With a two-year-old at home and a baby on the way, my husband and I are working full-time without childcare during the COVID-19 pandemic—and hanging on to our sanity by a thread.
But that whole idea—the shift work, the intense quid pro quo that has become co-parenting under quarantine—is exhausting me.
There’s no free time, and there is no free time, in that every moment I claw for myself seems to come at a cost. Any time I need an hour for a meeting, I need to trade it elsewhere in our schedule so my husband can get his work done, too. There’s no time to pause, no time to assess. Just barrel forward. On paper, at least, we’ve divided the week very equally. It’s taking a toll on me to be the more flexible of us; if my husband has a four-hour chunk, I’m inevitably the one to accommodate and block that time off my calendar, and he’ll do his “shift” later. But that whole idea—the shift work, the intense quid pro quo that has become co-parenting under quarantine—is exhausting me.
I work full-time at a tech startup creating tools to help parents manage their finances. I’m supposed to be working eight-hour days and be accessible for meetings, calls, and, well, work itself. And I have a side business. And I signed a contract with a literary agent a mere month before the pandemic, so the edits on my novel could come in any day now.
My husband is a graduate student in a very demanding program, which means we both have to navigate his inflexible hours for Zoom classes. That doesn’t even take into account the time he spends reading and studying and doing assignments. His program even still has him going on field trips! (Just, you know, by himself.)
Our precocious, giggly toddler is an utter joy—and also an occasional train wreck. There are the sweet moments when all she wants is to hold my hand . . . and there are the moments when the world has absolutely ended because her favorite pajamas are in the laundry. Despite a few blessed reprieves when she randomly decides to solo play by putting diapers on all her stuffed animals, she’s too young to plop in front of a computer and call it remote learning. She’s not addicted to TV or screens, and we’re doing our damnedest to keep it that way.
I’m hardly daydreaming about nursery decor or reading the kinds of books I did the first time around, because I’m feeling very mired in the realities of getting through each individual day.
In other words, she’s not really one for running around in the background while we work. I’ve tried—which resulted in a Complete and Total Crisis™ during a conference call and me thinking, Thank God I can mute myself because I am definitely not absorbing anything they’re talking about.
I’m grateful and relieved to have a partner who is able and willing to shoulder an equal burden—but the two equal halves don’t quite add up to the whole we need. We are holding our professional lives together by a thread. How many hours am I actually working every week? Let’s not tally it up, please.
Somehow I’m keeping up at work without raising too many eyebrows. I’ve managed to compensate for a lack of time by becoming more decisive. I don’t have time to ruminate on whether something is the absolute best incarnation it could be in the universe. Does it get the job done? Am I reasonably proud to attach my name to it? Fabulous, let’s move on.
I haven’t had much time or head space to focus on my pregnancy, either. It feels like I grew a belly all of a sudden, but that’s mostly because time has lost, or at least changed, its meaning. My husband and I suddenly find ourselves with only three months to go, and we haven’t finalized names yet. I’m hardly daydreaming about nursery decor or reading the kinds of books I did the first time around, because I’m feeling very mired in the realities of getting through each individual day.
The divide between parents and non-parents has never felt wider, and I wonder how much this glue-and-duct-tape approach to work will set parents back as a group.
Of course, that’s hardly a recipe for hitting great new heights in my career, or in my life as a parent. At a time when so many parents are barely making it work, I imagine that some single people, the sourdough starter people, the finally-read-Dostoyevsky people, may find their own ways to thrive professionally. Have you seen those articles online about how this is a great time to regroup and plan your career? Yeah, I don’t have time to click on those, much less read them.
The divide between parents and non-parents has never felt wider, and I wonder how much this glue-and-duct-tape approach to work will set parents back as a group. In the meantime, I do my four? five? six if I’m lucky? hours of work a day, barter over each minute with my husband, and dream of daycare reopening.
The other day, my husband emerged from the office ready to do his childcare shift, but I offered to let our toddler wreak havoc around me while I cooked dinner and fed both her and myself. “Yeah?” he asked. “That would be great—I do have more work to do. But, just like that? It’s my turn, officially.”
“I’m tired of all the tit for tat,” I said, “so yeah, consider it a freebie. Just think of me next time the tables are turned and be nice to me, too.”
He laughed. “So, a quid pro quo freebie, really?”
I had to laugh, too. Because, of course, that’s exactly what it was.
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