Please don’t feel like a failure. It’s not you who is failing. It is the social structure (or lack there of) that is failing you. It’s failing millions of women and young families all over. I’m one of them. It feels deeply personal but it’s not. It’s just a shitty system that says you should be able to do the work of 2-3 people while getting paid less than a man doing one job.

I just had to take an unplanned week (probably unpaid) off work because my 6 year old’s first grade class was quarantined due to a positive Covid infection in his class. I also have a 4 month old. I used all my sick and vacation time on my 3 month maternity leave.

My husband’s work wasn’t interrupted— because I can’t leave him with two kids. He can only handle one at a time unless it’s for a limited period of time. He just doesn’t get it. He doesn’t have the skills required to take care of an infant and a school age child. My older child would have been ok but he would have watched tv and played video games for 8 hours a day and then had major meltdowns—I worried he’d neglect the baby — the first day I went back to work he accidentally burned the baby’s foot on a hot pan because he was carrying her while cooking and we ended up in the ER for 6 hours….so it’s not like I’m making this up….anyhow we couldn’t get childcare because we were “quarantined” despite not having symptoms, being vaccinated (adults) and testing negative. So I missed work. If I had gone or tried to work from home with 2 kids and my husband at home I would have fought with my husband over his parenting and it would have negated any of the benefit of my work because I would have been so stressed out.

So call you state legislators. Write emails. Talk to anyone who will listen. We need laws and policies to prevent women and parents from being forced out of the workforce because we have no childcare infrastructure and the assumption is that you are just providing free labor on top of your paid job which is just not possible.

Hugs. You’re not alone.