I came across an article in The New York Times which talked about how the pandemic is forcing families to raise their children without help from other family members or outside resources. This sparked the thought of how specifically this situation impacts us and for the future; what are some other, less apparent and personal to me, impacts of the pandemic.

The article specifically details how more recently, even before the pandemic, parents have been spending more time with their children and less time for solo leisure time than in the past

The pandemic has made it near impossible for parents to reach outside of their household for help raising their children. In late March and April, we saw the closing of day cares and schools. This meant that parents were now forced to watch their children during the daytime. Households were forced to only interact within themselves and many families stopped interacting with their extended relatives or close family friends. This shift from being able to drop your kids off with someone else for an evening, having a babysitter come over, or sending your kids to day care was a immense change.  This shift likely had a large impact on not only family stability but also individual mental, emotional, and even physical health.

Physically parents had to exert more energy into caring for and teaching their children, many of which still has to exert the normal amount of energy at their jobs. Meanwhile children were using less energy as they were confined to homes and likely did not have others of the same age group to interact with. Mentally, this shift, was very taxing. Having to be cognizant of younger children being around you and taking care of them while continuing to perform your daily work activities, and the new trouble of them being done remotely, must be a nightmare.  Emotionally, the tolls were even higher. Feeling as if you are now trapped with your children and unable to have personal time to reflect and relax, in combination of having to deal with the shift of work and immense loss during this pandemic is rough, I’m having trouble to imagine it in other words.

That’s if you’re lucky enough to have a job that shifted to virtual work. If the parents are essential workers or still needed to go in to work, the challenges are even more taxing.  The sudden shift of having to take on all of this responsibility that parents were previous able to hand off or hire out is one that I did not think of before reading this article and doing more research on.