Where is the working parent headed?

Our household just finished up our third quarantine due to a possible exposure to COVID-19 at daycare. Now, before I write the rest of this post, I know I am very lucky to have a career where I can work from home and have flexibility to work with my kiddos home. We are also very lucky to have had 3 possible exposures and no one in our household has gotten sick with COVID, and everyone at daycare has faired well. But, this new way of life has come with frustrations, which I believe are compounded for a working mom who just returned from maternity leave.

There have been a number of times we have discussed exposure and risk in our house, and the 3 quarantines that we have been through are all included. As parents, we struggle with the discussion to keep our kids in daycare, knowing this creates a larger social circle. However, we both have demanding full time jobs and despite everyone deciding we can all work with kids home now, it was just not a reality with 3 kids 3 and under. We also did not feel like it was financially or mentally the right decision for one of us to walk away from our work. But believe me, we have had plenty of circular conversations about it. I am sure this is true for others as well. Instead, we limit our circle in every other way, both to protect our daycare providers(and our access to daycare) and to protect those in our families that have a higher risk. Statistically, we feel confident that the kiddos and ourselves would fair okay if we got sick(although two sick parents quarantined with 3 kids for 14 days sounds like downright torture).

So, back to the frustration of our current world. All 3 quarantines we have tried to work, sometimes using minimal time off to catch a breath, but this last one both Matt and I worked full time, and balanced 9 month old twins crawling around and a 3 year old with LOTS of energy. We took a deep breath Monday morning, and never stopped or looked back. Our brains and bodies are running on full capacity and switching constantly between trains of thought from 7:00 am until 8:30 pm every day. And with twin 9 month old's, we rarely make it through a full night's rest. By Friday, to say I was frustrated is an understatement. You want to be a good mom, and a thoughtful leader, and have a clean house, but the reality is you are going to struggle to be any one of these when you are forced to do them all at the same time.

As a working women, the feeling that you are personally responsible for ensuring the working women survives this year(okay lets be honest 2 years) means the weight of the world starts to fall in all around you.

It is hard enough to come back from a maternity leave and feel like you are hitting the ground running. When I say that, this is probably mostly pressure from myself but it is real. I found coming back to work during a pandemic after having twins meant that every virtual meeting started with lots of questions about my life/work balance(balance does not exist so stop trying to find it world), what I had decided to do about childcare, and maybe finally we would get to work related conversation. Everyone would assume my head was not in the game, and offer lots of excuses or outs for me if I did not want to commit at work.

Of course, everyone means well, but as a private person who is a perfectionist at work this is a really hard transition to survive through. And every time our littles are home while we work.....I re-live these conversations over and over again. I started to turn off my video in hopes we could avoid the conversation but there is really no way around it. Meanwhile, I hear the conversations my partner is having with his co-workers and the tone is completely different. There is no pity, no assumption of work loss. I was now a mom at work, and a boss at home. And it felt like everyone assumed I was not doing either particularly well. You can't help but wonder if any of it makes sense anymore.

So what is the point of this vent? I know I am not the only one out there struggling with the sudden combination of family and work life. Most employers have only the very best intentions trying to allow families to be flexible, yet it is creating no space for those of us who want to separate our private life and work life. And encouraging self care and balance are not practical or sustainable ways for anyone to make it through the unchanging demands of the economy and the family. There is no bubble bath that can fix a year or burning the candle at every end...or more like taking a blow torch to the candle. I don't have the answer, but believe there is still work to be done on what our working and family lives look like over the next 5 years. We are all in this together and my advice is to be kind, don't make assumptions about what someone needs, and maybe avoid the words "self care" around a busy parent...