Surprise lockdown habits Australian mums want to keep after restrictions fully ease
Aussie mums are keen to keep a string of newly-adopted lockdown habits well after restrictions fully ease, with many feeling positive after the pandemic peak, despite worrying about changing family finances and career goals.
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Mums want to keep their favourite lockdown habits such as spending more time at home with their kids rather than driving them to activities.
Australian mothers are now cooking more family meals, spending less time on exercise and self-care, and buying fewer things they don’t need, a Mumpower Shopper Insights survey has found.
The survey of more than 400 Australian mothers shows many are feeling positive after the pandemic peak, despite worrying about changing family finances and career goals.
Christie Nicholas, Mumpower head of research, said mums were “a little more down, but not defeated”.
Pre-covid, 77 per cent of mums felt “mostly positive”, but this has dropped to just 44 per cent. But it is balanced by an increase in mums feeling “often positive” from 23 per cent of 48 per cent.
“It’s no surprise that the game has changed for Mums and families around Australia as we all adjust to what is now a new normal - everything we once knew in regards to wellbeing, relationships, careers, spending habits and lifestyles has now be flipped on its head,” Ms Nicholas said.
Sixty-three per cent of mums said their relationships with their kids have improved, with one saying she was “too focused on planning external activities” before the pandemic. Another said the lockdown forced her family to “release the pressure valve on our daily schedules”.
Forty-five per cent of mums surveyed said their relationships with their partners were better off although most did not report a change in their sex life.
The survey also found 57 per cent of mums are doing more cooking, 42 per cent are doing more eating and 46 per cent are doing more cleaning than before the virus. More than half are also doing more family activities and bonding, and only six per cent say they are doing less things with their families than before.
Elwood mother-of-two Carly Kruger, 33, said she has been enjoying the “slow mornings with the family and not feelings rushed”.
“We’d have a pot of coffee and sit down to breakfast whereas in normal life the kids would eating toast in the car,” she said.
She has also enjoyed having her partner, Michael Skelton, at home to help care for their sons Flynn, 3, and Archer, 2. “At five he’d stop work and he’d be already home,” she said.
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