Being a Working Parent in a Post-Pandemic World

I remember the day we got “the email” from our kids’ preschool – the shutdown was supposed to last a week or two until it was safe to come back. But then a week turned into a month, which became a year, and then multiple years. We went from scrambling to find temporary childcare to accepting a new normal of trying to participate in meetings with Daniel Tiger in the background… trying to have a serious conversation with a crying child on our lap… trying to keep our families happy and healthy with bubble gum and safety pins. Fast forward to now, three years later, and everything is supposed to go back to how it was? That’s not possible for many parents.

Here’s my pandemic parent story:

My youngest daughter was the first child under the age of one to contract COVID in our county in June 2020. Given that our family of four was tightly locked down, it’s a mystery to me how she contracted it – I suspect a direct sneeze bestowed upon her during our daily neighborhood stroll. While her symptoms only lasted for 24 hours, the high fever had long-term effects to her tooth enamel and my mental health. From that moment on, my postpartum anxiety (PPA) went into high gear, and I found myself obsessively thinking about ways I could avoid exposing her to any further pain or health issues.

This line of thinking is unhealthy under normal circumstances (I also suffered from PPA after my first daughter was born and sought support), but throw a global pandemic into the mix, and you’ve got a recipe for a nervous breakdown. Isolation didn’t help. My first round of PPA was cured, in part, by community. Having a reliable and consistent tribe of women to talk to and commiserate with was a vital part of my recovery in 2016. In 2020, that support system evaporated. I did what I could to stay connected by transitioning to a virtual postpartum yoga group, but it just wasn’t the same. The connection I craved stopped when my computer screen turned off, and I was left alone with my struggles.

For all the struggles, there were some upsides:

1.??????Quality time with my family. We were all together all the time. I’m sure I clocked twice as many hours as a working mom with my younger daughter than my older one.

2.??????House projects got done. Our living room became our preschool, and our backyard became our playground. We made home improvements we had been putting off for years because my husband, who is a college teacher, was home for 18 months.

3.??????Connecting with extended family. We participated in regular “quarentinis” on both sides of my family, and my young daughters were exposed to their relatives beyond our normal once-a-year trip to the Midwest.

Here’s where things went sideways. As a working pandemic parent, my experience was fraught with a series of not normal work circumstances that still haven’t fully sorted themselves out.

1.??????I don’t know when to turn off my computer. Sure, I was probably a workaholic before the pandemic, but the lines of start/stop times were blurred beyond measure in 2020, and they haven’t gotten clear. For years now, there have been no boundaries, and I don’t see employers doing much to set them. Technology doesn’t help. If you are awake, you are connected. Global meetings don’t help either. When I entered the workforce in 2007, it was considered poor form to schedule a meeting before 9:30. Now, that’s a late start. Mind you, the school bus doesn’t come until 8:15, so something’s gotta give.

2.??????I don’t have time to get my work done. The pandemic shifted all our work in Corporate America to virtual, creating a firestorm of back-to-back meetings that make it impossible for employees to do actual work. As a working parent, my options are either to be perpetually behind or get back online after my kids go to bed and do the work part of my job. You know… the actual thinking and follow up-ing.

3.??????I don’t want to go into an office more than twice a week. Although I love human connection, I’ve found that the benefits of being close in proximity to my daughters far outweigh the disadvantages of missing potential face time with leaders. Two days a week keeps me feeling connected and engaged, while balancing my responsibilities at home. I recognize that not everyone is afforded this luxury of flexibility, and in that way, I’m very lucky.

4.??????I don’t have a plan when my kids are sick. In 2020, it was the norm to juggle illness and work life, so pandemic parents like me are having to readjust to the expectation that we should either have childcare available or take the day off work when there’s a sick kid at home who needs our attention.

5.??????I don’t have time for small talk. As a working parent, I’m trying to be as efficient as possible so I can log off and be with my kids at 5:00. I don’t mind exchanging a few pleasantries at the beginning of Zoom calls, but when the chit chat goes beyond five minutes, I start to get itchy. Time is a limited resource for parents. The way I see it, every minute I spend doing non-productive work is time I'm sacrificing from my kids.

Here are some ways I’ve tried to stay sane at home while maintaining a high performance at work:

1.??????Block your calendar. Need to do school drop offs? Mark your calendar as out of office. Determined to not eat lunch in front of a computer screen? Block your lunch hour (and push back when a new calendar invite comes through during that time).

2.??????Communicate your schedule with your manager and team. Every other Thursday, I log off at 4:00 to meet my daughter for Girl Scouts after school. Before I committed to this activity, I talked to my boss about it. In fact, I put it in writing so there were no secrets about what I was doing or how I planned to both cover and make up for the time. Then I – you guessed it! – blocked my calendar.

3.??????Take your vacation. Seriously, you need it. So do I. Every year, I take a big, two-week vacation with my family. I find it takes a week to mentally decompress and another week to really feel like it’s a vacation. I spend weeks in advance putting together a coverage plan and sharing it with anyone involved in my current projects so nothing gets dropped in my absence. I also do this so I can truly log off. I set this precedent with my team so they know that when it’s their turn, they can log off too.

Do you have any tips for pandemic parents? Leave them in the comments.