The Parent Trap
Covid-19 has exacerbated capitalism's impossible demands on mothers.
Having children is one of the great mysteries of life. Like having sex, or falling in love, or developing faith in a higher power, it’s an experience that falls short of any description.
Also like sex, love and religion, having children sucks about half the time, and it particularly sucks now, thanks to the coronavirus.
I’m in a best-case situation—two employed work-from-home parents, taking care of one relatively well-behaved 2-year-old—and still, parenting under lockdown is a gauntlet, a months-long Kobayashi Maru test in which the only way to win is to realize the game is unwinnable. School is out, and may or may not reopen in the fall. Many summer camps and day cares are shut down. Playgrounds are cordoned off. The only safe place is the house, and while you’re in that house, you’re expected to do your job. It is impossible to be both continually available to one’s boss and continually available to one’s child. The things that seem “cute” at first, like tiny toddler voices announcing their need to potty during a call, quickly become irritants. Emails go unanswered; basic tasks are forgotten; Screen Time, the parent’s nemesis, comes to dominate your child’s waking hours. I woke up a few weekends ago to hear my neighbor, whose toddler is the same age as mine, standing on his porch and screaming “I NEVER SHOULD HAVE HAD A KID.”
I have little sympathy for my neighbor, mostly because his wife was indoors, caring for the child he did have. Talking about “parenting” under COVID is a bit of a dodge. What we’re talking about, most of the time, is mothering. The amount of mothering being asked of women under coronavirus is triggering a generational reset in gender CONTINUE READING: The Parent Trap