Browsing the "parenting in the age of Coronavirus" Tag

Poetry

Postpartum depression during a pandemic

February 15th, 2022 | by Amy Mattes

The house is living and breathing windows lifting curtains let old air out. An air between seasons. Her body is living and breathing open organs stretching in the


99 Problems

Home

January 20th, 2022 | by Jade Sanchez-Ventura and Ro Agents-Juska

Though I’ve lived, mostly happily, in the same apartment for seventeen years, I spent this past September and most of


99 Problems

I Am Afraid / I Am Not Afraid

August 17th, 2021 | by Christina Yovovich

"You said you couldn't do that to me again," he told me this summer. Meaning that I couldn't make him spend yet another year alone in the den, seeing his teacher and peers only over a computer screen


99 Problems

Carriers

March 22nd, 2021 | by Cheryl Klein

Privileged parents are getting a dose of what poor parents have always known: When the system fails, we will be blamed and pitted against each other


Comics

Here We Go Again: A Comic

January 29th, 2021 | by Lisa Lim

Remote learning or in-person learning? Whatever decision you made, you had to stick to it for the rest of the school year. No backsies. What made it even tougher was deciding whether to stay put at my in-law’s house in the middle of nowhere, or go home to the city.


99 Problems

Waiting for Snacks

July 17th, 2020 | by Meghann Haldeman

Godot is a metaphor for so many things; God, yes, but also a vaccine, the election, snacks, the next Amazon package.



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  • “You’ve already told me that story,” he said. Switching gears, he asked, “Why isn’t my father around?” #breastfeeding #parenting #fuckit #protest #teenagers #sexualviolence “Over time, Anabelle learned to talk about her feelings. She said saw her birthmother in the sky. She drew a picture of grief moving through her body like water. When she had more language, she began to talk about her losses.” “I’m not sure why I read that poster and thought that it applied to other mothers, other people’s children. But it probably has something to do with the shock I felt two years later when a neurologist confidently diagnosed “Autism Spectrum Disorder” and I responded with at least twenty “What about…” type questions. I had described my dynamic, interesting, loving toddler to this doctor, and her response sounded dire and clinical. That poster was the same. All of it seemed so unfortunate.” “Someone hit the call button. No one came. Someone rushed to the nurses’ station; still no one came. The contractions, a creature, twisted my uterus, lancing its nails. I tried to breathe through them, but there was no space, no time.” “But when, one-by-one, natural disasters ransacked too many of the communities we visited, including my home-state of California, I began to spiral into a grief I didn’t know how to support. I came to realize that our climate crisis wasn’t off in some far-flung future. It was here. Now. I’d birthed two perfectly good humans, boys who wanted to set up lemonade stands and play soccer, but who would be tasked instead to worry about rising seas and firestorms.” “I have to say,” my doctor said. We were still in the OR. He seemed saddened. “There was a uterine rupture. A large one. I have only seen something like this four times in my career.” “This is the part where I am supposed to articulate that taking time for myself allows me to be a better a parent, which is true. But the compulsion to footnote derives from accepting the baseline that I should feel guilty at all for taking time for myself, which I do not. I’d meet my pals for dinner, go to a movie alone, or attend a weekend bachelorette trip even if it resulted in worse parenting. Parents deserve pleasures unattached to their children.”

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