This Dad Nails Why Weekends Suck When You're A Parent

Because being a parent today means cramming five days worth of tasks into 48 hours

For most families, weekends are for spending time together and enjoying some rest and relaxation as a family. LOL, just kidding! Weekends are for catching up on 3490583 things we neglected during the week and then some. British dad Simon Hooper is here to remind us that weekends aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

Hooper recently shared a post on his Instagram account that has parents everywhere tiredly offering a fist bump in solidarity.

“This weekend was like trying to fit the weekly shop into a single carrier bag that had the structural integrity of a biscuit that had been dunked one too many times,” Hooper captioned his post. “Cram too much in and it breaks, spilling it’s guts all over the pavement to onlookers to stare and mutter ‘glad that wasn’t me’ while you silent sob into a snotty rag you found in your pocket that that kids took a particularly large blown into earlier.”

Raise your hand if you’ve been this parent. Where your expectations for a well-planned, perhaps even — dare we say it — calm weekend go to hell in a hand basket because kids. And life. And the goddamn grocery store.

Hooper, a father of four girls, recounts the events of the weekend: sports, sleepovers, a zoo trip, a park trip, multiple grocery store runs for slime ingredients, making said slime, cooking, cleaning, etc. So that’s two exhausted parents, and four over-tired and cranky kids. Yeah, we’d say that sounds like one of those weekend clusterfucks we’ve all become accustomed to. Because no one knows how to relax anymore.

“I’ve now developed an eye twitch so bad that women think I’m coming on to them through winking,” he writes. “Parenting is hard work, but we are own worst enemies some times when we try to do too much.”

PREACH. We’ve somehow reached, like, peak parenting culture. Doesn’t it feel that way sometimes? If the weather is nice, the pressure is on to go enjoy the day and jam-pack 500 things into a sunny afternoon. If we were too busy during the week, we make up for by cramming five days’ worth of tasks into 48 hours. It’s insane. Whom exactly does it benefit when both the kids and the parents are exhausted and cranky?

Busy weekends are unavoidable sometimes. But they don’t have to be the norm.

Hooper thinks we should take it down a few notches. And a few eye twitches.

“We should give ourselves a break sometimes and remind ourselves we’re doing the best we can. Anyone else feel our pain? I’m so tired I could ……zzzzzzzz.”