Dear Nile Wires, I was intrigued by an article titled; “fiery tales of parenting during lockdown”. The writer captures a few scenarios of dilemmas of parenting during the pandemic lockdown.
The Covid-19 pandemic has had a hard toll on all spheres of life (economically, socially, politically), and the world can never remain the same. It has had the good and the bad. To some extent, it has been an awakening to families, individuals, governments and policy makers.
The scenarios in the article, pushed me to reflect on the need for Africa, Uganda in particular to prioritize many policy areas especially the emotional health of the population.
Citizens are a key resource for the development of any nation because a healthy nation is a wealthy nation. From the article, one could construe the fact that parental burn out has slowly rendered Uganda’s workforce productivity impotent.The COVID-19 pandemic having brought additional stress to many families.
I write in this article to explore a condition termed parental burn out, intending to capture government’s attention to design/redesign interventions that shall help support the population, knowing that these are the very workforce as the country plans to fully re-open the economy.
Parental burn out is a condition that involves four dimensions: an overwhelming sense of exhaustion, emotional distancing from the child, saturation or a loss of fulfillment with the parental role, and a sharp contrast between how parents used to be and how they see themselves now.
One could immediately detect this condition in all the fiery tales of the respondents in the guest writer’s article. In a quasi-longitudinal research conducted by a Portuguese firm comparing two cross-sectional studies among Portuguese parents, with an interval of 2 years between each COVID-19 wave of data collection.
Participants were surveyed voluntarily through an online questionnaire located on the institutional web platform of the universities involved in the study.
Multivariate analysis of covariance was used to take into account the associations among variables, alongside controlling the possible confounding effects. It was discovered that; Parents had overall higher parental burnout scores in Wave 2 than Wave 1, with increased exhaustion, emotional distancing, and contrast, but decreased saturation.
Although parental burnout levels remained higher for mothers across the two Waves, the growth was greater for fathers than for mothers.The research concluded that; Reconciling childcare with paid work is a stressful and new experience for many fathers. However, results suggest that even amid a crisis, some parents had the opportunity to deeply bond with their children.
The above research findings resonate in equal measure with the Ugandan situation as it is in the fiery tales article.The government of Uganda and other stakeholders are encouraged to consider proper intervention strategies to address potential parental burnout as the country rolls out a total economy opening up road map with specific emphasis to the education sector. There must be clear balance of intervention among the key stakeholders in the education sector viz; parents, students, teachers/schools.
Any concentration on planning for one shall leave the other overwhelmed in terms of resources and or emotional, physical, intellectual and mental capacities.
Also, initiatives that strengthen gender equity within parenting context are needed. Nowadays, parenting can be embedded with parenting norms that pose high and impossible standards because there is a strong social pressure for parents to excel in raising their child(ren), represented by the Hajjat dilemma in the fiery tale article. Hajjat’s predicament was worsened by the fear for social judgment of her failure as a mother, expressed in the statement; “Hajjat wails in agony, casting doubt to her abilities as a mother and feeling unworthy.”Such high standards are a risk factor for parents’ stress and burnout.
In a period of family confinement, this risk was likely heightened, even more so for parents who had already been experiencing difficulties in their parental role. These parents may be at highest risk of burnout. It is important to note that parental burnout differs from daily parental stress because it is a prolonged exposure to overwhelming stress related to parenting, with high demands and limited resources.
Therefore, parental burnout results from a chronic imbalance of risks over resources according to Mikolajczak & Roskam, 2018. Government should address gender inequalities in the family sphere. Because although both fathers and mothers are usually full-time working parents, gender inequalities in the family sphere are a constant within the African context.
Indeed, even when mothers have a full-time job or when fathers are unemployed, mothers do the bulk of domestic and childcare work. Further, despite the increasing involvement of fathers in childcare, parenthood remains a domain strongly affected by gender inequalities.
Additionally, the intensive mothering model prevails in African society, placing high standards on the mother in terms of her total availability, attention, and dedication to the child(ren). As a consequence, mothers who adhere to this model tend to ignore their own needs in an attempt to meet society’s expectations and, therefore, are at an increased risk of becoming overwhelmed.
As these mothers may always put their children first, they may experience negative feelings more often, such as anxiety, doubt, guilt, sadness, and loneliness and eventual pressure to resign from their careers, the case of Nancy in the fiery tale article. Given the available literature, it is unsurprising that research indicates globally a higher average level of parental burnout among mothers than fathers, explained by social gender roles that reinforce the representation of the mother as the childcare expert while the father remains her assistant.
According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD,2014), 17% of children aged 0-14 live in single parent households worldwide, and women head approx.. 88% of these households.
A 2011 Uganda Demographic and healthy survey (DHS 2011) report indicates that among children 0-17, 56% live with both parents, 20% percent live with only their mother, 5% live with only their father, and 19% live with neither biological parents.
Also, recent work carried out in 18 countries by UN women, revealed that COVID-19 intensified the workload of women at home, as they took on most household tasks and family care during the pandemic (United Nations Women), 2020. Uganda has been ranked number one country with the longest period of full school closures world over. Data from the UNESCO Global Monitoring of School Closures Caused by COVID-19 Pandemic report (2021) highlights that children in Uganda missed 149 school days during wave 1 lockdown. However, behind the missed school days lay a bigger challenge for the parents and caretakers of these children while at home. The fiery tales article highlights just a few.May this article cause a reflection by the concerned agencies to design public policies aimed at families during the pandemic and in its aftermath.
Policymakers should take into account the importance of mental health prevention strategies for parents, offer remote psychological support to parents, for example, through a helpline operated by psychologists and other mental health professionals. Especially for fathers, who may be more reluctant to share their feelings and concerns with another person, self-directed parenting interventions displayed in materials such as brochures, e-books, videos, and mobile apps can be an effective way to offer advice on how to avoid parental burnout during these peculiar times.
In addition, initiatives are needed to strengthen gender equity in the context of parenting, such as a PARENT project by the Ministry of Gender Labour and Social Development (MoLGSD), which aims to engage men in parenting through a well-designed Program approach and to promote a more equal division of unpaid work. Finally, public policies should consider extended support for parents who lost their jobs or were under layoff measures, more flexible work schedules, thus enhancing the work–family support.
Workplaces should also step up mental health support interventions for their staff, this should be done through human resource offices as a 2022 performance revamp measure to help re-align their workforce to the missions and visions of their organisations/institutions, otherwise parental burn-out has a devastating reflection to workplace performance and productivity.
Mutesimary77@gmail.com
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