The kids are alright. It’s the parents you should worry about.

Hard truths for working parents during a pandemic. 

Working parents are drowning.

When the initial coronavirus shutdown dropped us into the deep end, we flailed briefly in shock as we watched our tightly yet perfectly packed calendars torn to shreds by the raging seas of a global pandemic. Then we did what working parents do: we found a way. We learned new tricks to squeeze an extra productive minute or two out of every hour. 

We made it through the summer without the usual camps and programs to keep our children occupied and our energies focused on our jobs. Our kids adapted. My four-year-old daughter has developed a whole new language for her playtime. If I ask her to pick up her toys, she’s now likely to respond, “In a minute, mom. I have an important call I need to take.” It is both sweet and horrifying to me.

Now with schools starting up, some virtual, some hybrid and some in-person, working parents feel the seas changing once more. We’re learning to swim again, but our bodies are weary. We haven’t touched our toes on land since March and there’s no shore in sight. 

There is so much content being written right now for working parents, suggesting new ways for people like me to “find time.”  We don’t need to read tips like “Cook meals in advance, so your family can grab food without interrupting you!” or “Make friends with screen time!” Working parents have long been masters of time management, calculating what calls can be taken from the road, what meetings are truly necessary to attend and what can be covered with a quick email—all in an effort to manage some semblance of a balance between work and home.

If there’s anything the pandemic has taught me, it’s that the separation between the working world and the parenting world is—and probably always was—wafer thin.

We have kept our fears silent. We have tried to put a smile on our faces not only for our littles, but also as we stare through the little squares on our laptops to our bosses, to our colleagues and to our teams. Every single working parent I know will quietly confess feelings of burnout, frustration and despair. They tell me this pace is untenable long-term and fear the day the delicate balance of their lives comes undone.

This is our list of truths; the things we wish we could scream aloud. 

• It is hard to ask for help. There’s a tally that is happening in the minds of managers and between peers, and working parents are terrified that any ask for assistance or extension no matter how small will count against us in the long run.

• We are exhausted. We have traded sleep for work, always fighting the nagging sensation that we are forgetting something important. We are trying to give our all to absolutely everything we do so that no one can penalize us for using the “kid card.” 

• Some people just don’t get it. We see it the subtle eyeroll that comes when our children make a sound in the background of a Zoom call, or hear it in the impatient tone a colleague has when a conversation is interrupted by another request for snacks.

• We long for a return to our old routines but fear what we’ll miss when we do. The gift of this pandemic is time with our children that most of us would never have had before. We’ve been able to witness the milestones that usually happened when our children were in someone else’s care. And the gravity of that reality is not lost on us.

This isn’t a rant. It isn’t even a plea for help. It’s a note hastily and faithfully shoved into a bottle then tossed out to the ocean full of other working moms and dads on the hope that when it’s found, it brings some kind of solace. My message is simple: I see you.