The pandemic has ruined mothers – now we need to fight back

The news that mothers are £5,000 worse off after their working hours fell by an average of 40 per cent during lockdown only confirms what I already know: mothers in the UK have been ruined by this pandemic.

This ruination has come specifically from the decision to close school buildings and send home the majority of under-18s to be taught, cooked for and cleaned up after by their mothers. Some dads did their bit, others didn’t. Some were an active burden.

At the time, we didn’t object. There was an unknowable enemy, so we rolled up our sleeves, Second World War-style and did what we always do, just more of it and completely alone. Well, except for the dishwasher.

It has come at huge literal and personal cost. We lost work, we didn’t smile for days at a time, we seriously re-evaluated our marriages. Don’t tell me that other people have had it worse than mothers during lockdown – relative suffering has been used to silence us for years and I’m really sick of it. Now we’re daring to hope that September will see the end of this relentless domesticity, but I am worried that there is more to come.

How can the announcement yesterday that some of the lockdown restrictions – on wedding receptions, bowling alleys, cinemas and casinos – will remain, not be an early warning at that schools may not fully reopen in September? Boris Johnson’s insistence that getting them up and running is a “national priority” hardly inspired much confidence.

One woman I met recently has already been told one of her children will go back to school only until 2pm in September; the other until 2.20pm. I fret that, even with new scientific evidence about low transmission rates from children to adults, school buildings will stay closed “just in case”.

Because what on earth are mothers going to do about it? We have no union, we cannot go on strike or quit. No one gives a damn. Even to complain is verboten; we are only allowed to make jokes about wine. Mothers have historically had to self-medicate – gin, Valium, shopping – in order to get through the bad bits. I see now that society is happy that we find ways to opiate ourselves and get on with it. Wine o’clock suddenly sounds sinister. Drink up, Mummy!

We know what’s in store if schools don’t return in full. And so we mothers need to be on our own side, seeing as no one else is. We need to ask questions; of our schools, our local councils and our MPS. Dominic Cummings was quizzed on his movements after a flood of angry emails from constituents: it works.

Mothers don’t want thousands of people to die just so they can have a quiet cup of tea (which is how we will be made to feel, trust me), we just want and need more done to ease the dementing physical and mental burden. After all, the phrase is: “It takes a village to raise a child” and not: “Parenting is easy, have more wine and shut up.”