On a primal scream hotline of the New York Times, women stressed by home office and homeschooling should be able to scream out their anger. The offer is well received.

The corona pandemic and the associated restrictions have been going on for almost a year. What brings companies, artists or retailers into dire financial straits drives many parents – and especially the mothers – to despair. In addition to having your own home office, looking after the children in homeschooling and doing the household chores on the side – with no prospect of an end soon? In the US, a New York Times hotline now offers women the opportunity to vent their anger.

Urschrei-Hotline: Desperate women

The Urschrei hotline is accepted better than the initiators would have expected. Terrifying, as New York Times journalist Jessica Grose told ARD. According to Grose, she did not expect so many women to cry. It was also not clear to her that so many women were so exhausted and so desperate. In the USA most children are still in homeschooling.

Some women get up at night to do work, household chores and all-round childcare to bring under one roof. That brings some close to a nervous breakdown. One woman says: “All I hear is: Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Moooom!”

The project of the primal scream -Hotline is based on the idea of ​​wanting to scream into a pillow when everything grows over your head. Journalist Grose thought that women could also get rid of their burdens on the phone. And so Grose learned a lot about the current state of stress in US families, which is probably not too different from the stress in families in other countries, such as Germany.

Little help from partners and employers

Women mainly complain about the lack of support from employers. At the beginning of the corona crisis, they would have offered flexible working hours – but nothing more. According to a survey by the New York Times, three quarters of those affected do not receive any further support from their employers, such as financial aid for childcare. Anyone who has a job at all can still count themselves among the lucky ones, because five million women in the USA lost their jobs in 2020. 80 percent of job seekers are female.

Can such a primal scream project change that? Certainly not in the basic situation. But Grose is confident that one or the other positive impact will be recorded. Some of the partners of the women who contacted the hotline were not aware of their excessive burden. They now wanted to strive for more equality, it is said.

t3n asked the community how the new generation of home offices are arranging themselves. The results of the t3n home office survey “State of the home office” are now available.

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