All alone, together

Over a month ago, I packed a few suitcases and my in-laws, dog, 1 year old, husband and I left our home in FL to go stay with my parents. We have no idea how long we’ll be here or whether I’ll have this baby girl here or back home. Like everyone else, we’re living in a constant state of uncertainty - and let me tell you, I didn’t even pack correctly for it. 

We’re now a family pod with: 5 kids under 5, 3 dogs, 2 pregnant women, and 4 senior citizens. If you felt my pain about living with my in-laws since March 5 (not that I’m counting), imagine the chaos we’re currently experiencing. And we are incredibly lucky. We’re one of the many families who have relocated for shared care and despite the stress, tears, and exhaustion, I am sincerely grateful that we were able to do it. 

Earlier this week I was talking to a close friend who is in a similar living situation and she summed it up perfectly, “I go back and forth between being so incredibly thankful for such amazing people helping take care of my children, and being so incredibly rude and sullen when asked simple questions because...I just can’t” 

Parents across the nation are feeling that same ‘can’t.’ We’re seeing it in record levels of burnout, increasing anxiety about how we will manage the school year, rising numbers of women leaving the workforce to care for kids, and a million smaller ways each day - from sleepless nights to laughter at the type of thing that would have horrified us mere months ago, but now barely registers. We don’t have any energy left to sweat the small stuff - or even the medium to large stuff for that matter. Any reserve we have is saved for the really big stuff. And there’s plenty of that, unfortunately. 

It’s a cruel irony of this pandemic that we’ve never been so universally connected, and so completely alone. I can commiserate and joke with friends about the daily stressors, crushing burdens, and seemingly endless poop stories everyone seems to have, but there is very little we can actually do to help each other right now. Survey after survey shows that across race, geography, age of kid, and income level, parents in the U.S. universally feel defeated, stressed, and helpless about our childcare and work situations. Yet nearly all of us also feel we have no choice but to find a way to handle it - on our own. The stories I’m hearing are about individual parents and families making great sacrifices and almost unimaginable compromises to try and figure out this impossible situation by themselves. We’re so used to being abandoned as working parents that we’re not even aware that we should be demanding, pounding the table, and screaming for help. 

In many places, school has already started and remote learning, such as it is, is under way. Kids are sitting down to remote classrooms and parents are sitting down next to them, attempting to assist with classes while also doing their work. If the mental image you have right now is a very young kid, you’re wrong. 50% of parents with high school aged kids say their kids need adult help to do virtual learning, that number jumps to 75% of elementary age kids (I can’t stop wondering who the 25% that don’t need assistance are…). Almost all of us are doing this alone, without any outside help. If we’re lucky, we’re talking to other parents, mostly to check our sanity, and that’s about it. We are all completely alone, together. 

I hear different excuses about why working parents don’t need or deserve support every day. And that’s what they are, excuses - not arguments, ideas, or opinions. The response seems simple and obvious: you can’t afford not to. Those kids you’re not particularly worried about? That’s who is going to be paying taxes and taking care of you in old age, that’s the talent that will run your company, build a new one, or invent something that’s going to change your life. No, they’re not your kids, but luckily for you, you still stand to benefit from them. That’s how our society is structured. Newer generations take care of older ones. Discriminate and ignore their needs now at your own future peril. Not a long term thinker? Let’s talk short term. The mom in accounting who just handed in her resignation because she had no family help, no ability to afford care, and no other options? There goes a future CFO. And the 20 other moms in your department who are handing in their resignations? Well there go all your quarterly targets, because you can’t hit KPIs if you don’t have a team.

I talked with a few employers recently who told me they plan to look into adding parental benefits in November, after they see how parents handle the start to the school year. It would be comical if it weren’t so depressing. I’ll save you the time and tell you how we’re handling more months of childcare while working - not well. It’s a nightmare that we’re all dreaming simultaneously and living individually. 

We’re all collectively experiencing the same thing right now as working parents, we will all universally suffer the consequences of our failures as a society, but we’ve been abandoned to individually search for and build solutions. In no other situation do we think it’s normal or acceptable to go from collective, to universal, to...alone. Why should it be OK now?