5 ways to support parents now
I spent much of last year hiding from my children in a bus parked in the driveway next to our house. Now, before you start questioning my fitness as a mother, let me explain: I had a book deadline, and our bright orange 1975 VW bus became my only hope of meeting it. I would wake before the sun, shuffle out with my laptop and a steaming mug of strong coffee, slide the heavy metal door shut, and crank for a couple of hours.
By 8:30am my husband would be off to his job on-site, my older kid would be very reluctantly logging into her school’s morning meeting on Zoom, and my four-year-old would be begging me to play wild animal rescue, barber shop, or some bizarre combination of the two.
The days went on like this: super-early mornings, chaotic days full of plan Bs, Cs, and sometimes Zs (I guess both kids will just watch eight hours of Netflix today!?), followed by cranky, beer-filled evenings. My own little pandemic Groundhog Day grind.
But I know I was far from alone, and in fact, many working parents, mothers in particular, had it much worse than I did—less flexible or predictable jobs, more acute financial worries, and health scares to boot. According to the National Women’s Law Center, women have suffered the majority (55%) of pandemic-related job losses; in December 2020 alone, women accounted for all 140,000 net jobs lost…