All in the Family

Parents are undoubtedly finding it tough to cope during the lockdown. Femina spoke to a large number of women and came back with these findings.

- Shraddha Kamdar

As her 6.30 am alarm buzzes, Mumbai’s Reena Jhaveri thinks twice of snoozing it, but finally opts for the more responsible thing to do. As she parts herself from her cosy blanket, she mentally prepares a to-do list for the next couple of hours, which is drastically different from the next eight hours. She proceeds to cook breakfast and lunch for the family and clean up, while her husband Vishal wakes up and readies their children, Ansh and Advaita, aged 11 and six. While Ansh has to get set for his online school classes according to regular time-table, Advaita is to study with the worksheets her teachers have sent for the day. Once the children are set with their respective gadgets and sheets, Reena and Vishal will go ahead and log in for a long workday ahead. The Jhaveri family’s situation is representative of most families in metros and Tier I cities, as found by Femina’s survey on how parents are managing during the lockdown.

We had responses from 171 parents, threw up some interesting results, and some expected ones. The encouraging part was that close to 89% parents reported to having spoken about coronavirus with their children.

About 75% of the parents said they found it either very challenging (20.1%) or somewhat challenging (55%) to manage the house while working from home. In addition, 28 parents (16.6%) said they did not find it challenging and 14 parents (8.3%) said it was the same for them as before.