BO­BIE-LEE DIXON
(bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt)

Isoke In­niss’ pro­fes­sion as a so­cial work­er does not ex­empt her from the anx­i­eties ex­pe­ri­enced by sin­gle-par­ent moth­ers, es­pe­cial­ly now with the added so­cial, do­mes­tic and eco­nom­ic stres­sors brought on by COVID-19.

The moth­er of one is used to be­ing the coun­sel­lor to oth­ers—help­ing them solve their prob­lems—but late­ly, the shoe has been on the oth­er foot.

She tells Guardian Me­dia she is still re­quired to work at her of­fice at times, which pos­es a chal­lenge be­ing the par­ent of a mi­nor. Her nephew—her on­ly fa­mil­ial sup­port—bails her out on these oc­ca­sions, but she has to pay him as an in­cen­tive for con­tin­ued help.

When her nephew is not avail­able, she has to take her three-year-old daugh­ter to her neigh­bour’s or a girl­friend’s home, so she could get to work.

As a com­muter, she al­so has fears of con­tract­ing COVID-19 and tak­ing it home to her three-year-old daugh­ter, a con­cern, she re­lat­ed, which stays at the fore­front of her mind, dai­ly. She tries to be ex­tra care­ful when she re­turns home, but said with the virus and mov­ing about, one can nev­er tell what can hap­pen de­spite tak­ing pre­cau­tions.

In­niss said many sin­gle par­ents have had to deal with in­con­sid­er­ate em­ploy­ers who have turned a blind eye to these stress­ful re­al­i­ties, all in the name of mak­ing the ‘almighty dol­lar’.

“You’re un­der a lot of pres­sure to still do all your du­ties in the same man­ner as if we’re not in a pan­dem­ic, and if you speak up you are vic­timised,” In­niss lament­ed.

But work­ing from home al­so brought its own unique chal­lenges.

“I have a young child who re­quires a lot of at­ten­tion at her age. Every time I have to go in­to a zoom meet­ing I have to deal with her in­no­cent in­ter­rup­tions,” In­niss ex­plained.

Liv­ing in a tight space set­ting com­pounds the sit­u­a­tion for In­niss, as she said there wasn’t an­oth­er room she could des­ig­nate to her daugh­ter, al­low­ing her in­di­vid­ual space to work.

“It is hard to fo­cus be­cause even if I di­rect her to one cor­ner of the room, she doesn’t have a com­plete un­der­stand­ing of what is go­ing on and nat­u­ral­ly, she fol­lows me and wants to be with me,” she il­lus­trat­ed.

There is al­so the is­sue, she said, of em­ploy­ers not know­ing when to cut off work­ing hours when an em­ploy­ee is work­ing from home.

“My phone has be­come a both­er for me. Be­cause you’re work­ing from home, they be­lieve they can have ac­cess to you at any point in time as there are no bound­aries set for what work­ing from home means,” In­niss ob­served.

Al­though her daugh­ter won’t start vir­tu­al kinder­garten un­til next week, al­ready In­niss is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing jit­ters think­ing about how it would work su­per­vis­ing her daugh­ter’s on­line school­ing, while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly try­ing to main­tain her work sched­ule.

She claims with these stres­sors, she has had sev­er­al anx­i­ety at­tacks.

Ramp-up sup­port ser­vices

Sup­port ser­vices need to be ramped up quick­ly to meet the needs of the com­mu­ni­ty of sin­gle par­ents as it is feared, the sys­tem can be­come over­whelmed with in­creased cas­es of men­tal dis­or­ders stem­ming from the pres­sures of COVID-19.

That was the ad­vice of the Sec­re­tary of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Psy­chi­a­trists of T&T (APTT), Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh, who said In­niss’ ac­count was the re­al­i­ty of many sin­gle moth­ers, not­ing that some were even in dire straits.

He said in light of the pan­dem­ic it was com­mon­place—every­one was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing in­creased lev­els of stress, which could in turn po­ten­tial­ly lead to the de­vel­op­ment or ex­ac­er­ba­tion of men­tal health is­sues, such as anx­i­ety dis­or­ders and de­pres­sion. He con­firmed this was more com­mon in sin­gle par­ents.

“Sin­gle par­ents would be un­der a sig­nif­i­cant amount of stress with the chang­ing and de­mand­ing needs at this time. A net­work of sup­port is crit­i­cal to meet these chal­leng­ing times,” Dr Deyals­ingh rec­om­mends.

He said, un­for­tu­nate­ly, for many sin­gle par­ents that net­work may be a lux­u­ry they just do not pos­sess, plac­ing them at greater risk.

The World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) and the Cen­ter for Dis­ease Con­trol (CDC) have not­ed on their var­i­ous web­sites men­tal ill­ness has in­deed been on the rise dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

Deyals­ingh said for sin­gle par­ents deal­ing with the many dai­ly life changes that have come as a re­sult of the pan­dem­ic were the per­fect in­gre­di­ents for a break­down—from re­stric­tions on so­cial move­ment, how one is now re­quired to work, loss of jobs and re­duced in­come; to deal­ing with the home-school­ing of chil­dren and the stress of find­ing ad­di­tion­al mon­ey to fa­cil­i­tate such, as well as child­care if they can­not work re­mote­ly.

He said stud­ies have shown there has been an in­crease in sin­gle-par­ent fam­i­lies with three to four out of ten chil­dren liv­ing in this type of fam­i­ly struc­ture, and that most­ly women led these homes. These stud­ies al­so sug­gest sin­gle women were al­most twice as like­ly to suf­fer from de­pres­sion com­pared to mar­ried women.

“Like it or not, we may have to cre­ate a wel­fare state to sup­port our un­for­tu­nate cit­i­zens un­til this COVID-19 is­sue is re­solved. Sin­gle par­ents have the lives of chil­dren un­der their care and we can­not af­ford for them to men­tal­ly suc­cumb,” Deyals­ingh warned.