“I’m tired of how blurred the lines are between home and work,” Julia Thomas tells me as her two boys repeatedly ask for snacks in the background. Thomas lives in London with her husband, twin 11-year-old boys and a daughter, seven. She is a civil servant, but says she is feeling so burned out by childcare that she’s considering quitting her job completely. She isn’t sleeping properly, her back and hips ache from sitting at a desk all day and her constant to-do list makes life feel chaotic.
“I think I have parental burnout,” I say to my husband. “Do you have it, too?” He looks at me as if I’m mad. “Of course!” he says. A poll carried out by Savanta ComRes earlier this year found that 45% of parents feel burned out, while The 35-year-old from Watford lives with her husband, Ismail, and their four children, who are 14, nine, eight and one. The youngest was born during lockdown just as hospital services were being closed, meaning Sabeena had to go through a 24-hour labour alone before being sent home with a newborn.
For parents of children with special needs, the same problems can apply – but many found themselves with less support thanks to cuts in government funding. Suzy Camp, 47, lives near Woking, with her husband and their two sons. Her eldest was diagnosed with cerebellar atrophy at 18 months. Now 13, he’s non-verbal, and still in nappies. Camp worked in recruitment and property for 20 years, but quit when the work-parent balance became unmanageable.
The psychotherapist and author Philippa Perry advises parents worried about reaching burnout to set boundaries long before limits are reached. “It is important to respect our own tiredness limits while we’ve still got the patience to do it.” Gary is a business consultant and coach. He says he’s seen many people in similar situations to him in the last few months. “I recently re-interviewed members of a company I’d spoken to before the pandemic. They’d been fun, creative types before lockdown, but when I spoke to them again, their personalities had been greyed and deadened. They just seemed to have less hope.”
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