Today – March 11 – marks exactly one year since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Covid-19 a global pandemic.
As a journalist and working mom of three children, I’m especially preferential to how this time has impacted families. While it’s safe to say that we’ve all come a long way since those first few terrifying and agonizing weeks of Spring 2020, there are still many who continue to struggle and cope. And for more still, the learning journey and daily rigmarole continues to evolve. I know this is true for me. My husband and I are working together as a team more than ever before. There are no more specific assigned duties; we simply pitch in to pick up the slack when the other cannot. Again, I’m partial, but I believe working families have been impacted the most by this pandemic.
In a Parents magazine article titled, “A New Day for Working Moms,” the founder of a firm that invests in services supporting working families, stated, “The pandemic has made visible the day-to-day invisible work of parenthood.” So true! The pandemic has lifted the veil on working families. Remember the “BBC Dad” who was interrupted by his children as he gave a live interview to the BBC News? It was taboo at the time (2017), but now it’s the norm to see our coworkers’ children in the background of our virtual work meetings or to hear them crying out while we’re on the line. The pandemic has altered our work-life balance and forced many employers to rethink flex-time and work-from-home policies. And, in perhaps the greatest game-changer of all, the pandemic has made it more acceptable to openly acknowledge you’re a parent with priorities outside of work and little ones at home who need you and depend on you, just as much as your boss does.
“The amount of stress and guilt moms carry is something others can’t grasp who aren’t in that position,” said Therapist Julie Hairston, the owner of Infinity Counseling & Consulting Services, LLC in North Royalton. “It wasn’t something that was really talked about before, but now, with the work from home lifestyle we have established it is showing employers that people are going to give you their best when they are able to balance everything. And it is recognizing, ‘Hey, you’re a parent and you need to go be a parent.’”
I can think of many moments throughout the past year where priorities and mindsets shifted inside of me, and I’m not alone.
Dr. Kimberly Brzezowski of Royalton Psychological Associates, LLC, had an “Aha Moment” when she acknowledged that doing paperwork at home just wasn’t going to be possible with her children running around.
“The one thing I’ve learned is that I have to adjust my expectations for myself and for the kids,” she said.
But it’s not all sunshine, rainbows, and Oprah-like epiphanies. For parents who work from home, the pandemic has totally erased boundaries between work life and home life. When parents work from home, they are, in a sense, “always on,” with little breaks between roles. For many of us, we can hear our kids’ virtual schooling while we work in the room next door. We’ve lost our daily commute that allows us to get our game faces on for the workday ahead. The evening drive home that provided time to decompress has been replaced with a short walk to the kitchen to start dinner and tackle homework. And after we put the kids to bed each night, we often go back to finishing work things we couldn’t get to during the day. The pandemic has also greatly impacted employment trends and forced thousands to downshift or leave the workforce altogether to better handle responsibilities at home. Many are unemployed and receiving jobless aid for the first time in their lives.
Our children, too, have been sequestered to their bedrooms for virtual schooling and have witnessed their extracurriculars and social lives dissolve or take different forms. Some are struggling academically and emotionally. Some are witnessing their mothers and fathers’ struggle. Experts say parents can help their children (and themselves) by establishing daily structure and routines. It’s also important to provide reassurance and acknowledgment, and practice patience and understanding, Brzezowski said.
And while it’s easy to focus on all the loss and disappointments the past year has brought, it’s also a great time for families to treasure the good.
“My hope with families is that we are able to enjoy each other’s company more,” Hairston said of what families can take away from this time. “That we enjoy conversation, laughter and making memories out of experiences and go back to the importance of being a family. With kids, I hope that kids recognize how important it is to be open with their emotions. I hope families are able to relate to each other better. We’ve all lost something and that feeling of loss is the same for everybody, but we all experience it differently and that’s OK. The amount of empathy we’ve been able to establish by having a shared experience is huge.”
Brzezowski says the loss has helped us gain some things – commonality, appreciation, and a new heightened level of awareness for others around us.
Our time together has also helped us slow down and channel our inner Ferris Bueller when he reflects: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
Hairston discovered this for herself last summer.
“When Covid hit, everything in our lives disappeared. We literally paused everything, but then we thought, ‘Do I really care that we don’t have anything to do this weekend?’” Hairston said. “Last summer we spent a lot of time swimming in the pond in my parents’ backyard and just enjoyed a different level of connection family-wise. I was suddenly floating in a pond that I hadn’t been in since I was 14. I think we’ve all taken the time to enjoy our own yards and enjoy what we’ve invested in because home is where it happens. It’s our haven. And I think we were all moving so fast before that we didn’t stop and look around and acknowledge, ‘hey, it’s alright here.’”
By SARA MACHO HILL
Contributing Writer