Back in February, a fellow mom of a one-year-old and I discussed how we’d like to spend more time with our kids. Wouldn’t it be great, we said, if we could take some parental leave now that our children were so much more engaging than when they were newborn and potato-like? You know what happened next.
Before the quarantine, the rhythm of my family’s weekday life looked like those of many two-parent families in New York City: two adults commuting to work, baby in childcare. About two hours a day of awake in-person time with our son, and the same number of hours spent in person with strangers on the subway. Before I became a mother I wouldn’t say I lived for the weekends, but afterwards, that changed. I like my job a lot, but not as much as I like my son. He’s the most interesting person I’ve ever met.
Post-quarantine, my husband was laid off. I am grateful to be able to continue working from home. My husband has taken on the majority of the childcare, but I get to spend far more time than usual with our son in the mornings and evenings, on lunch breaks, and in snatches of time between video calls. I am seeing him reach all kinds of precious milestones: eating spaghetti, refusing to wear a T-shirt, trying to climb the bookcase.
Our jobs are not who we are: at heart I think everyone knows this, but we don’t always live it. Back when we met in person, ‘What do you do?’ was a standard question to ask by way of introduction.
Complaining about the hardships of raising children often feels like the most socially acceptable way to talk about parenthood. And that makes sense: parenting is very hard. Not every parent is good at it, or enjoys it. Being able to share the exhaustion and annoyance and boredom of looking after kids is a refreshing change from the era when mothers felt compelled to only speak of their children with effusive praise, and fathers were expected not to talk about them much at all. But a common understanding that parenting is a burden or an irritation also serves to support the idea that work done outside the home is always more important, more serious and more interesting than work at home. The time I’ve spent at home during the quarantine has made me realize that I’d be happy to be a full-time parent.
Back in the early days of the quarantine, back when quarantine could be funny, a meme circulated among parents in which people completed the phrase “‘My coworker…” with a description of something their child had just done: “My coworker just threw Cheerios all over the carpet and then ate them.” “My coworker is screaming from her crib because she doesn’t have her glowworm.” Now, I look at my son and think: “My coworker has never made me sit through a 47-slide Powerpoint presentation,” “My coworker will never leave me a passive-aggressive comment on a Google doc,” and “My coworker never invites me to a meeting that should have been an email.” It’s a different kind of working life. But I like it.
