The Mother Drought

‘You’re so lucky you have Hugh’s parents so close” – it’s a comment I receive at least weekly from one friend or another.

Usually after I’ve revealed that, on Monday’s we don’t have to cook because my mum-in-law has made a batch of something for me to take home, or after I say I can stay to finish off a pitch at work because my dad-in-law can pick up my daughter last minute.

My friends don’t have this level of support. Some live on the other side of the world from their family and didn’t have the foresight to marry an 'inner westie from Sydney' like I did, others lost their parents too young, like I lost my dear dad. Then there are the other friends, the ones that meet me for runs on Friday mornings or wine on Sunday afternoons, doing their best to be positive after another week of trips to aged care facilities and discussions with doctors. With sad eyes and slumped shoulders, their sparkling personalities dimming as if the marrow is being sucked from their bones.

These ones, I think, feel like the unlucky ones – parenting down whilst carrying the grief of caring upwards, stuck in limbo.

What they wouldn’t give to arrive to dinner made, beds turned down, the scent of baking filling the air, a cup of tea arriving as if by magic, to be mothered whilst mothering – like I got to do when my mum lived with me for a year after we said goodbye to my dad.

It’s a cruel truth, but a truth none the less, that when you become a parent, that’s when you need mothering the most; someone to fill your cup while your kids empty it, a person unshakeably on your team that knows what you need and when without being asked – yet our lives are now designed in a way that makes this increasingly hard to access.

We live globally and remotely, we start our families later and at a time when our own parents may need to take the care as opposed to bestow it.

And we work, outside the home (even if that’s from our dining table) meaning that, rather than the first year of parenting being the hardest, the load grows as the birthdays climb higher. Milly’s 2nd birthday came 4 weeks after my dad’s funeral, Milly’s 4th birthday passed as we went through failed IVF, all whilst working full time. We have special spas and places of rest to look after the new mums which is brilliant, but what about the other, the ones with all the experience and none of the energy?

In my life the laundry goes undone, we eat scrambled eggs more often than I’m convinced is healthy, Annabel Crabb hit the cultural nail on the head when she called attention to the Wife Drought back in 2014, but now it feels like a second drought is on its way – the Mothering Drought.

Where we all parent as if we were full time parents, we work as if we were full time employees, but really many of us are simply daughters (or sons) still needing the care of our parents, grieving for a time and circumstance where that would’ve been possible.

All this to say, there’s a care chasm – one that wasn’t as pronounced in the 80’s or 90’s when we had children in our early 20s (40%) and 69% of us were single income earners. And when we don’t acknowledge these gaps, we rob ourselves of the opportunity to innovate around them.

Instead of more teas, spas, candles, exercises, supplements all designed to hide the exhaustion, businesses might get to work lightening the (mother) load if we could accurately depict the problem and the opportunity on the line.

Whilst I’m only one person, and we’ve already identified that my family currently lives off scrambled egg, I do have the support I need so I want to spend time understanding the road my friends are walking. I’m gathering stories and insights from mothers on the care gaps they are facing and I’d love you to add to the discussion via an anonymous google doc here:

https://forms.gle/TxycEizRyhxa93K16

 I’m working on something I think might help, I’m not ready to share it yet, but when I do rest assured it’ll be as a result of the mothers that mother me, and allow me the time and energy to get these things done (and hand me tea before I realise I need it).