This is how I wind down at night after a full day of chasing a crawling toddler and making sure I put in enough good article for the day

I’ve said it before and I will say it again: wives don’t need incentives to go shopping and whatnot, what we truly want is a top-up in our e-wallet for food delivery. Take notes, husbands.

I found that many marriages can be made simpler –including and especially mine — with the presence of food delivery apps. To test my theory and out of curiosity, I decided to conduct a mini survey among my friends and asked them how often they used the food delivery apps and what they thought of food delivery’s role in the overall household managing situation.

My experience

Life doesn’t stop for me the moment I became a mom; it just doubled up in size and responsibility.

It is true that my kid is my sun and I orbit around her constantly. Taking good care of the kid and finding time to indulge her curiosity may sound motherly and heroic, especially in the era of displayed lives on square screen for comparison, but it is honestly exhausting.

I don’t want to complain, instead I carve out time for myself when I can do whatever it is that I want and recharge. Why do I need time for myself to recharge? Exactly because I’m just like the rest of the 16 to 50 per cent of the world, an introvert.

Luckily, for me the introvert, I don’t need to go out and socialise to be able to keep myself sane. I find a small refuge every night after my kid has fallen asleep –by browsing through meal option near where I live.

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My go-to is always the Near Me page, and the choices available are where I wouldn’t have to spend much on both the meal and the delivery charge. It is borderline addictive to the point where I would find myself lurking way long before my kid goes to bed, already exploring choices.

It’s a rewarding solitary time that is associated with a good UI/UX design. My mind was practically blown when my go-to (pun intended), OG food delivery apps made an improvement with the streamline options and foodprints, as well as in-app chat option with the drivers. My introvert, late-night foodie heart rejoiced.

I wonder if it’s just me or if every parent-nial (millennial parents) out there also shares the same feelings. So I conducted a little test.

The test

As a true Millennial parent myself, I took to Instagram naturally. Do you know that you can post ‘Yes/No’ button and ‘Ask Me Anything’ bubble stickers in your Instagram story? I do know and I use that. What I do is I put these options two times or more a week when placing an order with the said apps.

The results were close. About 55 to 45 voted two times a week is the most they would go for ordering meal with a delivery app.

Next, I put questions on how they would classify food delivery app’s role in their married life. The answers were pretty much similar to the way I feel about food delivery apps.

All moms and moms-to-be in my circle shared the feelings of how important food delivery is to keep themselves sane, which allows them to be lazy on a not-so-productive day. Others highlighted the amount of money and time they saved by ordering food online; because dining out means one has to bring along their kids along which can at times become harrowing.

The verdict

I don’t know about other people but in my case and for these surveyed moms who shared their opinions, food delivery is the fundamental change they nowadays have access to, compared to the baby boomer mothers.

It is now possible to not have a domestic help to take care of your children, but you still get home-cooked and warm meals. I’d imagine this privilege would not have existed had technology been this advanced.

I also found that the more technology we get involved in the family life, the more involved the mothers are trying to be, even more than the previous generation.

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For example, my generation worships moms who stay at home with their kids without help, labelling them as the “real” mother, and love to campaign about natural, gentle birth, and the importance of breastfeeding in motherhood journey. All are good things if you discount the toxicity of such content for special cases where moms are just unable to do the so-called gold standard.

This brings us to the food delivery app. One respondent labeled it as “hero”, which rings true for me.

After all, managing a household is no easy task. No matter how trivial it seems to stay full time at home raising kids, it will always take a toll on the parents — with or without the domestic. It is something that can only be understood when you’re building a family.

Moms and wives, for lack of a better word, are under-appreciated most of the times. There’s a sense of keeping it together that’s just unhealthy to a certain extent.

Luckily, it is something that a rewarding order of hot meal can neutralise.

For me, in a way, this is the dawn of technology, as something as simple as ordering food online can go on touching and helping real lives. I could be exaggerating here, especially when another technology has taken the more complex form to solve urgent matters. But please excuse my weak-ass motherhood journey while I order my 1 km away Nasi Ayam Geprek (crushed chicken with chili and rice) and stream newest episodes of Designated Survivors.
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Photo by Björn Antonissen on Unsplash

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