When the child’s symptoms and the self-test with the two lines certify that there is covid at home and a week of confinement ahead, you visualize one of those big knockdown balls hitting the fragile structure of your daily routine. The fifth call after the pertinent notices to work, school, the toy library, extracurricular activities and others is for the official telephone number for pediatric information on the pandemic. As expected, the asymptomatic and negative antigen test sister must stay home because she does not yet have the second dose. “As you have already had the three vaccines, you can lead a completely normal life,” the kind young man tells you. «Define completely normal for a single parent in the present situation. A full day telecommuting, plus the care of a sick son, plus the care of a healthy daughter, plus the five meals of the two, plus the online tasks, plus the purchase, plus the cleaning, minus the dining room school, minus sports time, minus school, plus boredom…». “I have come to tell you that you do not need to isolate yourself,” my interlocutor cuts off with a hint of compassion in his voice. Isolate yourself, what a luxury, it sounds exotic. In this sixth wave, which they say is retreating, the most heard mantra in family circles is “better if you take it too, like this at least they give you sick leave and you only have to take care of the offspring ». Contagion or derangement, that is the dilemma. These days we celebrate two years of pandemic that have been managed as well as possible. But in the confidence, or under the false premise, that there will always be someone at home to watch over the sick. A person by profession ‘his work’, as in the days of yore. That person who used to be a woman has been transformed, or rather split, into a worker who with a lot of luck will be able to telework, or will have a partner who can telework to care for those who are not well, or are healthy but receive the order to respect a quarantine for the benefit of the community. That person is going to spend a few hellish days trying to get to everything.
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The Minister of Social Rights, Ione Belarra, announced last week the creation of a seven-day permit paid one hundred percent for the care of descendants, ascendants or cohabitants. An oxygen balloon for families that will no longer solve the extreme situations generated by covid-19, but that will serve both for future collective crises and for everyday challenges. So that the well-being of the vulnerable (children, the elderly, the sick) does not depend on the favor they want or can do for us, or go in exchange for vacations. Almost nothing has been said about this long-awaited tool that it will serve to make conciliation something more than a chimera within the reach of some officials, a truly transformative measure. is inside a family law that has to be approved this year, which is not making the headlines either between the political fights and the elections called by tactics. We are far behind Europe in terms of family protection, and nothing has been improved in relation to single-parent families. The legislature advances and Belarra raises issues that interest the vast majority of citizens, but do not generate public debate. What a huge disconnect between us and them. The ministry of the leader of Podemos is called Agenda 2030, hopefully the issue of care protected by law does not go so far.