Coronavirus and working mothers: How a forced feminist lean-in has helped my family

The forced COVID-19 retreat into our homes has been nothing short of trying. But at the risk of offending the sisterhood, this virus-induced rewind of feminism is actually a good thing, writes Lucy Carne.

“It feels like I’ve become a 1950s housewife.”

It’s a statement I’ve heard repeatedly from friends, colleagues and the media during lockdown.

This forced mass retreat into our homes has, for some, not been a heaven of jigsaw puzzling, Stanley Tucci negroni lessons and TV binges of Normal People and Tiger King.

For some of us, it has been an exhausting magnification of cooking, cleaning, laundry and schooling from home, all while trying to hold onto a job.

We have become midnight Geppettos, madly working to juggle it all, and sometimes still coming up short.

And so, coronavirus has been blamed for setting back the advances of the feminist movement.

“Women’s domestic burden just got heavier with the coronavirus,” The Guardian said.

The Atlantic declared: “The Coronavirus Is a Disaster for Feminism”.

Economists, in a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, wrote: “ … the COVID-19 pandemic will have a disproportionate negative effect on women and their employment opportunities.”

Many mothers have become midnight Geppettos, madly working to juggle it all. Picture: supplied

Darcy Lockman, author of All the Rage: Mothers, Fathers, and the Myth of Equal Partnership, told Harper’s Bazaar that coronavirus has amplified the gender divide of women as “defacto caregivers and men as emotionally detached”.

Of course, this overlooks the literal pandemic gender divide that more men die of COVID-19 than women. And it does not outweigh the fact that hundreds of thousands of people have died and livelihoods destroyed.

But at the risk of offending the sisterhood, may I suggest that this virus-induced rewind of feminism is possibly a good thing.

Perhaps it is an opportunity for us to reset how we function as families and parent equally.

This forced pause on the whirlwind of modern life has, at least for me, re-evaluated how I mother my three children.

I’m no longer the full-time worker, part-time mum, rushing through the front door for 30 minutes with my kids before they go to sleep, or worse, missing bedtime altogether.

I’m no longer propped up by grocery deliveries, cleaners, teachers, tuckshop and babysitters.

Sitting on our front steps sharing a chat and a bowl of ice cream with my daughter on a weekday afternoon, I realised this simple pleasure was one I missed out on as a child.

Our mothers burned their bras and marched out of the kitchen, but now we’re marching right back in to bake iso sourdough (bras optional, because who could really be bothered right now).

The Women’s Lib movement fought to get us out of the home, but the pandemic has pushed us back in. Picture: Sun March 1974

If you’ve stepped outside into suburbia recently, you’d be forgiven for thinking we had returned to the 1960s.

Like a scene from The Wonder Years, parents jog alongside the wobbly child learning to ride a bike, dogs are walked, lawns mown, chalk drawings cover footpaths and the smell of cooked dinners wafts on the breeze.

They are the result of a much-needed break from the incessant thumb scrolling of smartphones, competitive busyness and weekends crammed with mandatory socialising.

Of course, I support equal rights for women and men and I want my daughter to grow up with the unfettered freedom of career choice.

But does knowing the kids have clean hair, the slow cookers on and the sheets are drying on the line bring me deep joy? Absolutely.

Suffragettes would be turning in their graves, but I refuse to feel guilty for my new-found maternal feminism.

And it’s not just women re-embracing domestic bliss.

In our last great social shakedown of World War II, women had to take up non-traditional roles left by men.

Right now, our neighbourhood looks like Wonder Years throwback. But who knows how long it will last? Picture: supplied

Now in this ‘war on corona’, men are discovering their domestic affinity and savouring a return to active fatherhood.

They are also (according to the anecdotal evidence of friends) appreciating the invisible mental and physical load of raising children.

But with restrictions easing, will it last?

“This gives us pause to reflect and really investigate further and potentially put in place additional policy and more conversations to advance equality and gender equity,” says Yolande Strengers, Monash University Associate Professor of digital technology and society in the Emerging Technologies Research Lab and Associate Dean of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in the IT Faculty.

With a predicted $60 billion in lost income and an unemployment rate of 10 per cent by June, the idyllic notion of a stay-at-home parent by choice may be over.

We will all need to help rebuild our devastated economy.

But in our return to the hectic demands of unlocked life, let’s not forget what has made us truly content.

Hopefully, when all this is over, parenting unity will be our new normal.

Lucy Carne is editor of Rendezview.com.au