Right now is a really tough time to be a parent.
If you’ve still got a job, you know you should be feeling grateful. But what do you do with your kids? PM Scott Morrison announced earlier this month that childcare would be free. But with social distancing being enforced nationwide due to coronavirus, some parents are feeling hesitant about putting their kids into care.
As for schools, they’re still open, mostly. But the guidelines on which students should be attending differ from state to state. In Queensland, schools will only be open for children of essential workers. In Victoria, they’re open for children whose parents can’t work from home and vulnerable children. In the Northern Territory, children will be expected to attend school unless their parents make alternative arrangements.
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What this all means is that many parents, trying to do what’s best for their families, are struggling with difficult decisions.
One mum, who works in allied health and has a husband in an essential service, says it might be the most stressful part of the COVID-19 situation for her.
“I have cried so many times from the stress of trying to decide what’s right and from the guilt of needing to send my children to school/daycare,” she tells Mamamia. “It’s truly awful.”
She says a lot of the guilt and worry comes from the fear of her children contracting coronavirus.
“But the health advice seems to be that they aren’t at risk,” she adds. “So much emotion caught up in the decision, because it involves our children.”
Another mum, Lisa, who’s working from home for an essential service, says she’s found it “almost impossible” to combine work and childcare.
“I am failing miserably at both,” she admits to Mamamia.
Lisa has made the “immensely difficult” decision to put her daughter back into daycare.
“The guilt is heavy, especially when I hear the judgment in others’ tone,” she says. “I question my decision to put my daughter back in every day and wonder – have I put her health or my family’s health at risk? I am 20 weeks pregnant too, so concerned for my unborn baby.”
First-time mum Trish has just spent 12 months on maternity leave from her government job. She feels “incredibly lucky” that she and her husband are still employed, and she’s reliant on the income, but can’t see how she can work from home with a baby.
“It’s impossible with a crawling, high-energy little lady who requires constant attention,” she says.
Trish is thinking of sending her daughter to childcare part-time, but worries because she lives in one of Sydney’s hot spots for coronavirus cases.
“The risk is incredibly high. I am a breastfeeding mother and am very concerned about how I would cope and look after baby, should I get sick.”
With most schools across Australia staying open, even if only for a small number of students, some teachers are having to put their own children in school or daycare.
One teacher, married to a teacher, tells Mamamia that even though she could have done her job from home, she wasn’t given the choice. Her three children will be returning to school when she does next week.
“Whilst I completely understand and respect the need for schools to be open for essential workers and vulnerable children, I do feel like my family is collateral damage,” she says. “I can only hope that those parents that have the choice do keep their children home.”
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Another teacher, Rachel, is working from home. But with three children under three, it’s “just not possible” to teach and look after them at the same time. She says she tries not to think about the risk of coronavirus too much.
“I am comforted by the fact that most children are recovering well. However, there are days where I really struggle with it. My twins were premature and my boy suffers with wheezing when he gets any common cold, so that plays on my mind.”
Parent of kids with special needs are facing extra pressures. One mum-of-two, whose eldest son has Down syndrome, is working in aged care two days and from home two days, while her husband is working from home full-time.
“Whilst we juggle working and attempting to complete the prescribed schoolwork, we are also constantly dealing with very challenging behaviours,” she says. “We feel like we are currently failing on all fronts. Plus, school was normally our respite.”
She says they did think about sending their children back to school.
“However, if my son is at school, he also needs an aide, which would mean at least one more person in the school,” she explains. “In the end, for us, it was an easy decision. Safety is our first priority and we do not want to risk our children’s health or those around us.”
For some parents, the decision to send their children to daycare or school has been a tough one. But once they’ve made it, they’ve felt it was the right one.
Georgie works from home four days a week in an admin/management role, and for the past three weeks, has been staying up till 2am or 3am working, then looking after her two young children during the day.
“It was totally unsustainable,” she says.
So Georgie made the decision to re-enrol her sons in daycare.
“It was really hard, and I still feel like it’s a bit ‘wrong’ – almost like I’m betraying the childcare workers by handing the boys over to them during this time,” she admits. “But I knew I had to make a call between either keeping them at home and resigning – which feels like the worst option right now in this climate and with my partner’s job also very unstable – or putting them back into care.”
Today was the boys’ first day back.
“I can’t explain the weight that has been lifted off my shoulders,” she says. “I can now actually do my job!”
Are you facing a dilemma with schools and childcare centres open? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Feature image: Getty.
Top Comments
It was an easy decision for us - with a primary school student at home we took our younger child out of childcare at the same time. (Even while still paying to keep our place). My partner and I cut back our work hours, home schooling is at best two hours a day, but their health and that of their teachers is more important. Children can catch up on schooling. Neither children nor adults can be sure they will recover from this virus. The childcare staff and teachers I’ve spoken to don’t want to be at work. And having witnessed one of our children struggling to breathe on oxygen before, we don’t want to take that risk. We’re fortunate to be able to have this choice while still employed, not everyone does, but feel that since we can keep our children home, we should. (Though we might be a bit crazy by the end of it! 😊)
Bottom line here is pretty simple - caring for children is so undervalued, so underappreciated and so misunderstood in our society that the teachers, the childcare workers and frankly, the parents in a way, are forgotten in this.
I can speak from a great deal of experience. I began work as a babysitter, then as a live in Au Pair, as a private nanny and in the baby and toddler rooms of a national Childcare/Early learning centre. I am now a stay at home mum with 3 children aged 6, 4 and 3. I was to begin my part time studies towards teaching Kindergarten, hopefully in 2021 but that has been put in hold for now
I have had 20 plus years working with children aged from 0 to 12. I've worked in England, America and Australia. I've seen what goes on behind the scenes...I've worked (and lived with) very wealthy families. Your are the hidden member of their team. Only the housekeepers are below you. Once in a while they will tell you in the privacy of their home that they appreciate you but never in public.
I only ever had one family show true gratitude for my work caring for their young daughter in the baby room of a childcare centre, only one family in all the countless families I have worked for, take the time to show how appreciative they were.
Our culture doesn't respect the role of child carer/nurturer. Stay at home mother's are judged constantly for not 'working', working mothers are judged constantly for 'working', men who want to be teachers are so rare it's heartbreaking, especially as a mother of two boys who would benefit so much from the presence of male teachers in their primary school. I won't even go into the men who want to work in early childhood education - they're practically non existent. Yet on the very, very rare occasion we had a male relief worker at my centre, the children adored him.
Bottom line, our society doesn't value the care of young children. If it did, I would have gone back to work in the child care sector that I loved so much.
But I won't. Because it traumatised me.
It traumatised to have to look after 4, sometimes 5 crying babies in the cot room. All at the same time, some under 6 months, all under 10 months, while a co worker fed, consoled and changed the other babies. But they stay, despite being overworked and underpaid (I earnt FAR more as a waitress/bar girl than I ever did caring for other people's babies and children), they stay because they are passionate about caring for the youngest and most vulnerable members of our society. Just like our teachers. Our amazing, passionate, talented, creative teachers, who in the midst of this pandemic, are the only frontline workers whose constant message from the government is 'business as usual'.
I live in hope that our attitude to those who choose to care for/educate/raise children will change.
But I doubt it.
It’s business as usual for postal workers, supermarket employees, delivery drivers, transport officers, cleaners and any number of other frontline workers. Mamamia just doesn’t run endless articles about them.
It isn't the same Cat. Delivery drivers, postal workers, transport officers and cleaners don't mix with the public. They wear gloves, have hand sanitizer and do large portions of their jobs alone. Supermarket workers have hand sanitizer and can maintain distancing with customers whilst doing their jobs. There is NO SUCH THING as social distancing in schools or child care centers. Kids don't understand, it is just not where they are at developmentally and there isn't enough room. In addition we don't have enough soap or sanitizer to even think about washing our hands every time we come into contact with our kids. I am a prep teacher and I love them. I would far rather be with them than teaching online. However I also live with my mother who is battling breast cancer (which has spread to her bones) for the fifth time and my father who has emphysema . If the schools re-open prematurely, which it is looking like they will, I will be in a horrible dilemma. I am sorry to shout and sound short, but I am just so fed up with this argument.