
This is so not the moment.
Not the moment to tell a frazzled-looking mum that it must be fun to be home playing with the kids all day.
Not the moment to roll your eyes and say how tiresome it is that you have literally "got to the end of Netflix".
Watch: Horoscopes as new mums. Post continues below.
It isn't the right time to say that you wish you were pregnant because maternity leave will be that holiday you've been hanging out for.
Or to throw out a gag about how homeschool looks like a lot of fun because it's all craft projects and YouTube tutorials when you're meant to be working.
Nope. Consider this a warning, child-free friends: Keep it nice. Parents have officially lost their sense of humour.
One of the many nasty side-effects of the coronavirus pandemic is that the gulf between parents and non-parents has widened by about a kilometre.
Yes, lockdown was and is hard on everybody. Behind the "introvert's dream" memes and online yoga classes there's a mental health epidemic unfurling. Isolation, anxiety, depression. Beyond Blue report that from April, calls to their reach-out services were up 66 per cent. That's a lot of people struggling to cope with the new reality that they may and will be cut off from the world at little notice. That their livelihoods can be snatched away. That jobs can dry up.
In Melbourne this weekend, almost five million people are in Stage Three lockdown - going back inside and closing their doors after only a few short weeks of something resembling normality. It's difficult, it's overwhelming. It's very, very strange. No-one is coping.
But for parents, it's another level of stressful.
For a start, your own anxiety about the state of the world is the very last priority. Your job is to keep it together. As teacher guru Gabbie Stroud says, what children are really learning while they're in lockdown with their parents is not the schoolwork they're being set via Zoom. They're learning how to behave in a crisis.
And many, many of the nation's parents are feeling overwhelmed with guilt that what their children learned from this crisis the first time around was how to yell a lot, cry on the toilet and stress-eat ice-cream straight from the tub.
So excuse us for not really being in the mood to laugh along with gags about what a breeze it all is.
It's why hackles are up, comments are snippy and your mum-mate hasn't called you back.
Parents have no time for jokes right now.
There's nothing funny about trying to relearn Year 5 maths while also being on high-alert about losing the job you know you're lucky to have.
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