How Covid’s hidden childcare crisis has left mums struggling with mental health
Climbing into bed just after midnight, single mum Staresha McDonald lay in the dark and wept quietly, not wanting to wake her three-year-old daughter Ayanna, who was asleep in the next room.
In June this year, after another 18-hour day juggling parenting with work while the country was in lockdown, she was exhausted, demoralised and depressed, her mental health unravelling under the intense strain of trying to be both an employee and a mother at the same time.
A few weeks later, Staresha, 26, from Camberwell, south-east London, resigned from her job as an employee support officer, unable to cope any longer.
“My daughter’s nursery shut when lockdown began,” Staresha explains. “Before that she’d gone there every day from 8.50am to 5.30pm while I worked from home. I’m a single parent and my daughter’s father isn’t part of her life, plus my sister, who’s my nearest family member, was shielding, so there was no one who could help me with childcare while I worked. By July, my mental health had deteriorated to the point that I had to quit my job and claim benefits. I was devastated, but didn’t feel like I had any choice.”
And Staresha is far from alone. As lockdown restrictions ease, the furlough scheme approaches its end in late October and the government pushes for employees to get “back to work”, a crisis is engulfing the UK’s maternal workforce.
The reasons for this crisis are multiple. Nurseries are suffering financially after months of closure, with many seeing a drop in demand as parents become unemployed or their working patterns change, while others are struggling because social distancing limits the number of kids they can take on. A recent survey by Childcare.co.uk indicated more than 250,000 childcare spaces will no longer be available across the UK following the pandemic.
The needs of working mothers have been completely ignored during this pandemic and, as many others have warned, we are now seeing that they are first to go when jobs are cut.
Joeli Brearley, founder of Pregnant Then Screwed
Add to this a shortage of clubs and wraparound care when school begins, and the loss of informal care from grandparents – some of whom are continuing to shield, while others have tragically passed away – and it’s a bleak landscape for the UK’s 13 million working parents.
According to Joeli Brearley, founder of Pregnant Then Screwed, a charity that supports and protects the employment rights of pregnant women and mothers, British mums are being treated like “sacrificial lambs”.
“The needs of working mothers have been completely ignored during this pandemic and, as many others have warned, we are now seeing that they are first to go when jobs are cut,” she says. “The crisis in the childcare sector has been growing for years, but now it is at breaking point – and without this vital social infrastructure in place, we will revert back to the 1950s very, very quickly.”
In July, Pregnant Then Screwed released the results of a survey of almost 20,000 working women – 81% of the respondents said they need childcare in order to work, yet 51% are unable to access it. Just over half of the women surveyed said a lack of childcare in the months of lockdown had a negative impact on how they were perceived or treated at work, while 74% of self-employed women had their earning potential reduced. And 72% reported they had worked fewer hours during lockdown because of a lack of childcare, while of those who had been, or expected to be, made redundant, 46% said lack of childcare played a role.
Staresha realised very quickly after lockdown began what an impossible situation she was in.
“I’d only started the role in February, but was really enjoying it, particularly because it was home-based so I could drop Ayanna at the local nursery, then walk home and be at my desk with no commute,” she says.
“Within a couple of weeks, however, I knew there was no way I was going to be able to work and look after Ayanna. My daughter is too young to entertain herself, she wanted my attention and would sit on my knee during Zoom meetings, crying for me to play with her. I felt so stressed, conscious I wasn’t being a good mum or a productive employee.”
In April, Staresha’s employer – who wasn’t furloughing staff – agreed she could halve her hours and salary and work a four-hour evening shift Monday to Friday, beginning at 7.30pm.
“I’d put Ayanna to bed, then sit down at my desk already exhausted from a day of caring for her. I’d fall into bed at midnight, then be woken at 6am. It was gruelling, and by June I was suffering from anxiety and depression, triggered by exhaustion. Ayanna would ask why I was so sad, and there were days I struggled to get out of bed I felt so low. Living on only half my salary was a struggle, especially as I was spending more on things like food and electricity with both of us at home all day, although I was able top it up with Universal Credit.”
In June, Staresha was signed off sick for a month by her GP, but soon after returning to work she decided to quit.
“With no information about when the nursery will re-open, if it opens again at all, I knew I would be back in the same awful cycle. I could have extended my sick leave, but I felt so guilty that it reflected badly on me as an employee, which just made my anxiety worse. It felt easier to leave.
“It was a painful decision because I loved my job and didn’t want to be on benefits, but I had to put my health and my daughter first. I wish I had been given the opportunity of furlough, as that would have made things easier and I’d still have a job.”
Kirsty Pearce, 32, a mother of two from Harlow, Essex, is a member of the Facebook group Maternity Petition Supporters, which is campaigning for the government to give new mothers who are currently on maternity leave an extra three months statutory maternity pay. She is currently on unpaid leave from her job as a learning support assistant after she was unable to find a nursery place for her 10-month-old son Jake.
“I went on maternity leave in September 2019 and Jake was born in October,” explains Kirsty, who is also mum to 12-year-old Maya. “My plan was to start looking for a nursery place in March, with a view to Jake starting in July, when I would return to work. Then the pandemic hit. A lot of the nurseries in my area are either still shut or open only to keyworkers’ kids, and not accepting new children because they’re not sure what numbers they’ll be allowed.
“By early June, I realised it was impossible to return to work the following month. I can’t be furloughed because I work for a local authority and am classed as a keyworker. My only option was to take unpaid leave.
“My fiancé James, 31, works for a company that makes medical equipment so he can’t be furloughed and, as he earns more than me, we decided to protect his wage. “With just one income, we’re having to budget tightly, with no family days out this summer.”
I feel unlucky to be part of this generation of mothers being hit so hard.
Kirsty Pearce
Although Kirsty has managed to secure a place at a nursery for Jake from September, only part-time hours were available because of reduced capacity.
“He can only go four mornings a week, so I’ve had to ask to reduce my hours, which will mean I’m earning less than I was pre-maternity leave. We’re going to have to use our savings to subsidise our household income, and there’ll be no meals out or holidays, plus I’ll be drawing up a monthly budget to make sure we don’t get into debt.
“I can only make one change to my contract per year, so even if a full-time nursery place became available – which is unlikely – I can’t adjust my hours again. I feel unlucky to be part of this generation of mothers being hit so hard. It’s been difficult enough caring for a baby and home-schooling my daughter for months. Now my career and salary have been hit, too, with no sense of when childcare will improve, if indeed ever.”
So why are mothers and not fathers being hit hardest? Dr Geraldine Lee-Treweek, sociologist and associate professor at Birmingham City University School of Social Sciences, says it’s down to the gender inequality that still exists both in domestic and employment settings.
“Much of the progress women have made in employment has been contingent on accessing childcare,” she explains. “It enables women to essentially sub-contract their role – we know that it’s still women who do the lion’s share of caring for and supporting children – and it’s that structure which has, more than anything else, allowed them to work. Now that support is being taken away, with dire consequences.”
“We’ve never reached a point where equal pay is a reality. So the man’s job and salary is the one being protected during this crisis,” she says. “Also, it’s an uncomfortable truth that in many households, childcare is still seen as ‘women’s work’ – reflected in the study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies in May, which revealed that working mothers were only able to do one hour
of uninterrupted paid work for every three done by men during lockdown. If childcare can’t be accessed, it’s viewed in some homes as the mother’s responsibility.”
With mothers 47% more likely to have lost their jobs or quit during the crisis, according to the Institute’s research, Geraldine says she’s not surprised that it’s women who are finding
themselves out of work.
“We know from other social crises, like austerity, that mothers are often in the firing line first, and women who feel anxious about their job security are, sadly, reading the landscape correctly. There is still deep-rooted sexism, with employers associating women with ‘extra costs’ such as maternity pay, and having to accommodate a lack of childcare. That will influence them when deciding who goes when redundancies are being made.”
If you’ve had to take time off to look after them and, as a result, are dismissed or treated in any way to your detriment, you have the protection of the law and should take advice from a solicitor.
Gillian McAteer, Head of Employment Law at law firm Citation
However, there is legal help for women who feel a lack of childcare has seen them out of a job.
“If you do not have childcare provision and you need to care for your children, the law is on your side,” says Gillian McAteer, Head of Employment Law at law firm Citation.
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“If you’ve had to take time off to look after them and, as a result, are dismissed or treated in any way to your detriment, you have the protection of the law and should take advice from a solicitor. Also, any sort of consideration in a redundancy process of time taken off for childcare reasons would be discriminatory, because that would have more impact on women.”
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Now claiming Universal Credit, Staresha is hoping that Ayanna’s nursery will open soon so she can look for another role.
“I feel very anxious about job-hunting at such a difficult time,” she says. “I’m trying not to think about it at the moment – I just need to focus on Ayanna and rebuilding my mental health.”
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