I was inspired to write this post by Nell Frizzell's observation about loneliness in mothering. I say in mothering advisedly because, despite it being the 21st century, I know that this is, still, a feeling that assails mothers infinitely more than it does fathers. That isn't to say that it is unknown to fathers and it certainly isn't to me.
A quick disclaimer. I'm half of a two parent, two income family and it would be a grotesque misrepresentation to suggest anything but that my wife bears, by far, the lioness' share of the parenting. To borrow one of the catchphrases of 2020 I must 'do better'. I know that there are many mothers, and some fathers, doing all this on their own without financial or familial support. They have my boundless admiration.
All of that out of the way Nell's observation rings as true as a bell tolling the end of your freedom. Very few explain to expectant parents that when they add one to their family they subtract the world. Obviously in one sense that is melodramatic nonsense but when you are listening to screaming, whining, pleading, badgering all day it is very easy to feel that you have ceased to exist as a participating member of the human race.
I've written before about how early years parenting requires a profoundly healthy relationship with your emotional self and ready access to your inner child. Babies needs may be basic but they are relentless. No intellectual nourishment arises from feeding, burping, changing and napping all day every day, week after week, month on month. The price you pay for growing your child is diminishing your self and place in the world. If you have striven hard and tirelessly to find that place its loss can feel like a bereavement but mourning it wins no well wishers or sympathy.
When you parent a small child technically you're in company but in reality you're encumbered. Adult conversations are snatched, unsatisfying, invariably about the cares and cost of childcare. A sense of being untethered quickly sets in.
Much of this is a result of how we parent now. We are atomised and isolated; parenting as a group activity is vanishingly uncommon. I remember how ineffectual parent and baby (alright mother and baby, let's get real) classes seemed to be at mitigating this feeling of being alone. Paying for an hour's company felt like paying for a friend.
Those lucky enough to live near supportive and support giving relatives enjoy a benefit almost unimaginable to those sentenced to months of unremitting childcare. Maybe I'm being naive or missing something but the solution to all this isolation and loneliness seems obvious to me.
Childcare in Britain is madly expensive and usually comes at the cost of parents' return to work. What we really need are comfortable creches where parents could spend the day in company with other parents and their children. Where parents could take a nap with the reassurance of knowing their child is being watched by another parent.
Alternatively we can persist with the broken model of staying at home and going quietly mad.
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