No wonder we need ALL the coffee.
Listen up, parents – if you have ever found yourself in the middle of that crazy morning hustle to get everyone ready and out the door and thought to yourself ‘I am about one missing sock/hockey stick/Planet Maths book away from loosing my goddamn mind’ – well, let’s put it this way: You are not alone.
Oh no, we are all there, deep in the trenches, and my God, mornings are hard AF when there are kids involved.
Well, here’s a little nugget of news straight from the ‘we could have told you so’ files: According to a brand new study, parents spend the equivalent of a full day’s paid work just getting our kids ready and off to school before the bell rings.
Yep, I know. No wonder you feel like the week is dragging on when it’s only bloody Wednesday.
Seems like all that toast buttering and juice spill clean-ups and nagging and hunting for books that are mysteriously missing somehow all adds up.
The research, compiled by Kellogg’s, surveyed 2,000 school parents and looked at our workload over a week.
It found that overall, we spend a good ten hours on top of every other thing we do – like paid work, taking care of our younger-than-school-age children and keeping on top of the housework (or at least trying to) – just getting our school kids out the door and then driving or walking them to school.
I mean; it makes sense. All those lunchboxes, permission slips and uniforms that need ironing – they don’t exactly do themselves now, do they?
“We wanted to shed light on what real mornings are like for parents before their kids go off to school,” said Jeremy Harper, Vice President of Marketing, U.S. Snacks, at Kellogg’s.
But sure we knew that already. All of us. How effing hard it is being a parent. But at least now we have study to prove it, and, you know, shove in someone’s face if they are asking you why you are hanging out by the office coffee machine again.
