The author of this piece is known to Women’s Agenda but wishes to remain anonymous.
During this pandemic I’ve baked cupcakes with my kids. Pink ones, for the little one, chocolate icing for the big one. We eat them out in the back garden in what remains of the afternoon sun, watching the autumn shadows lengthen across the grass. The little one sits on my lap and soon I am covered in crumbs and have icing in my hair. We can hear the kids next door kicking a ball around with their dad.
In this suburban enclave, full of wealthy families, nobody’s lost their job. The sounds wafting over the back fences are of laughter, broken only rarely by the odd burst of parental frustration at a child who won’t come in for dinner or turn off a screen.
It’s hard not to think about what it might have been like if this pandemic had happened in the late 1980s, in another suburban house, in another suburban enclave. There, my father beat my mother, my mother beat me, and they both regularly threatened suicide.
The beginning of the holidays would stretch out into the distance – not with a sense of wonder, but with a tense, clenching fear in my stomach, not as something to relish but as something to survive. My elder sibling hid; shielding the younger fell to me. The end of summer brought warm relief; the bullying at school was still better than home.
At least we had enough food. Even when I lay awake in the dark, listening to razor voices crackle up the stairs, wondering if my parents would survive the night – even then, at least my belly was full. One of my closest friends wasn’t so lucky. I would take a banana for her breakfast, and share my sandwich with her at lunch. If this pandemic had occurred in the late 1980s, what would she have eaten?
We moved when I was in primary school. A week before school ended, I wrote a letter to my favourite teacher and posted it, stopping my bike at the postbox across the way, glancing furtively over my shoulder to see if anyone was waiting at the window, because handing it to her in person was too terrifying a prospect.
I remember what I wrote: I begged her to adopt me into her family, so I wouldn’t have to move away with mine.
The truck pulled into the driveway and my father started loading boxes through its wide doors. I cried, because Mrs M had never replied. I wondered whether, if I’d been honest with her, she might have adopted me really. I’d only told her how much I loved her and thanked her for all her support. I hadn’t said a thing about what it was like at home; I didn’t have the words.
Several years earlier, a family friend’s daughter had reported her parents for smacking her. The contempt dripped from my mother’s voice as she told me about it, edged with what might have been a warning. I’d never breathe a word of what my day to day was like to anyone else. Neither would my mother. There was pride in endurance and shame in speaking the truth, or asking for help, or certainly in running away.
School saved me. Mrs M in primary school, Miss R and Mrs S in high school. They all gave me extra extension work and enrolled me in external academic competitions. Sometimes they drove me to them. Sometimes they even paid for it.
Mrs T hugged me, and Mrs B let me sit in her office and read a book so that I could go home an hour later, claiming an extension activity. Miss G, the librarian, handed me book after book with the strong female characters who would become the role models and heroes who (I’d only realize decades later) gave me what I needed to keep surviving. None of them asked questions. They just gave kindness.
In 2020, my kids, and the neighbourhood kids, are safe and loved. Delivery trucks bring books and educational toys that parents have bought to make sure they grow and develop, even in isolation. Their houses are warm and illuminated, the cupboards and hearts full. These children aren’t afraid of being at home like I was, and they’re not hungry like my friend was, back in the late 1980s when a pandemic would likely have destroyed us.
When we hear our leaders say that they have asked much of us, we must remember that the cost of what they ask is not fairly allocated. The children in these suburban neighbourhoods may well remember this time fondly: they’re academically precocious, supported by constant and affordable access to technology, and the devoted attention of their parents. As parents, we don’t want them to remember much more than board games and cupcakes and kicking the footy in the back yard.
But as I sit with my younger child on my lap, covered in pink crumbs, with buttery frosting in my hair, my heart is sad for all the children for whom this pandemic may be the worst part of their childhood as it concentrates familial trauma and deprives them of community connections that sustain them physically and emotionally.
There are many who will never be able to catch up on lost learning, not because their parents don’t love them, but because they don’t have the time or resources to dedicate to them, and many more who will spend months hungry, or scared, or alone.
For children whose childhoods currently look like my own did, for whom school and the generosity of underpaid teachers was their only salvation, we have to remember that they haven’t got the means to report their suffering. They may never overcome the consequences of extended isolation with their families, if they manage to survive it at all.
As an adult who has escaped and survived family violence, I ask our community to remember those children whose voices we cannot hear. School closures, restrictions on freedom, lengthy lockdowns – these are privileges held often by the wealthy, and always easiest weathered by the secure.
For many in our society, the home is far more dangerous and far more terrifying than the most contagious and deadly virus.
If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, call 000.
If you need help and advice, call 1800Respect on 1800 737 732, Men’s Referral Service on 1300 766 491 or Lifeline on 13 11 14.