcer in the house (which is a whole other issue), but now that he is almost 11, it is finally starting to pay off. He just does it; doesn’t argue; doesn’t need many reminders. Maybe it’s maturity. Maybe it’s us getting into a better groove. Who knows. But, I say this to encourage others who are struggling. Be consistent and stick with it.

Btw — his jobs are unload the dishwasher, take out the trash and recycling, tidy his room, carry laundry to laundry room and sort it, swifter the kitchen and bar area, and tidy his bathroom the weeks that the cleaners don’t come. He also has to put away his laundry. And my favorite category — other tasks as assigned. He has activities three nights/week and these chores don’t take more than 10/15 minutes per day, but they are a big help over the course of a week.

We also have a cleaning crew come every two weeks. It is a sanity saver. When they didn’t come during the height of the pandemic, our house was a wreck.

1 kid?

[Anonymous]

I really wish someone in authority would say "It looks like the <5 vaccine is not going to be a thing, at least not for some time" to get everyone's expectations on the same page.

Instead, there is just "hopeful" news or silence. I can take a hint, but it is causing a lot of confusion.

[Anonymous]

It just doesn’t feel like this is “it”. You get into a rhythm and then something changes.

+1. I feel like every day it's a new guideline to follow, a new variant, etc. My life is being lived in limbo.

I'm also pissed that the pandemic forced me to pull back on my career. I loved my full-time job! Men who pulled back to take care of kids are called heroes and get articles written about them. Where's my award?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

It just doesn’t feel like this is “it”. You get into a rhythm and then something changes.

+1. I feel like every day it's a new guideline to follow, a new variant, etc. My life is being lived in limbo.

I'm also pissed that the pandemic forced me to pull back on my career. I loved my full-time job! Men who pulled back to take care of kids are called heroes and get articles written about them. Where's my award?

Really? I did that but all I get called is “beta” — where are those articles?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The amount of angst cause by dishes and laundry is astounding. It doesn’t matter. In 10 years it won’t matter. Change the things you can and accept those you cannot. Focus on what matters and your life will improve 10 fold.

THIS THIS THIS.

Guess what the kids are on dish duty, a four year old can do it.
DH bought baskets for every person in the house, your clean clothes live there if you don’t fold them.
A lot of the aesthetics and minor repairs are ignored until I feel like getting to them.

And you know what? Life isn’t bad, and we’re not stressed. Resist the urge for everything to be just so, and roll with it. It’s the best way to survive this draining capitalist society.

[Anonymous]

It’s not back to normal for me. My toddler is still unvaccinated. There’s a war in Ukraine, the prices of goods and groceries is sky high and rising, every trip to the grocery store/gas station is painful, my wages are worth less, we can’t afford a premium
7K extra charge on a new car due to the parts shortage so we are doing without, my partner and I have a lot of healing in our relationship to do as we fought tons these last 2 years over different opinions in COVID risk, handling family visitors, what was safe for the kids, child care, and fighting and jockeying over balancing kids at home doing virtual
School with our work and meetings. I am so sick of hearing my partners work calls and work voice and negotiating whose
Meeting is more important and who gets the office and who has to watch and supervise the kids. Our relationship has been seriously damaged like many couples and I have a hard time seeing us get back to where we were before. We are also dealing with continued illnesses and struggling to find decent child care - centers don’t offer full day or don’t have openings, etc. So much pressure on to make up for 2 years of missing fun activities for the kids. Sleep deprived and burned out and I have realized that I hate being a working parent and feel strongly (ironically for me as an ardent feminist) that to be an active and good parent for the kids and to raise them the way we want, one parent needs to stay home. And yet we cannot afford this in todays society so we both are struggling and being crappy workers, parents, and partners since we are all expected to do it all. Also - I am so angry at our grandparents who basically always say, oh I wish I could help when life is hard for us yet just want to come and visit, be waited on hand and foot, hardly help at all with our kids, and have little to no COVID precautions anymore despite being at risk and having unvaxxed grand kids. Oh and then there’s the friends who dropped/judged me for being COVID conscious with a newborn - I’ll never get those back again and I don’t want them - but no energy to find new like minded friends

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It just doesn’t feel like this is “it”. You get into a rhythm and then something changes.

+1. I feel like every day it's a new guideline to follow, a new variant, etc. My life is being lived in limbo.

I'm also pissed that the pandemic forced me to pull back on my career. I loved my full-time job! Men who pulled back to take care of kids are called heroes and get articles written about them. Where's my award?

Really? I did that but all I get called is “beta” — where are those articles?

Stop spending so much time in red pill communities and you’ll realize the rest of the work isn’t quite as steeped in the most toxic forms of masculinity.

[Anonymous]

Sorry got cut off. I am not ok because 2 years of this have burned me out and fried me to a crisp. And as a full time worker in 2022, there’s no break. A vacation is not a vacation anymore as a working parent. I have to line all the work up ahead of time In my job which means a week of overwork, prep/pack everything, figure out and plan for every contingency (including if someone gets sick with COVID or something else), get bothered on vacation with work (which I ignore but then it piles up), then parent two kids on vacation which just means maybe a few hours at the beach and cooking all meals for the week in a different less equipped kitchen, and then deal with hundreds plus emails and tons of work once back, etc. maybe it will be different when the kids aren’t little but right now it’s just so hard. Work just feels unrelenting, it never ends and just sucks the life out of me and will take every thing I possibly have and then more. My kids feel the same way. So does my home, and my partner. Everyone just wants more and more from me. The pandemic has broken me down and I have nothing left.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It just doesn’t feel like this is “it”. You get into a rhythm and then something changes.

+1. I feel like every day it's a new guideline to follow, a new variant, etc. My life is being lived in limbo.

I'm also pissed that the pandemic forced me to pull back on my career. I loved my full-time job! Men who pulled back to take care of kids are called heroes and get articles written about them. Where's my award?

Really? I did that but all I get called is “beta” — where are those articles?

Stop spending so much time in red pill communities and you’ll realize the rest of the work isn’t quite as steeped in the most toxic forms of masculinity.

Yuk yuk, that was on the DCUM jobs forum.

[Anonymous]

I think we were all on the treadmill of life before the pandemic and sometimes we’d hit an incline, but more or less we could handle the speed because we weren’t running on fumes.

Now it feels like we all just ran a marathon. But instead of getting to a cold jug of ice water and a foot rub at the end, we just got put right back on the treadmill. The pace that used to feel sustainable just doesn’t anymore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It just doesn’t feel like this is “it”. You get into a rhythm and then something changes.

+1. I feel like every day it's a new guideline to follow, a new variant, etc. My life is being lived in limbo.

I'm also pissed that the pandemic forced me to pull back on my career. I loved my full-time job! Men who pulled back to take care of kids are called heroes and get articles written about them. Where's my award?

Really? I did that but all I get called is “beta” — where are those articles?

Stop spending so much time in red pill communities and you’ll realize the rest of the work isn’t quite as steeped in the most toxic forms of masculinity.

Yuk yuk, that was on the DCUM jobs forum.

Post the link.