In the third year of the epidemic, I learned what a mother is

From the warm spring flowers to the summer, the epidemic situation in various places is still not optimistic. Staying home from time to time has become the norm, and unsurprisingly, most of the moms around me spend Mother's Day at home with their babies.

UN Women has previously published data on women's household contributions during the pandemic, and they spend three times more time on family care than men.

Indeed, special periods forced moms into all-round fighters.

Today I want to share with you, when the epidemic is normalized, how does every mother face the difficulties of life head-on?

01

Mutual help moms

Friend Xiao'an is a novice mother, when she encounters a sudden Shanghai blockade, her first worry is not the adult's materials, but the child's rations.

Living in the era of convenient procurement, she did not have the habit of hoarding goods, so she did not expect that she would one day encounter such embarrassment:

The child's 3rd stage of milk powder is only less than half a barrel, which cannot withstand the sealing period.

What to do? Xiao An had to post on major social platforms for help and indicate his positioning. After several tosses, she not only successfully replaced resources with a few bags of spare diapers and mothers, but also sorted out the methods and channels of various difficult times and wrote a guide to share with everyone.

Not only do new mothers help each other through social means, but every mother who needs to handle the chores of the family has stared at valuable group messages in order to win some necessary resources for the family at any time.

A while ago, Xu Xin, the VCS queen, also asked for help in the group, wanting to supply some bread and milk to her family.

Many people sigh and feel that the VC queen has fallen to this point, but this is the most real reflection of an ordinary mother taking care of the family.

In fact, grabbing vegetables and analyzing supplies is a mental and physical task. Mothers need to anticipate the needs of their families, track the extent of their family's material consumption, find feasible options and paths, and then make decisions about replacement or purchase. Not only that, but they also have to consider a backup replacement plan that can't grab supplies.

It's no exaggeration to say that every step of the way is a lot of work. In the beginning, mothers also had times when they were helpless, and they were not less anxious and sad.

But gradually, they also developed a calm and idle mentality.

02

Give enough children a sense of security to the mother

In addition to actively seeking help from the outside, mothers during the epidemic period are even more meticulous in taking care of their children internally. No matter how difficult and bitter, the mother will do her best behind her back to let the children get a full sense of security.

There is such a Hong Kong mother, because of her special family situation, she has to support the whole family alone. Since the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020, she has been alone with her two babies for 700 consecutive days, and the loneliness and despair she has experienced are only clear in her heart.

My husband's job is in Shenzhen, and before the epidemic, he was still able to commute across borders. But now, for a family to be reunited, they must not only consider the opportunity to clear customs, but also consider the quarantine period. If he quit his job at such a special period, it would undoubtedly be a great blow to this small family.

After some rational discussion, the couple decided to live apart and have their wives take care of their two young children alone. During the epidemic period, the mother's parental support in the mainland also failed, and she then considered the choice of Filipino maids.

Also because of the policy impact, foreigners could not enter the country, and her second level of support was cut off. This mother fought alone and began to use the experience of the previous workplace management team to bring two children.

She will seriously hold regular family meetings with the children to implement the children's housework and learning arrangements, and she will not forget to teach the children lessons in their daily lives and teach them basic survival skills.

The Hong Kong mother is well organized in raising her children, but in fact she is under a lot of pressure.

She originally thought that the epidemic would end in more than 70 days at most, and even wrote a sharing lecture manuscript for this purpose. Now it seems that she not only carried more than 700 days, this state of life even lasted a long time.

During the two years, the most she wanted her husband to be around was when she underwent a major operation alone. At that time, she signed the risk notice alone, but there was no one around to rely on, and she could only encourage herself with two young children: she could not fall down.

This is what a mother can do in difficult times, and the maximum security. No matter how anxious their hearts are, their faces are always light and breezy.

Remembering the previous infant isolation incident in Shanghai, it triggered a heated discussion among the majority of netizens. Later, the Shanghai Health Commission announced that for children with special care needs, negative guardians can voluntarily apply for parent-child cabin escort.

In this incident, most of the mothers have strong empathy, thinking that if they really reach this point, they will definitely choose to apply.

There is a saying that goes well: "A child who does not know the way back, a mother who has no way out".

Moms always give priority to their children and take risks to walk with them.

03

Mothers mediating with children in online classes

Mothers can bear the bloody storms of life, and they can also fight strongly in their children's "suspension mode".

The children of the online class generation are missing a large part of their collective life, and many times they are filled with "mother's company".

The distance between a decent white-collar worker and an all-round mother who works several jobs lies only in a school notice. Many moms have experienced such "desperate moments":

They started each day with a chicken-and-dog wake-up service and then struggled through the hard mode of working and supervising children.

In addition, the fragmented time to juggle housework, as well as the evening children's homework tutoring and correction, also filled the lives of mothers.

At first, many mothers broke down and cried. But as the days go by, who doesn't grit their teeth and survive? Even when it comes time to talk about it, the mothers have developed a set of easy working modes, and they can easily play with the terriers.

The Department of Sociology at Sun Yat-sen University once conducted such a survey, collecting records of 75 women across the country about their daily lives during the epidemic and interviewing them.

The findings show that the impact of the epidemic on household chores includes:

Family members gather to spend more time caring for their families, and family affairs have increased due to the epidemic;

Domestic services are interrupted, family matters cannot be outsourced, etc.

This means that parents need to set aside a part of the time that was originally freely allocated and tilt it into family affairs. It is often the women in the family who make sacrifices.

These calm and quiet daily lives are inseparable from the painstaking maintenance of mothers. Whether it is in the past, or in special times for mothers, children are always willing to give all their concerns.

Be grateful, but also appreciate every mother's extraordinary hand with the world. I also sincerely wish every mother good health and happiness.