Cover story: The truth about Covid motherhood
From birth to homeschooling, the pandemic has hit women hard, as Mary Carr reveals this Mother’s Day
Caroline Foran’s introduction to motherhood was not what she had imagined. The writer and Instagram influencer gave birth to her pandemic baby boy Caelan last August, after a labour which her husband Barry Doyle was permitted to attend for only a short period, in line with hospital policy.
If that was not fraught enough, over the following days, as Caroline attempted to get acquainted with her newborn, she was dismayed to discover that she felt no wellspring of maternal delight or euphoria, and none of the baby bliss she was anticipating.
‘I just felt stressed, overwhelmed and vulnerable,’ says Caroline, who writes books about wellbeing, the latest of which, Naked: Ten Truths to Change Your Life, has recently been published.
‘I honestly don’t know how I would have coped had I not had Barry at home as I was terrified to be left alone with the baby. I think I overprepared for labour and under prepared for the aftermath. I was so surprised at not feeling like a mother instantly, I thought there was something wrong with me.’
In the end Mother Nature did her thing and, like most new mothers, Caroline became besotted with the tiny scrap in her arms. Before she knew it, she was babbling and cooing at her little bundle of joy.
‘I am the primary carer for now and I do want to keep the attachment going,’ says Caroline of seven-month old Caelan. ‘I built my career so that when I had my family I could be flexible and spend time with my baby. Ultimately, I hope to have a minder in the house so that I can work here.’
The pandemic cast a cloud over the birth of her first child and like all new mothers who gave birth during this extraordinary time, Caroline has missed out on the social side of motherhood, the bonding over mother and baby yoga or music classes, and the supportive network of family and friends to help celebrate the new arrival or lend a hand with nappies and feeding.
Her husband Barry sat outside the Rotunda hospital while she went into labour and was only admitted when Caroline had an epidural administered. He left an hour after the birth.
‘I think I underestimated the effect of the pandemic on having a baby, probably because I had nothing to compare it to,’ she says. ‘But things have got better and we are getting a bit of a routine going now. My little boy had reflux and digestive problems which have been ironed out so I feel I can trust myself with him now. He’s adorable — he smiles all the time, although he has his moments too.’
If the pandemic has driven a coach and horses through the childbirth experience, removing new mothers’ support systems, the sacrifices and privation of lockdown are also felt right through each stage of parenting.
Motherhood’s familiar trajectory has been upturned, made almost unrecognisable from the accounts in the parenting books, from the grind of the early years — the lack of sleep, the weird and unwelcome changes to one’s body and the realisation that even the most devoted partner can only take on so much of the burden — to the relatively plain sailing of early and middle childhood and on to the melodrama of the tricky teenage years.
Under Covid’s long shadow, the phases have almost merged into each another, demanding bottomless reserves of patience and ingenuity from those charged with steering a healthy course for their children during such an unnatural climate. Homeschooling, the closure of childcare facilities, of after-school hobbies and classes have piled pressure on parents, with research showing that it’s invariably mothers who are shouldering the larger part of the burden.
A recently published UCD survey on the last lockdown found there was a clear gender difference in who was helping the children with remote learning, with 95% of children reporting that their mother helped them, compared to 52% of children reporting that their father helped them.
A UK survey of 1,005 full-time working mothers shows that, deprived of the help of extended families, 60% of mothers report feeling isolated, lonely and depressed, with 34% feeling burnt out by the struggle to keep everything on track in lockdown.
This picture of motherhood under stress holds right across the socio-economic spectrum. High powered women like Labour sena
‘I feel like I can trust myself with him now’
tor Ivana Bacik, whose children are 13 and 15, worry about keeping all the plates spinning between work and home. ‘I have definitely found it tough juggling home life with work,’ says Ivana, whose partner is an essential worker in the manufacturing sector and unavailable for most of the day.
‘The children are more self-sufficient now but this has been a very prolonged period without routine, school, extracurricular activities or their friends. I have to keep an eye on everything, from trying to ensure that they get some fresh air every day to monitoring the inordinate amount of time they are spending online.
‘When they were younger, I had great supports but not so much now and I feel it during Covid.’
The toll on mothers in less welloff households may be twopronged. Covid has collapsed hospitality and retail, two sectors where women dominate, and many have lost their paid employment. They are undertaking all of the childcare and domestic chores while their partners bring home the bacon.
The most recent CSO figures show that in the last quarter of 2020, total part time employment fell by 58,000 from a year earlier. Remarkably, of that number almost 43,000 are women.
The UN deputy secretary general, Amina Mohammed, says Covid risks setting women’s rights back by decades.
Orla O’Connor of the National
Women’s Council says the pandemic has exposed society’s reliance on women to assume caring roles, caused by either their predilection to care for small children or because of a lack of female representation at political level.
The Council is seeing women at the end of their tether, struggling with care issues at home and homeschooling. It highlights, says O’Connor, the lack of public childcare and public care services, but also the disproportionate impact of care on women’s professional lives.
‘I think Orla O’Connor is correct about how the pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing inequalities,’ says Ivana Bacik. ‘The Children’s Minister Roderic O’Gorman believes that the recovery of the female labour market may be at a slower rate than men’s after the pandemic. I’m considering a proposal for a special scheme for women workers, something to incentivise employers to promote women and develop their careers, to try and make up for what they’ve lost.’
Bacik has reservations about casting childcare constantly as a burden or in a negative light. ‘I said in the Senate this week that childcare is not always a burden, it’s also a huge joy and I love it. Men have a minimal entitlement to paternity leave but only a small number of men take it,’ she says. ‘There is a cultural impediment to them taking leave which may only be undone if some really high-profile man takes it, like Tony Blair did in the UK. He showed dads how to acknowledge their responsibility to their families. I have loved every stage of being a mother; I loved it when they were babies and I love it now that they are older and we can chat. I think men are missing out on so much.’
The pandemic highlights some of the nuances of the Growing Up in Ireland study of children and young people. In 2008, the study found that even though 65% of the surveyed mothers were in full-time employment with almost half of these working over 30 hours a week, the issue of a sick child was seen as the mother’s responsibility. In fact, 46% of mothers saw nursing a sick child as their sole responsibility, against six per cent of fathers. For all the advances in gender equality, when it comes to an emergency like a sick child or a public health crisis like Covid, mothers are the default parent.
The younger the child, the more fixed the notion that because the mother is generally a child’s primary attachment, it falls on her to take charge of her child in a crisis. Debates rage whether this is a primitive maternal urge or whether it’s culturally sanctioned.
Whatever the reason, the pandemic has produced the most exhausted and anxious generation of mothers in recent history, with many also paying a heavy price in career terms. On this Mother’s Day, it might take more than a pretty card or bunch of flowers to repay them.
‘Childcare is not a burden, it’s a huge joy ’
‘I think men are missing out on so much ’