Aileen Reid on Parenting and Lockdown
There is something about parenthood that no-one will ever prepare you for. It’s compelling and enigmatic in its entirety. You think you’ve felt love before...and then you become a parent. Whoa. It’s a bit like sticking your head out of a speeding car window when you’re wee, and trying to take a big breath - it’s such an exhilarating feeling, laced with joy and uncertainty and everything in between. With the abundance of love, joy and contentment you feel, there comes an overwhelming amount of fear, guilt, despair, isolation, loneliness, inconceivable tiredness, guilt, exhaustion, guilt, tiredness, and did I mention guilt?!
The Guilt. About. Everything.
It’s an unequivocal fact about parenthood, and should be written in big, bold capitals on the tin. The guilt will consume you, no matter what job you have, no matter how many hours you work, no matter who looks after your child, no matter how happy they are... Guilt will ALWAYS find a way to make you feel awful for doing whatever you’re doing! I have no cure for this, I’m afraid. The only thing I know is that it doesn’t care how strong, how self-assured, and how good a nick your mental health is in...it is universal, ancient, and felt by all the mammies and daddies in the whole wide world.
Having a job that comes across as self-fulfilling, precarious, and slightly whimsical at times, lends itself to scrutiny, and “The Guilt”, on a regular basis. Multiply that by a trillion when you need childcare.
We live in a world where doing something you love - something you would ideally do if money wasn’t an issue - is what your hobby should be; not your job. The amount of times I’ve felt the pressure to get a “real” job... In truth, I’ve felt this pressure from opinions around me rather than from a financial perspective. I was lucky to play music from a very young age, and always had some form of an income from music. I had various jobs/careers from running a top floristry business to waitressing in casinos, but always found myself going back to touring and performing after struggling with the routine, and, quite honestly, how skint I was not being able to do gigs.
The stigma attached to being a musician, especially a folk musician, is so much so that I still find myself telling people my job is teaching yoga and music in schools and nurseries, before I’ll say that I’m a musician (I do actually teach these things - I’d be much more adventurous if I was just making it up!). I’ll admit that I re-trained as a Child Development Officer/Early Years Practitioner, before I admit that playing the fiddle is actually more suitable to family life...
We can’t win for losing, it seems these days. You either have a family too young and didn’t give your career a go, or you give your career a go and you’re leaving it a bit late for starting a family. The stigma attached to both edges of that sword - where to start?!
I count myself as very, very lucky. I was married at 23, and a mother at 24. Although I had toured world-wide in my teens and early twenties, my own personal musical career probably took off AFTER having a child. I can analyse everything until the cows come home, and there is no doubt that there were/are various contributing elements, but the primary factors for postnatal career success in music, in my eyes, include the following:
Becoming a parent kind of makes you get your shit together - you don’t have the same choices, time, energy, abilities, or freedom. You either do it, or you don’t, as there are twenty seven other things on your list of to do’s that day. You can put a professional plate spinner/juggler on your CV.
Badly paid gigs are not an option anymore. You have babes to feed and bills to cover, childcare costs, and the stress of it all needs to be justifiable. You form a sort of layer of armour when negotiating fees, because you have this newfound “reason” of why your time and skills are worth appreciating.
Your mental and physical health have been so high and so, so low that opportunities and adult interaction are a lifeline.
You see things differently.
Applicable to every musician, parent or not, but for me it happened when I became a mother.
It is almost impossible to do it all. Anti-social hours means childcare is such a challenge. Juggling who/where/what/when - between going to someone’s for the night or someone staying the night, packing up and zooming home as quickly as possible, primarily because the guilt is setting in so much after speaking to someone for longer than 10 seconds after you’ve finished your set whilst your baby might potentially be inconsolable, or thinking the babysitter is raging that you’re going to be later than you said you’d be...or the ones where something’s run over time before you start, and you could cry and scream that people think it’s OK to add this on to the other side. Little things like this at gigs, are huge when you’re a new parent in particular.
It’s almost impossible, but with a support network around you worth their weight in gold like I have, it’s doable. I suppose anything is though, isn’t it, when you have amazing support around you? That’s the key.
I tried the whole taking my baby to work with me thing, which was manageable when she was tiny and just slept and fed all the time, but when I heard her crying, or any baby for that matter...disaster!
Constant midnight flits, pacing around a tiny hotel room with a wide awake or crying baby, long journeys, pushing a pram through festival crowds, leaving your baby crying because it wants a feed but it’s time to go on stage - not the easiest to concentrate on what you’re playing because a) you’re riddled with guilt, and b) your bajongas are leaking milk for all the world to see.
It gets easier, though. You figure out what works and what doesn’t, for all involved, and sometimes that means you have to move out of your home for a few days, or you pack everything you’ve ever bought for a 15min performance, or sometimes it means you just don’t take the gig. What works for me, and this is only through my own personal experience, is trying to keep stress levels down as much as possible. For me, that means knowing my daughter is staying with someone she loves and is completely comfortable with, and I’ll arrange around what suits that aspect of the juggle. Children are usually always totally cool and sleep perfectly for other people (I have witnessed this firsthand with every other child I’ve looked after!), however, The Guilt listens to no-one... When the childcare provider says “they’re fine!”, it is usually 99.9% true. The 0.01% of doubt is usually The Guilt.
Every stage of a child’s development is wondrous and different, with each stage bringing a whole new level to the word “challenging”. If you can, remember to trust your instinct; ask for and accept help; and, embrace changes. Then you’ll start to learn how to cope with the juggle in your own way.
Who would have thought that the challenge I’d be facing at present would be isolation and homeschooling...
Lockdown and the impending scenario of no work for the foreseeable has impacted me as a parent, of course, but I’m going to be brutally honest and tell you the truth... I am built for this and in my element. Being airy-fairy my entire life has finally paid off! I find plans, which don’t go to plan, a lot more stressful than just going with the flow and seeing what happens.
Whilst it’s constant and tough going at times being a single parent during lockdown, I also think I’m more than pretty lucky to say the least. For a start, my daughter is now 5, and not 2 or 3. The difference between those ages and stages are like night and day. I discovered after day 2 or so that homeschooling is indeed, an absolute hoot. Not. So, we’re going for a more holistic approach, learning through play, and active, responsive learning for now. That means that by the time she’s in bed and asleep, my admin work gets started and emails are sent at 1am. I’d much rather do it this way, than try to juggle it while she’s awake. I’m used to being tired, but not used to being stressed out all the time, so I’ll stick with what I know for now...
I think my saving grace throughout isolation has been that I don’t live with another adult. It’s so easy (and natural) to deflect responsibility on to someone else because you’re tired, in pain, anxious, stressed, in a bad mood etc. Instead, I live only with an affectionate, caring, enthusiastic, magical wee firecracker in the form of my five year old daughter. Her enthusiasm is intrinsic to my being, and makes all pain, discomfort, and worry shrink to almost nothing.
My personal survival methods for coping with isolation at the moment are:
Take each day as it comes. Don’t stress about tomorrow, let alone next week or next month. Pay the bills this month and then think about next month.
Pick your battles. You will not win every war. Does it even need to be a war? There is no-one else to distract either of you just now, so do you really need to make this such a thing?
When you have a moment of creativity, seize it, record it. They are rare.
Video-calling tends to cause frustration, and is usually when it suits the adult rather than the child. Don’t let technology and bad vibes/frustration get in the way of happy times.
Embrace this precious time as much as possible, and make it as memorable as possible.
You don’t need to be anything or anywhere for anyone else for bloody ages. Get The Guilt to France for once.
