The food writer and anti-poverty campaigner Jack Monroe has revealed how she had a breakdown because of the stress of juggling childcare with being a working parent.
Ms Monroe, who was instrumental in piling pressure on the Government to take action over extending free school meals during the pandemic, said that after she returned to her job from maternity leave it was “extraordinarily stressful” to organise childcare arrangements and the situation became “unsustainable”.
This is a retelling of the story we’ve already head and none the worse for that.
However, pressure began to build because of the varying shifts she was required to work and her home being 30 miles away from the job – especially if her son became unwell.
“I had to be completely 110 per cent focused on my job, and instead I was sitting there with my phone tucked under my thigh feeling like I had to check all the time that the childcare arrangements had worked and that my son was safe and sound,” she said.
“This inherent feeling of guilt started to gnaw away at me that I had this baby, and I was just shipping him around like a parcel.
“All to people who love him and adored him and were meeting all his needs. At six months old he wasn’t really very aware of it. But I started to feel like I was failing”.
As she tells it the arrangements were fine. It was being both a mother and working that was the problem. Given that, this isn’t something that will be solved by different childcare arrangements, is it?
Her autobiography was on the steam wireless over Christmas, and I couldn’t understand why she’d given up a well-paying job just down the road for a crappy job 30 miles away. It was never explained, it was just assumed you were clairvoyant.
As a relatively disinterested combatant I’ve been taken aback by how many mothers are complaining that their children have become a problem and are getting in the way of a mothers right to lead a ‘normal life’.
FTFT: “The food writer and anti-poverty campaigner Jack Monroe has revealed how she…” hasn’t been in the media for five minutes and so needs to increase her exposure again.
Anyway, what’s this “she” malarkey? Isn’t Monroe one of the Special People who eschew patriarchal ‘he/she’ constructs?
Actually, ignore that. I don’t care.
“The cookery writer was in her early 20s when her son was born…”
Immaculate conception, or did the sire do a runner?
Choice, meet consequence.
I take it “anti-poverty campaigner” is code for likes spending other peoples’ money?
The ASI should claim to be anti-poverty campaigners. They believe in free trade and that creates wealth which in turn lifts more people out of poverty far faster than redistribution and spending it Jack’s hobby horses every will.
If nothing else it will make lefty heads explode. I think I’ll try it on a lefty forum when I get chance.
Eh? Part of the thing of normal jobs, lower-end jobs is that you don’t travel 30 miles to them. The people on call centres live nearby. You might have specialists travelling 30 miles, but the bulk of the people are local. And the places they’re based tend to be cheap places (because you can put a call centre anywhere).
I’ve followed her on and off on Twitter. I get the feeling she’s actually, generally, not a bad person. When things were really locked down a year ago, people were sending her lists of ingredients on Twitter and she was telling them what to do with it. But I think she’s not all there in certain ways, and I don’t think the people she’s around (leftie media, her parents, friends, partners) do much to help her.
@bloke on M4,
Yeah, I quite like her, but she’s very lost.
Juliam – by Jack’s own prior accounts dad has done everything asked of him. So i adduce one of the people boy was passed around to was his Father. As they say above with JackM there’s always lots of blanks to fill in.
Jack Monroe’s problems stem from her poor life choices specifically her decision to have a child with no support network and no apparent thought as to how she would cope as a single parent.
According to Wikipedia, her father was a firefighter (and received a MBE) and her mother was a nurse, so not exactly a deprived background. She also attended a grammar school so she had an excellent education with opportunities for university. But she chose to drop out of school and had a child outside a stable relationship. Of course it’s all the fault of the evil Tories!
Why is it that, when we start getting bio information about so many leftist activists, we always come to the paragraph telling us about their psychological issues and breakdowns and angst?
Father was in the Falklands war.
A firefighter with MBE.
She got into Grammar school when she was called Melissa.
Pissed it all away and chose a lifetime of bad decisions including having a child out of wedlock, tattoos, alcoholism, other stuff (google), and finally lesbianism trumped by non-binary attention-seeking and claims of an imminent double mastectomy. All accompanied by ‘look at me, look at meeee, look at meeeeeee’ tantrums on Twitter.
He deserved better.
It was all Fachers fault!
Yawn.