Podcast Corner: Parenting podcasts for lockdown listening

Mon, 11 May, 2020 - 21:00

Eoghan O’Sullivan

Here are three parenting podcasts that may help you deal with issues you experience during lockdown... or at the very least comfort you with the knowledge that you're not the only one experiencing them, writes Eoghan O'Sullivan

Parenting on Moncrieff

In the top episodes of the 'Kids & Family' section of Apple Podcasts recently were two hits from Parenting on Moncrieff. It's a regular segment on Sean Moncrieff's Newstalk show and the way the episodes are titled - in these cases, 'I Think My 6 Year Old Hates Me' and 'My 5 Year Old Is Very Anxious' - might give an indication of what's worrying parents during the ongoing lockdown.

Rob Beckett and Josh Widdicombe's Lockdown Parenting Hell

Enjoyment of this new show depends on how you handle the UK panel-show mainstays trying to one-up each other in the laughs stakes. There are good moments. Widdicomble says on episode three: "Parenting hungover is the worst - I've spent the whole week trying to stop my daughter watching Sarah and Duck, and yesterday the roles were reversed. She wanted to play in the garden and I was begging her to watch TV." Beckett adds: "They know, don't they! They can smell fear." They're joined for interviews by fellow 8 out of 10 Cats parents Katherine Ryan, Jon Richardson, and Lucy Beaumont.

Dadcast - Misadventures in Parenting

A show from Moncrieff's Off The Ball colleagues, Ger Gilroy, Adrian Barry, Nathan Murphy, and Dave McIntyre; for many, their voices will already be familiar. It's been running sporadically since September 2018 though it's at a more regular clip this year, particularly since the work-from-home orders. It sounds like therapy for the foursome. "I'd say there's still a good chunk of the male population that for them this is the first time they've ever had to spend this amount of time at home," says Murphy early on in 'Go back and clean up the Pooh', adding that "there's no escape". Rather than reassure, McIntyre sounds similarly fraught: "Every other possible escape has been withdrawn, be it grandparents, babysitters, childcare, school... There are no options so you just get on with it." Get on with it seems as good a mantra as any right now.