“I am hanging on by a thread. This week, my daughter hasn’t been able to go to daycare because of a runny nose (likely allergy-related). Then, my middle daughter’s school called today to tell me to come pick her up. She had a headache and now can’t go back until I have her tested for COVID. I’m not allowed to work from home, and my team is so short-staffed that I have no idea how I can ever take a sick day, let alone find time to schedule my daughter’s COVID test. My husband also works full-time as a teacher, and we don’t live near family. Basically, none of this feels sustainable anymore and I officially feel like I am drowning. How can a mom stay sane while working and dealing with never-ending COVID school policies and sick kids? —Stephanie, 33, NJ Lauren Smith Brody: Stephanie, I could practically hear your heart palpitations as I read this. (Or maybe those were my own!) So many employers are asking workers to return to full speed, and yet, for parents (of little kids, especially), any random Tuesday can toss you right back to March 2020. Kids home. Team overworked. Anxiety mounting. What you’re describing—a seemingly endless emergency mode—doesn’t feel sustainable to you because it’s not. And that is not your fault. Of course, it shouldn’t have to be this way. FFCRA, the federally protected paid family leave that was rolled out for COVID and meant to handle COVID-thrown weeks like yours, expired at the end of 2020, and the tax incentives on it also ran out this past September. Thanks to the tireless efforts of advocacy groups like PL+US, paid family and medical leave is now in the proposed Build Back Better legislation, with the hopes of becoming permanent law, but that’s far from a done deal. And you need a break right now. As I see it, with no paid leave, you’ve got two options: The first one is that you or your husband could—like the 2.8 million women who were in the workforce pre-Covid but no longer are—leave your job. No one would judge you for it. Heck, even the editor of Working Mother magazine quit recently when the inflexibility of her paid work became more than she and her family could live with. Still, there are 2.8 million reasons—economic, financial, cultural, historic—why I could beg you not to leave your paycheck behind. But I’m going to guess that you’ve already seen all those headlines, and that the last thing you need is for me to add a gender equity lecture to your list of to-dos. View this post on Instagram
A post shared by PARADE (@parade.media) I’m also going to guess that, having made it this far, you actually need and want to keep your job. And that you’ve already attempted to negotiate as much flexibility as possible. If you haven’t done that, or you want to try again, here’s a worksheet I created to help you request it in the most effective way. You’ve probably also done as much negotiating with your husband about childcare and housework as you care to. So, here’s option #2: Embrace the concept of what I call the “generous minimum,” both in your paid and unpaid labor. What is a “generous minimum”? It’s your absolute bottom shelf effort, plus one small extra that makes you feel good about yourself. We have been conditioned, as workers and as mothers, to over-deliver. To assume that everyone needs our best all the time. In truth, kids learn to be vulnerable and recover by seeing us be vulnerable and recover. Bosses learn what’s broken when workers stop “faking it till they make it” and make systemic flaws more visible. A generous minimum is: Feeding the kids three times a day on paper plates, but throwing in some baby carrots. Wearing clean-enough clothing, but also your favorite earrings. Doing the client Zoom with your camera off, but following up with an email connection. You get the picture. This is a new muscle you’re building as you recondition yourself to excel at the long game by half-assing (or maybe three-quarters assing) the tasks that are immediately in front of you. Try it for this week. Buy yourself some breathing room. And keep going, because you can. Next, real moms discuss what streaming service is a must. As an entrepreneur who can’t quit journalism, Brody writes regularly about the intersection of business and motherhood for, among others, The New York Times, Slate, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Elle, and pens advice columns for Parade Media and the children’s brand Maisonette. Brody is on the board of the early education nonprofit Docs for Tots. A longtime leader in the women’s magazine industry, she was previously the executive editor of Glamour magazine. Raised in Ohio, Texas, and Georgia, she now lives in New York City with her husband, two sons, and rescue puppy.
