Should I protect my child from deadly diseases by vaccinating him? Go with your gut. My child's projectile poop is purple, should I call the doctor? Go with your gut. I'm considering using breastmilk to treat my child's fungal rash; should I be concerned about the open sores? Go with your gut, Mama!
When my child was an infant, the advice I hated more than anything was being told to go with my gut. Because my gut was telling me that I had no idea what I was doing, I had no business being a mother, I was going to kill my baby with every foolish decision I made. My gut, in fact, was telling me that if the hospital had a baby return slot, the best thing I could do with my baby was drop him right into it and walk away.
Once, when I was a teacher, I didn't have enough chaperones for a field trip to the Hall of Science and I made Phil come with me. At the end of the day, exhausted, he introduced me to the concept of "decision fatigue": the more decisions you have to make, the worse you get at making decisions. He said teachers get asked so many questions and have to make so many decisions in a day that it's no wonder teaching is so tiring.
I've been thinking about decision fatigue a lot lately as it relates to pandemic parenting. We're making so many new decisions — so many radically different decisions — that it's exhausting. And if you tell me to gut check my 2020 pandemic decisions, I may punch you in your own gut.
Should I have wiped down this playground swing before Eli sat on it? Is Eli close enough to that other swinging kid that I should tell him to put his mask on? How about now? Should we even be at this playground? Are the other parents at this playground judging us for being at the playground even though they are also at the playground?
Should I be preparing to form a private homeschool co-op with other families because school buildings will only reopen partially in the fall? Should I be hiring a private teacher? Should I be moving out of New York? Renting a second home? Why in the world did I order that box of school supplies? If Eli only gets to go to school once a week, as mounting evidence is suggesting he might, what are we going to do?
What are we going to do?
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| Back when I used to put on a nice dress, fill up my thermos with iced coffee, walk Eli to school and leave him there. |
If you are like most working parents, the first thing you are taught to do is pretend that your children will never interfere with your productivity at work — even though the whole framework of having children in the first place is that, for better or worse, from eating a meal to using the bathroom, they interfere with everything you do. You are taught that you should be at all your child's school events and performances, but also at all your office meetings. You are taught that you should volunteer for class trips and bake sales, but also that you should volunteer to stay late at work. You should share cute anecdotes about your child, but not his needs as a human being who requires child care.
So the work of that child care becomes invisible (and expensive). You pay someone else to care for your child so you can earn money to pay for that care. And then, somewhere between your child's birth and the present, there is a pandemic and it all comes crashing down.
In one Facebook group I'm in, a bewildered working mom shared that her employer had sent around a memo reminding everyone that even though they're all working remotely due to the pandemic, they should make arrangements for child care. (record scratch noise) There is a pandemic. There is no child care!
Last week, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer released a 25-page report outlining his plan for reopening New York City public school buildings. Child care gets six paragraphs — six vague paragraphs in which Stringer notes that "there can be no broad-based return to work unless families, especially those with young children, have access to child care" and then goes on to acknowledge that the "challenge of ensuring that there is an adequate supply of safe and affordable options for these families cannot be overstated."
Where will this hypothetical child care facility be located? Who will be staffing it? How will my child participate in this promised remote learning if he is not in a school or at home with me but in a hypothetical child care facility? If I am sending my child to a separate child care facility on the days when he is not in school — a child care facility in which he is mingling with an entirely separate cohort of children and adults and in which he is not being taught the same curriculum he would be in school — does that not defeat the purpose of not having him in the school building? And is this hypothetical child care service that you are running out of some hypothetically empty office building with hypothetical federal funds from the CARES Act one you want me to pay for?
Last week, Mayor Bill de Blasio sat in front of a screen and crooned that sweet, sweet promise that I, a working mother, had been longing to hear for months: "Schools will be reopening in September." He even went so far as to use the phrase "full steam ahead," which, outside of the context of "Thomas the Tank Engine" and inclusive of the context of reopening schools, was pretty bold.
Too bold, as it turned out. In a dance familiar to anyone who follows New York State politics, Governor Andrew Cuomo quickly put his foot down to remind us that the authority to reopen school buildings rests with him, not the mayor, and also that he is more powerful than de Blasio will ever be and maybe de Blasio should just go home to Park Slope and cry about it (perhaps he didn't say that last part out loud).
Then UFT President Michael Mulgrew piled on to call de Blasio's pronouncement "premature," and all parties agreed that the decision should be made "collectively," namely by the governor, the mayor, the Department of Education, the UFT and the CSA (the principals' union).
And the more I thought about Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is a man, and Governor Andrew Cuomo, who is a man, and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, who is a man, and CSA President Mark Cannizzaro, who is a man, and UFT President Michael Mulgrew, who is — have you guessed it yet? — a man, the more I thought about these men squabbling over this looming decision while we inch closer to September and the burden of their judgment will fall primarily on women and working mothers, the more I felt my insides begin to heat with rage.
Women are 70% of New York City's teaching force. Women are the ones who will be expected to return to the classroom and homeschool their children — some women will be expected to do this simultaneously! Women are the ones who will be invalidated or outright punished at work, the ones who will feel forced to quit their jobs, the ones who will feel the crushing guilt of knowing they're managing to fail at being both mothers and employees (I'm not the only working mother who has felt this every day for the past four months, am I?).
So now, in the absence of any reassuring plan from anyone in a position of authority or power, we're all turning to each other for advice. Conversations in my Facebook newsfeed are getting ugly, pitting teachers and working parents against each other. I have seen teachers claim that we want to send them back into school buildings to die (I think this is a bit hysterical) and I have seen parents claim that teachers who express any reservations about going back into school buildings to die should just do it already and decrease the surplus population (actually, that was Ebeneezer Scrooge who said that, but close enough). There are parents planning to pull their children out of school and homeschool them, or parents who are moving out of state to a state they feel will be fully in-person in the fall, or parents who have already smugly formed their homeschool co-op pod.
In other words, everyone is going with their gut. And as usual, my gut is screaming at me (this is only half figurative, because anxiety stomachaces are real!) that I have no idea what I am doing, I have no business being a mother and I'm going to kill my baby with every foolish decision I make.
What are we going to do?
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