Yue Yan, a student at the University of Malta, takes a look back at what life for some mothers was like during the partial lockdown.

Every morning, Katie* would move her laptop into her 13-month son’s room. Then, while keeping an eye on him as he played with his toys, she would work for a maximum of one hour until her son got bored and wanted to be picked up to play with her keyboard or mouse.

That was life during the epidemic for Katie, a company group accountant.

According to her, if her son needed a nappy change or was hungry, she had to stop what she was doing immediately and address her son’s needs.

Before the pandemic, she used to send her son to the nursery, but when they closed, her son conditioned her schedule.

“I had to work around him,” she said. 

In the meantime, her workload and pressure increased during the pandemic. Besides, her husband is self-employed and had a lot of dues to pay and so Katie had to prove herself more in order not to be fired.

She would thus usually stay up late at night.

“I once stayed up until 4.30am, because I had to deliver reports the day after,” she said. “I couldn’t have a good sleep because my son woke up at 5am to have some milk, then he woke up again at 6.30am or 7am and started yelling for me to get him out of his bed.”

Additionally, Katie would feel guilty for not tending to her son’s needs in a better way. She would usually find ways and means to entertain him but during the pandemic, he ended up spending a lot of time in front of TV, watching animal documentaries or cartoons.

“It seemed as if the universe had stopped,” Katie said. “It was very challenging.”

A popular post in a local Facebook group’s page called ‘Women for Women’ proved that Katie was not alone. 

The post read: “2020 will be remembered as the year were most females had to... work like they had no kids... educate their kids like they were full-time teachers... keep their houses clean as if they had a full-time live-in maid... run their kitchens like a full-time cook... think of everybody’s well-being in their house and possibly that of their parents too.” It got approximately 890 likes and 135 comments like “well said true” or “you are not alone”.

Julia*, the author of this post, a business consultant for an international firm, is a mother of two kids.

During the pandemic, Julia would start working at 6am. At 10am, her nine-year-old son’s daily lessons would start and, invariably, when her six-year-old son would wake up, he would start jumping around, begging for attention.

It seemed as if the universe had stopped. It was very challenging

At 3pm, she would stop working and start the homeschooling. Later, she would start cleaning up and disinfecting orders from the grocery. By the time she would finish the housework, everyone would be hungry, so she would prepare dinner. Afterwards, she would sit and watch some TV while folding away clothes that she would had previously put in the drier. Then it would be time to bathe the children. At 11.30pm, the kids would be in bed and finally, she could have a shower.

Although Julia had over a decade’s experience of working from home, these circumstances were new to her. During the pandemic, she had to give up on her eight-hour sleep to cope with her work and children and left the bulk of the cleaning for the weekend.

“I am happy we spent more time together as a family,” she said. “But without the help from school or other family members like my parents, it would have been very tiring.”

Julia was mostly concerned about the impact COVID-19 was having on the old people.

“For them, this is lost time which they will never get back. For them, time is precious, and they feel they have been robbed from what they have been working for all their life. This is the time they long to spend with their grandchildren and enjoy their last travels while they still have the strength to do so.”

Michelle Borg Cuomo, a teacher and a mother of 14-year-old Julia and 11-year-old Alex, also said that the hardest thing for her during the past months was that she couldn’t meet up with her family, especially her 92-year-old grandmother and her mother.

“I could see them from a distance, but it was hard not to be with them physically,” she said.

Besides the trouble in attaining work-life balances and worries about the kids or the elderly, some mothers missed their social life.

“It is a bad thing that I couldn’t meet up with my friends. We are very sociable people and we enjoy socialising very much,” said Annemarie Coppola, a marketing manager and a mother.

At the same time, Coppola stressed the lack of social life had a negative impact on her five-year-old son, who had a developmental delay.

“Kids couldn’t meet each other, and it is the way they learn,” she said. “They learn from each other.”

She added that she, however, learned valuable lessons from the outbreak. As her daily hectic schedule calmed down, she had more free time to spend with family at home.

“In normal days, everyone is in a rush. Hurry up the homework. Hurry up in the traffic,” she said. “Life can be crazy!

Borg Cuomo tells her children: “You have got a big story to tell your kids if you get married and have children!”

She finds this scenario to be similar to that which her grandmother experienced during the war. But she is a positive person.

“I believe that, when this is over, everything can get back to normal,” Borg Cuomo said.

Julia wrote in the post on Women for Women: “Cherry on the cake follows in 2021, when all these women will be criticised for not having looked after themselves.”

After going through all this, all working mothers should be regarded as super wonder women.

*Some of the names are fictitious.