 | By Lauren Kelley Editorial board member |
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This pandemic has been gut-wrenching in so many ways. I haven’t seen my mom in over a year. I wasn’t able to visit my grandmother in the months before she died. I don’t know when I’ll be able to hold my infant niece. |
But things are going much more smoothly for me than they are for millions of Americans. I’m not facing eviction. I’m a member of The Times’s editorial board, writing this newsletter on my couch — not a front-line worker risking my life to get a paycheck. I’m healthy. |
And I don’t have children. |
Us childless folks have taken some heat lately, a lot of it on social media. Don’t we realize how privileged we are? How does it feel to do our jobs without simultaneously trying to be a schoolteacher and a full-time caretaker? We’ll never understand how impossible that situation is. |
The inevitable responses from non-parents: You don’t know our lives! We might be facing infertility, loneliness, caring for older relatives. And yes, many of us do know how hard being a parent is — that might be why we haven’t had kids. |
I understand the frustration on both sides. But I’d like to gently ask everyone, parent and non-parent alike, to stop bickering with each other and focus on the real enemy here: the patriarchy. |
As Joan C. Williams, who runs the Center for WorkLife Law, notes in a Times Op-Ed today, mothers are in many ways bearing the worst of the recent crisis. |
“We know that Covid-related job loss has disproportionately affected women,” writes Ms. Williams, who along with her colleagues has heard from scores of parents through the center’s Covid-19 help line. “We also know that the women we’re hearing from aren’t quitting because they don’t want to work; they’re being driven out by a combination of family care requirements and employer rigidity. And when workers try to push back, they face a labyrinth of laws that are often ineffectual.” |
Something a lot of people don’t understand about patriarchal systems — such as those that position women as disposable members of the work force — is that tearing them down would help all of us. Men’s lives would be improved if our society better supported them in spending time with their kids. Childless people would be better off if their personal time was regarded as highly as that of their parenting colleagues. |
And besides that, once this terrible era is over, we’ll be leaving some sort of new world for our children — and our nieces, nephews and beloved friends’ kids. Why not make it a better one? |
So get mad, please. But maybe less so at each other, and more at the systemic problems that are making this period worse than it could be for so many Americans. |
Reddit AMA: Yes, Coronavirus Is in the Air |
Join Dr. Linsey Marr for a live Reddit AMA today at 12:30 p.m. E.T. Linsey will answer your questions about her recent Op-Ed on the transmission of the coronavirus through the air and what it means for our response to the pandemic. |
Here’s what we’re focusing on today: |
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