The Primal Scream

February 5, 2021 8:33 AM

The pandemic exposed “balance” for the lie that it is. Now, a generation is teetering on the edge. A NYT package on motherhood, parenting during the pandemic, and everything it exposed.

America's mothers are in crisis. Is anyone listening to them?

Three mothers, on the brink.

This isn't burnout; it's betrayal.

Will Biden's stimulus plan help?

How to help working parents right now.

Let's hear it for sabbaticals, subsidies, and nanny reimbursements

Know your workplace rights.

posted by toastyk (12 comments total)

Making this so, so much worse is that many teachers are mothers, too. This cannot end well.
posted by wenestvedt at 8:41 AM on February 5, 2021 [9 favorites]

Thank you for linking to the individual articles buried in this interactive soup.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:57 AM on February 5, 2021 [8 favorites]

I'm still working my way through the links but to respond, I have to say I am immensely grateful for

a) a boss who is flexible with my work, based on the work I have done for him all along - although I always have mixed feelings about my "all in" approach to long hours, this is one of the times it has given it back to me in spades

b) a partner who gets it

c) that my kids are 10 & 15

d) when my small business was completely shut down I received CERB which did not, for us, make the difference between eating or not but did allow me to go to school, which if fitness never comes back may be the best thing I have done in the last few years career-wise

Work wise we do fall into the classic pattern that I earn less, and so our set up looks like this. We have one home office space available, and my husband gets that, because his job is the more lucrative one. I bought a desk at the start of the pandemic (I had given up my home office to my MIL when she moved in with us a few years ago) and it's in the living room, which is on the same floor as the kids' rooms (bungalow). I'm the one that gets interrupted every 10-15 minutes for Remote Learning Things, snacks, lunches, catching my child on his Kindle rather than watching his friends' french presentations, catching my older son ditching a 'boring' 'voluntary' lecture, etc.

And I get the emails from the school, from the math tutor, and so on, even though both email addresses are provided.

And I actually got a side gig opportunity during this time, plus I had enrolled in a certificate program, so somehow I have ended up with 1.5 jobs, school, and the job of education coordinator for two kids.

That said, I am 100% the Pandemic Cruise Director. I am the person who finds "ways to celebrate!" and "ways to connect with friends!!" and puts in the mask orders and figures out which stores are doing curbside and aren't going to bankrupt us and still have lactose free cheese - and I'm also the person monitoring the government situation for work and I am as a result highly aware of the fuckups.

And oh yes, not a psychopath, worried immensely as well for vulnerable people, those I know, and generally. I have a friend in pediatric ER care who sees so many maltreatment injuries that she's drinking a lot more, to name one teeeny tiny group.

And I am angry, angry angry...I feel like all the little cracks in my life, the way I have constantly rushed from work to school to daycare to activities to birthday parties to yardwork to tutoring to the grocery store are suddenly writ so large and these stupid, stupid, stupid men with a few stupid women are just fucking ridiculous lack-of-empathy shitheads, running companies and teams, that I just - don't know what to do with myself other than run on the beach and scream.

Also as a trauma survivor, I know that the work people are doing to get through it now...well there will be costs. Emotional costs, societal costs - we are really going to lose out because of the coming wave of what it will take to survive.

I can't even say recover. I have hopes that some of us will recover but recovery is a lot of work and who, in the face of all this, is going to have time for it? Parents who are helping their kids catch up on math and adjust to being around people again? Single parents who are now homeless?

My only hope is my own renewed commitment to fighting for equity and justice and the hope that hundreds of thousands or millions of people will join me...when we can...really soon now. I signed up to canvass for the candidate of my choice in the next provincial election and I am on a committee at my kid's school that is currently equity-focused but which I hope will also create specific free, useful remedial pathways for the kids that are not okay, to help the families that are not okay, and hopefully can let moms and dads drop their kids off After All This so that they can go cry or whatever they need to do then,

Thank you for coming to my MetaFilter comment.
posted by warriorqueen at 9:08 AM on February 5, 2021 [76 favorites]

...who, in the face of all this, is going to have time for it? Parents who are helping their kids catch up on math and adjust to being around people again? Single parents who are now homeless?

Yeah, I worry that the only cadre with free time and clear To Do Lists are the kind of dead-eyed granny-stranglers who will step into the gap and make things much worse.

It's heartening to see Biden and his team lay down a lot of specific changes so quickly, but it's agonizing waiting for Policy to turn into Real Life.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:16 AM on February 5, 2021 [2 favorites]

Thank you for linking to this. I cried as I read it and now I am thinking about ways to better support my friends and family from afar.
posted by brainwane at 11:01 AM on February 5, 2021 [2 favorites]

My wife has been writing about this since last year, so I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that when I sent her the link to this article she'd already received it multiple times from other moms (at 3 in the morning no less, which is the only time she feels she gets for herself).

The burnout is extreme and there really isn't any end to it in sight. Her and her friend have been talking about going into the street to scream at midnight. I do my best as a partner, but no amount of effort from both parents will fix the problem and mothers overwhelmingly bear the burden of it all.
posted by montag2k at 11:21 AM on February 5, 2021 [7 favorites]

OMG, do not have time yet to read all of it (or read the articles by montag2k's wife) but listening to the one message from a weeping mother ... I know it's bad. But hearing that message? I feel so powerless. Then again, I am doing laundry for my pregnant daughter and her family, am pitching in with the kids, etc. But relatives as caretakers is never going to be the answer. Everybody needs help. Yesterday. Thanks for posting, toastyk.
posted by Bella Donna at 11:57 AM on February 5, 2021 [4 favorites]

I used this comment on Metafilter about how impossible all of this is, but I don’t anymore because I am too fucking tired. My friends and I don’t talk about it amongst ourselves anymore because what’s the point? We’re still drowning. Any hope I had died last summer, when I had an extremely bored kid at home, a full-time job, no child care or distance learning schedule, and a stressed out husband who largely locked himself in the basement office. Things got a lot better when I told my husband he had to work upstairs and be equally visible to our interrupting kid, but I am still bitter about how the bulk of the housework and emotional labor falls on my shoulders. I started passive-aggressively sleeping in until 7:30am and having my husband deal with 6:15am kid breakfast and monologues about Mario Kart. I’m still exhausted.

I’m thinking about taking a pay cut to go part-time this upcoming summer because I cannot live through that again. I am thankful I have the option to do so (my employer just approved 160 hours of COVID-related caregiver leave at partial pay for 2021), but my husband flat out refused to take the federal COVID caregiving leave last year when he was at his breaking point. He refused to take the potential career hit, didn’t want to be assigned “boring” projects, and didn’t want to be seen as someone with one foot out the door. Hello, welcome to life as a working mom! The American patriarchy can go fuck itself and die in a fire.
posted by Maarika at 12:38 PM on February 5, 2021 [34 favorites]

I can't help but foresee a wave of divorces by women who realized that, far from helping, their husbands actually made more work for them. In which case, might as well go it alone.
posted by emjaybee at 7:40 PM on February 5, 2021 [9 favorites]

Because schools in the US are our social safety net and services provider, kids with disabilities are not receiving their therapies while schools are closed. Basically at all. Most can't be provided online, or can be provided only very poorly. I've watched over and over as parents of kids with disabilities have lobbied local districts to open a few classrooms and get the kids in there who require services. (Did you know that in most counties, public schools are the largest entity billing Medicaid because of how much medical service they provide to children with disabilities? Those kids currently have no care!) Most districts are too overwhelmed trying to provide remote or hybrid learning for the 78-ish percent of their students who don't have IEPs to focus on the 22% or so who do. But in a few districts where the parents have managed to get a little traction, parents of typical children have freaked the fuck out that the school is willing to let children with serious medical needs return to in-person school but not their kids.

And like, I get it? Every goddamned parent in America is drowning. Schools are literally our entire social safety net and they don't just provide education but child care, meals, transportation. Working parents -- and most kids live in homes where all adults work -- have NOWHERE TO GO but schools. And as humans we tend to direct our anger at the things that are in front of us. Like other parents.

But there is an entire generation of children with disabilities who are being irreparably harmed by a year-long interruption to their ability to access necessary therapies and medical treatments. Harmed in a deeper and more lasting way than ALL of America's children are being harmed by the pandemic. 85% of speech delays completely resolve -- if the child receives treatment before the age of 5 (early intervention for speech/language is one of the most successful and cheapest interventions available). If they don't, it can be a lifelong struggle. Right now? Three-year-olds are struggling to access speech therapy. Lots of kids on the autism spectrum aren't being educated at all, because many of them need a one-on-one aide or push-in classroom support, which schools aren't really providing on Zoom. These failures are going to have lasting, life-long consequences.

And I'm really glad the pandemic relief bill is coming, but nobody at the federal level is talking about the utter collapse of special education during the pandemic. Nobody at the state level is either. There's nothing in the relief bill to help parents of kids with disabilities pay for private therapy or respite daycare. Nothing that recognizes that mothers of children with disabilities have left the workforce at FAR higher rates than all mothers (who are leaving at startling rates as it is). I don't expect there to be any ongoing support for the more intense support needs those children are going to have for YEARS after this interruption in their access to therapies and education; I don't expect to see any extra support to help schools pay for those more intense support needs.

I expect all those children and all those mothers (and, let's face it, it's mostly mothers) to sink into the pond of our collective unconsciousness with barely a ripple, without recognition of the damage this year did to those children and their families, and certainly not to those mothers who have spent the past year not just juggling full-time pandemic parenting, distance learning, and work, but also trying to serve as occupational therapists, physical therapists, speech therapists, behavioral supports, feeding therapists, nurses, and god knows what else, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no help, and no breaks.

I have to not think about this too hard, because I have some really deep-seated rage about it. But I can SEE my kid falling behind without his team, and I go to bed every single night knowing that I am failing him, because I am not a physical therapist. I'm not an occupational therapist. I'm doing my damn best, and I'm a privileged person with a lot of resources and education, but I am not a fucking OT! I don't know how to help! People have graduate degrees in doing this right, and I am not doing this right! And there's just -- nothing to be done about it. I'm just going to go to bed every night knowing I'm failing my kid, and knowing that that's just going to keep happening until schools reopen, and that there's not a good goddamned thing I can do about it, except sleep less, work harder, and cry myself to sleep. It is what it is, and what it is is bullshit.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:23 PM on February 5, 2021 [25 favorites]

As a mom who quit a good job to provide pandemic childcare while my husband somehow works even longer hours (wtf?), I can’t even read these articles - the idea of it makes me too angry.
posted by samthemander at 10:12 PM on February 5, 2021 [8 favorites]

Thanks everyone...I appreciate everyone commenting. I'm in a fairly privileged position myself, and have plenty of resources, but I can't say that I haven't woken up angry nearly every day of this pandemic. I really wish there was a way to make things different.
posted by toastyk at 2:36 PM on February 6, 2021 [1 favorite]