As I type these words, my 18-month-old daughter is intent on destroying the house.
In just five minutes, she has banged the floor lamp against the window, climbed on the dining table, bitten the cat’s tail and started wailing after the cat scratched her in retaliation.
She hasn’t been to nursery in a month and we’re starting to lose our minds. Homeworking with a toddler is impossible, but, as the pandemic rages on, is taking her back to nursery the right choice?
When the government announced they were closing schools but keeping nurseries open, many felt dismayed. Toddlers can’t understand social distancing and nursery practitioners don’t wear PPE. We don’t really know if the new coronavirus variant is more transmissible between children, and the government is yet to provide any solid scientific reasons behind its decision.
A petition to shut nurseries has gathered almost 100,000 signatures and, on social media, healthcare workers are begging parents to keep their children at home. The harsh truth is that by taking our children to nursery, we are risking lives.
However, there is no easy alternative. Most nurseries can’t afford to stay closed without government support, so if parents decide to keep their children at home, they will have to continue paying their fees or risk losing their place.
Taking care of a toddler is a full-time job, but parents may not be eligible for furlough if nurseries are still open. And then, there’s the fact that early years education has huge benefits for our children that, as stressed-out working parents, we simply cannot provide.
“My daughter was a baby when all this started and now, she’s talking. I look at her, and I’m scared.”
Just after the new year, our nursery emailed us with the news we had all been dreading. A staff member had tested positive. The following day, 40 children and eight practitioners went into self-isolation. Two days later, three colleagues and three children from the same group also tested positive. So much for nurseries being safe from Covid outbreaks.
If a child is a close contact of a positive case, current government guidelines don’t require the rest of their household to self-isolate. For us, it means that although the outbreak didn’t happen in our daughter’s bubble, siblings of children in the self-isolating group can continue attending nursery.
Considering children are likely to be asymptomatic or not present any of the three official symptoms when infected, this feels incredibly risky. No parent is going to stay away from their self-isolating toddler, so, if they turn out to be positive, by the time they start showing symptoms it may already be too late to stop the spread.
For now, we’re keeping our daughter home. My husband and I are lucky that our employers are understanding and allow flexible working, but most parents aren’t so fortunate. And, as anyone who is homeschooling knows, even with flexible working it’s hard to be productive with a tiny person screaming in your ear and gnawing on your leg for attention.
As always, the government’s failure to properly support parents and early year providers is harming the most vulnerable.
Working mothers are the ones bearing the brunt of juggling work and childcare, and the consequences are dire. A recent report by Fawcett Society found that 43% of working women are worried about their job prospects due to the pandemic, and a McKinsey analysis shows that, globally, female jobs are now 19% more at risk than male ones.
Meanwhile, nursery workers, who are mostly women and underpaid, are seeing both their livelihoods and their health hanging in the balance. They feel unprotected and abandoned by a government who is forcing them into workplaces they deem unsafe. And, without any additional financial support, a quarter of childcare providers may close within the year.
It shouldn’t have to be like this. If nursery workers had access to routine testing, adequate protection, proper funding and priority vaccination, we wouldn’t need to be agonising over the decision of taking our daughter back to nursery or not. She adores nursery, and, as parents, we feel lost without it.
The end of the pandemic is in sight, but the weeks drag on. The bad news continues to pile up, the daily death toll keeps increasing and we’re just exhausted.
My daughter was a baby when all this started and now, she’s talking. I look at her, and I’m scared. I’m scared for my family because, as immigrants, we don’t have any relatives in this country who could care for our daughter if my husband and I were both to fall sick. I’m scared for my 80-year-old neighbour who hasn’t left her home in weeks and is desperately waiting for the vaccine. I’m scared for my pregnant friend, who might not be able to access adequate medical care if she were to experience any complications. And I’m especially scared and outraged for my daughter’s much-loved nursery key worker, who every day greets us with the warmest smile even when she’s risking her health for us.
But the truth is, I still don’t know what to do.
Irene Cantizano Bescós is a freelance journalist.