On Friday and Saturday, my Twitter feed was full of anger and frustration over a blog post on the ALSC (Association for Library Services to Children) Blog. Entitled “How Motherhood Has Influenced Me as a Children’s Librarian,” the post was problematic because it suggested (probably unintentionally) that childless children’s librarians could not connect with patrons as much or have the level of insight about babies that the author got from having a baby. Many of these so-called insights seemed like things anyone should know (I’m not a children’s librarian, but even I didn’t try reading Corduroy to my son until he was 2 or 3!), but many librarians without kids felt that the message of the piece was that they would never be as good a children’s librarian because they don’t (or can’t) have kids.

I wish the author had considered how writing something like “the children seem to know a mommy when they see one, and relationships are forged quicker” would impact a children’s librarian who desperately wanted to be a parent but couldn’t. Or devoted children’s librarians who have decided not to have children. To make childless librarians feel like they could never have the level of passion for the work, the insights, and the relationships you do with patrons because they don’t have children is wrong-headed (even if it wasn’t her intent). I 100% believe that the author did not intend to make anyone feel excluded, but the simple fact is, she did. If something you write makes people feel hurt and excluded — especially on the official blog of your membership organization — the right thing to do is apologize. I hope she will and I hope ALSC will address this issue on the blog.

Even as a mother, I get annoyed by the “transformed by having a child” trope. It promotes the idea that a woman isn’t truly whole and fulfilled until she has had children. I had a wonderful and fulfilling life before my son was in it and I have a wonderful and fulfilling life now. Sure, having a baby changed me. So did moving in with my partner. So did college. So did working in a toxic environment. So did working with fantastic colleagues. So did every episode of depression I’ve had. So did having migraines. Every major experience I’ve had in my life has altered me and made me who I am today. It was, undoubtedly, a HUGE change in my life and one that enriches and challenges me every day, but I’m still me.

I get especially frustrated when I hear from men that having a baby made them more empathetic or that having a daughter made them a feminist. What the fuck is up with that? If you couldn’t imagine another person’s struggles or couldn’t care about women having equal rights before you had a child, there is something seriously wrong with you.

I think if you just read the article without an understanding of the culture we live in, the blog post would seem innocuous. However, if you haven’t spent your life living under a rock, you couldn’t help but see the intense societal pressure placed on women to have children. It’s relentless and women without children are frequently portrayed as selfish and/or incomplete. Women who do not fit the mold are not only pressured, but are often excluded. Even I, as a mother, have encountered this. In my community, we are literally the only people we know (of all the families we have known over 6 years of schooling) who have one child. Every other family has two or more. And I’ve seen how we’re sometimes treated like oddities for having one child, like there’s something deficient about our family. Whatever…

The funny thing is, for all the pressure women receive to have children, the minute they do, that fact is suddenly a liability in their worklife. You realize the world is still designed under the assumption that women will stay home with their kids, even though most mothers now work. Any mom who has had to pump breastmilk in a public restroom can tell you that the world isn’t set up to support working moms. And that’s never been more obvious than right now. My son came home from school on March 13th and never went back. But somehow my husband and I were expected to work the same amount as we did before. At my job, it wasn’t even discussed. No one asked how they could help those of us with kids (a surprisingly small number of people at my place of work actually). My boss didn’t ask me how I was balancing work and schooling my child. And in Spring I did work my usual hours (and then some). I just gave up doing anything other than my job and supporting my child’s emotional well-being and schooling. And I didn’t spend nearly as much time with my son as I should have. I put work first as if we were living our pre-pandemic lives because I didn’t feel supported to do anything else. I worked myself to the bone and short-changed my son and for what?

For all that pressure we get for having kids, the minute a woman seeks support because their children’s needs are interfering with their ability to work, the message becomes “you chose to have kids.” I’ve covered for colleagues who had to be out for so many different reasons. And yet I feel shame if I want to flex my time so I can see my son perform in his play. Or if I can’t teach a class because my son is sick. Because women are supposed to be both 100% devoted mothers at home and 100% unencumbered devoted workers at work and those two paradigms should never meet. We can never be our full authentic selves as mothers at work if we want to be taken seriously. I’ll never forget when a library dean told me that people who want to have families and spend time with them shouldn’t take tenure track jobs. That was in my first week in a tenure-track job when my son had just turned two. Wow, ok.

But now we’re in a situation where these roles that were supposed to magically be hermetically sealed off from each other are colliding in epic fashion and in most cases, we have no safety net. No one with kids under high school-aged (and many with high schoolers too) will be able to work a full-time job at full capacity and adequately support their kid(s) without help. And most places of work I’ve heard about are either being extremely insensitive/terrible about caregiving or aren’t mentioning the issue at all (which honestly feels worse). Are any workplaces doing this well? I’d love to hear about them. I’m incredibly lucky that my place of work is still going to be remote at least through Fall, but I’m still expected to work a full-time job.

Please know that your colleagues with children are extremely stressed right now and for good reason. And it’s more than just the time it takes to help students with school. It’s stressing about your kid’s socio-emotional well-being and finding ways to keep them safe and emotionally well. It’s a million little decisions that always feel terrifying. Many parents have faced decisions this summer that no parents have faced before. My husband and I had to choose between sending our son to school half-time (with half the time online) or committing to fully online learning for at least half the year while coronavirus cases were steadily increasing. We had to think about logistics, safety, our son’s socialization and mental health, and our ability to visit my husband’s elderly parents who live nearby. And it’s not like any of the options were good — we were ultimately just choosing the best of the worst. And it was work! I was listening to every school board meeting and writing letters to the Superintendent, school board members, and other parents when their original plan was to outsource online schooling to a sketchy company. And when my advocacy work succeeded and we finally decided to have him learn online and felt ok-ish about our decision, the governor declared that K-12 schools couldn’t open until counties met pretty stringent benchmarks, so most of that agonizing had been for nothing.

Now, we have to figure out how we’re going to do our jobs while helping our son (who needs a lot of support getting a handle on what needs to be done, staying on-task, and getting organized) with fully online school. And, in the grand scheme of things, I recognize that my job is less important for our family than my husband’s. I know I’m the one who is going to have to do the bulk of the support when it comes to my son’s schooling and I’ll do it gladly. But as someone who is struggling to recover from work addiction, I’m worried about my ability to set boundaries on my work and time. And at a college where no one seems to have given thought to supporting working parents (or at least no one is talking about it beyond HR sending out the boilerplate about the Families First Coronavirus Response Act), I’m worried about whether I will get the support I need. If I’m asked to go back to work before my son is back in school face-to-face, I don’t know what I’ll do. And I think many mothers (and some fathers too) will be in the same situation, but this could have a significant and long-term impact on women’s careers and that is really fucking scary. Here are some bleak stories/studies from the New York Times, Fast Company, The Atlantic and USC on the subject.

This pandemic has been hard for everyone, but I think it’s been uniquely difficult for people who are caregivers, whether that is for a child, an elderly relative, or someone with a life-threatening or chronic illness. Making decisions for another human being who is dependent on you is daunting at any time, but particularly now when there is no history to rely on in making these decisions. My mental bandwidth is so maxed out right now. And I’d like to hope that people will recognize that it’s in the best interests of our society to have emotionally-healthy and well-educated children (and sane long-term colleagues) and will support working parents. If you have colleagues with kids (especially those with very young kids — I honestly don’t know how people with babies and toddlers are even working at all with them at home), try checking in with them. Try to help lighten their load at work. Working moms often have a hard time asking for help because we’re traditionally supposed to pretend our kids don’t make demands on our work time. If you’re a supervisor of people with kids or other caregivers, have open and frank conversations with them about their situation, their needs, and how you can support them. Make it clear that you believe their family should come first (in word and deed). And absolutely cut people, all people, slack right now. This is a time for maximum flexibility and humanity.

This crisis will eventually (hopefully) end and those working parents will (hopefully) still be at your place of work. How loyal will they feel and how much of a team player will they be if they were forced to make a choice between their job and their kid(s)? We are seeing people’s and companies’ true colors now. We’re seeing the very best and the very worst of humanity. Which side of that do you want to be on? Let’s be the village that working parents and other caregivers need right now. The last thing any organization should want right now is for their employees who are parents to take all of the 12 weeks of leave guaranteed by the Families First Coronavirus Response Act come Fall, so try to find other ways to proactively support them in finding a balance.

Image credit: Working mom by Ran Zwigenberg on Flickr. CC-BY 2.0 License