Working Parents: Ready to Riot?

Notes from The Exhausted Frontline

I put up a post on Instagram last week that blew up.
I was in the process of booking Summer Camps for the kids (a WIP for the last 3 months, trying to coordinate dates, start-times, collections, split collections, work days etc) when I had a reminder from creche.
No part-time hours anymore. No afterschool for summer.
What does that actually mean?
If I send one child to camp it’s €120.
If I send a second child to camp it’s €100
So €220 for two children to go to a camp.
The camp starts at 10am. The camp finishes at 2pm. The camp is a 45 minute round-trip.
To send one child to creche from 2.30pm to 5pm: the cost is €252 for 5 days.
To send both kids to creche for 2.5 hours a day for 5 days is €504
The cost to F/T working parents is €724 per week. Plus lunch costs plus fuel costs plus time lost in travel.
To send your children to a summer camp - to build their social and emotional skills; to build confidence; to build new interests and new friendships - and to have minimal wrap-around care so that parents can work - almost costs €1000 per week. PER WEEK.
So what in this picture is so incredibly wrong? Parents working to afford to send their children to camp? To outsource the minding of their children in order to have enough hours to complete their work? Working to essentially pay for the privilege of spending less time with their children?
Years and moments and summers and experiences they can’t get back.
I’m not blaming the creche or the camps or the school - I’m blaming the WHOLE FU*KING SYSTEM. And I had to share some of these messages, because I am just one voice in a sea of broken parents.

One of the things that gets me the most is that we are tired. We are exhausted. We are too tired to riot, to march, to campaign, to strategise. We are holding the weight of the world in our hands - we are worrying about global atrocities, about genocide, about rising living costs, about bullying, about smart-phones.
I don’t have the answers. I mentioned in a previous post that I try to keep things positive when it comes to working parenthood. But sometimes, struggling in silence keeps up trapped in the system. Please - tell me - how are you feeling?