Lonely But Not Alone: Meet The Women Who’ve Given Birth In A Pandemic

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‘Being unable to connect with other new mothers has been tough on my mental health.’ Tinuke, 29.

‘I felt totally alone and a complete shell of my normal self.’ Poppy, 34.

‘Family stood by the window to look at our beautiful baby, but all I remember feeling is just so sad that they couldn’t come in and give us a hug.’ Amy, 36.

These women, who’ve all had babies in the past 12 months, feel lonely, but they are certainly not alone. Data from campaigning charity Pregnant Then Screwed shows that 97% of pregnant women and mothers said Covid restrictions increased their anxiety around childbirth, and 37% of new mums said their mental health is poor. It’s no surprise when none of the usual maternity leave lifelines are available: baby groups, coffee with other mums and letting-off-steam drinks with friends. While loneliness and isolation are big issues for parents, they also worry about the long-term effects on their babies.

READ MORE: Becoming A Mother In The Year Of The Covid Pandemic: 'I Didn't Know I Had The Strength I Have - It's The Hardest Thing I've Ever Had To Do'

‘Parents have a huge and understandable concern that their babies’ social development will be affected, but babies don’t care,’ reassures Dr Nneka Ikeogu, child psychologist and co-founder of parenting platform Mellownest. ‘From a developmental perspective, they don’t need huge amounts of interaction. Focus on your own connection with your baby and know that you are helping them develop their social skills.’ She also has reassurance for parents concerned about screen time, since it’s been the only way to connect with family. A baby will barely register a screen, she explains, it’s more about the grandparents getting to see them than vice versa, and there will naturally be fewer screens as we emerge from lockdown. Talking of which, Nneka insists it’s important to take it slowly. Don’t feel pressured to welcome a flood of visitors, and always follow your baby’s lead. ‘It’s perfectly normal for them to not necessarily want to be handed over to someone they’ve only seen on FaceTime,’ she says. ‘Don’t force it.’

While it’s comforting to hear that lack of social interaction won’t harm your baby’s development, it doesn’t make it any easier for parents who feel isolated. Social media can help (although it can make some feel worse, so be mindful about who you follow and steer clear of accounts presenting shiny, happy, clean perfection) and parenting-specific digital platforms can create that sense of community.

Becca Maberly is the author of Nobody Tells You and founder of one such platform, A Mother Place. She agrees that babies’ social skills can be crossed off your list of worries. A bigger challenge, she says, is new parents’ sense of anger or sadness about what they have missed out on over the past year. ‘There are many who have spent every day of their precious maternity leave in lockdown,’ she says. ‘It’s heartbreaking. New mums have never felt so alone and so isolated.’ The day-to-day support of connecting with other mums and comparing notes on everything – from feeding and sleeping to the surprisingly lurid contents of that nappy – is sadly lacking. ‘This form of interaction is so important in helping new mums realise they’re not alone,’ she says.

If there’s a lockdown silver lining for pandemic babies and their parents, it’s that many new mums’ partners have been at home, so more dads have been around for those key early milestones, forging closer connections with their babies and, ideally, lightening the domestic load. Of course, every situation is different and not every new mum will benefit from this.

Anna Whitehouse, aka Mother Pukka, is a Heart radio presenter and founder of flexible working campaign Flex Appeal. She describes the isolation that new mothers have felt in lockdown as ‘nothing short of traumatic’ and feels that having both parents at home is not necessarily consolation. ‘Sure, the optics will be better with heterosexual couples, in terms of both parents being seen to parent and work perhaps,’ she says. ‘But the stress and anxiety laced through that is not to be underestimated.’

She’s certainly right that the optics vs reality do not tally. Women have been furloughed in greater numbers than men, and still shoulder significantly more childcare. For change to happen, it needs to come from the top, so it’s encouraging that, earlier this month, Minister

for Women & Equalities Liz Truss called for flexible working to be normalised, giving employees the option of part-time or flexible hours, WFH or job shares. ‘The shift for many people to work from home during the pandemic has changed mindsets,’ she says, ‘and now is a chance to seize the opportunity of making flexible working the norm, rather than something employees have to specially request.’

So is this the beginning of flex-for-all, with as many dads taking flexible hours to be there at pick-up as mums have for years? ‘I’m sceptical,’ says Anna of Liz’s statement. ‘This is a woman who suspended gender pay gap reporting so I’m taking it with a pinch of salt. Anyway, implementing flexible working isn’t going to be the challenge. It’s ensuring it’s taken up by men so the burden of childcare doesn’t remain strapped to female shoulders. We need men to stop seeing looking after their own children as emasculating and we need managers to approve requests from men and women equally.’

Joeli Brearley, founder of Pregnant Then Screwed, thinks it’s positive that the Government is considering how this could work. ‘But it doesn’t solve anything for the hundreds of thousands of women on zero hours contracts or in precarious work where the flexibility benefits only the employer,’ she says. ‘The number of women who work part-time is very high in the UK compared to the rest of Europe and this is a major contributor to the gender pay gap. Mothers will continue to work fewer hours until we deal with this unequal split of unpaid labour and our obsession with presenteeism.’ How to fix it? ‘Properly paid, ring-fenced paternity leave,’ says Joeli. ‘We know from other countries that implementing a “use it or lose it” policy for dads drastically increases the number who take it, which helps the domestic labour gap. Second, good quality, affordable childcare. As a proportion of income, we have the most expensive childcare system in the world.’

Labour MP Stella Creasy is famously the first member of Parliament to have maternity cover, and has campaigned for maternity rights for all MPs. She agrees it’s going to take more than a statement from the Government to effect real change. ‘Shared parental leave and flexible working are brilliant in theory for both mums and dads, but in practice are only open to those with the money and seniority to be able to negotiate it,’ she says. ‘It’s going to take real leadership and proper funding for this to become a reality – so the fact the minister hasn’t made time to have even a single meeting about it in the past three years speaks volumes about whether the Government can provide that.’

So, a lot of talk with little evidence of walking the walk, then. But there are some green shoots in the shape of a study of lockdown behaviours by the Universities of Birmingham and Kent. Two of its authors, Dr Holly Birkett and Dr Sarah Forbes, tell me that, although their research shows that women have done the majority of the childcare and unpaid work in the home during lockdown, it also reveals that men who have been working from home stepped up and did more childcare and housework than before.

‘Most fathers in our study want to work more flexibly in the future so they can spend more time with family,’ says Holly. ‘We also found that managers are more likely to be supportive of flexible working, even for senior roles. These are really positive signs in terms of breaking down existing flexible working stigma and gendered assumptions about childcare in the early years.’

The study shows that Covid-19 has led to changes in working practices and cultural expectations around childcare that the authors say would otherwise have taken decades to achieve. Of course, more needs to be done. For instance, men need to believe that their careers won’t be negatively impacted if they work flexibly. It’s time we rebranded flexible working from something stressed-out mothers have to do, to a desirable power play. After all, by the time this generation of newborns is in the workplace, will they want to spend five days a week, eight hours a day in an office?

‘Millennials and Gen Z have different expectations and requirements from work than past generations,’ explains Sarah. ‘They’re much more likely to apply to a company because of its processes, such as flexible working and parenting policies, and this will become even more pronounced in the future.’

Perhaps these lockdown babies are unwittingly at the genesis of a new parental revolution of flexibility, equality, resilience and communication. With that foundation, it’s exciting to imagine what kind of world they’ll create.

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