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The week before Mother's Day is always exhausting for emancipated women.

In the supermarkets, in addition to pink praline packs and heart-shaped cakes, even toilet paper "in Mother's Day design" is now being sold.

Companies and politicians outdo each other with maudlin posters or pathetic videos.

But this year the spectacle is unbearable. Many mothers (and fathers) are exhausted after all the months in which daycare centers were closed and they had to teach school children at home. Months in which there was a lack of rapid tests for children, laptops for teachers did not arrive, air filters were not installed due to official requirements - and parents were tacitly expected to organize their gainful employment around the chaos.

How far politics is removed from the everyday reality of exhausted families can be seen in Bavaria.

There, the State Ministry for Family, Labor and Social Affairs announced that with the expanded opening of flower shops on Mother's Day, "in view of the increased stresses caused by the pandemic, sufficient space should be created for the traditional appreciation of mothers through flower gifts".

And that in a week in which Prime Minister Markus Söder held out the prospect of opening beer gardens and cinemas, but failed to provide long-term prospects for daycare centers and schools.

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The prime ministers had unanimously promised that this time children would really be the "very first" in the series. Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania proves that this promise is worthless. The state now allows fully vaccinated day tourists and second home owners to enter the country again. But they are not allowed to bring their children with them.

One thing must be clear to us: Any relaxation, whether to the cinema or a day trip, increases mobility, risks a renewed increase in infections - and thus extends the lockdown for the unvaccinated children.

After all, if you are cynically tempted to say, Dad can get a bouquet of flowers on the way back from the beer garden to express Mommy his “traditional appreciation” for giving up homeschooling, childcare and household chores - and either reducing her own job to part-time or entirely has given up.

Because who knows, in view of the increasing relaxation competition for adults, whether schools and daycare centers will even open properly before summer.

Welcome back to the 50s!

And: Happy Mother's Day!