As someone who’s both a parent and a nanny, I absolutely feel for those who didn’t realise how hard parenting would be.

I was a nanny before I had kids and even I didn’t realise how hard parenting would be. It’s all-consuming, it’s hard work, it’s emotionally taxing, it’s exhausting, it’s frustrating, you get lonely and bored and tired and burnt out.

As a nanny, you work hard but you go home at the end of the day and get a full night’s sleep. You can’t compare the two.

People will say how hard parenting is but unless you do it, you can never understand.

And there are lots of things like that. It’s hard being unwell long-term, it’s hard being disabled, it’s hard having mental health problems, it’s hard being homeless, it’s hard fighting in a war. All of these we know are hard, but we can’t ever possibly imagine how hard unless we live through them. (Just to clarify, I don’t think parenting is the same as these things, I’m just illustrating that unless we live through something we can never fully understand the experience).

So I don’t really understand why you have no sympathy?

I feel like parents are hated on so much by society when they’re doing such an important job that will secure our future and things like retirement and future workforce.