4 minute read
The Juggling Mother
THE
Coming Undone During The Age of Anxiety
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When the COVID-19 pandemic struck our part of the world this past spring, I did what most working parents did (after panicking, crying a lot, checking my symptoms hourly, and stocking the pantry). I put my head down, rolled up my sleeves, and got to work.
I recall feeling incredibly appreciative that I didn’t lose my job. We were a lucky, dual-income household, in a privileged social position with respect to both race and income. We were tasked with staying put while people around us lost their jobs, risked getting sick on the frontlines of the crisis, and were forced to process egregious displays of anti-Black and antiIndigenous racism against families and communities. by Amanda Watson
While I put my kids in front of screens from April to July so that I could keep working remotely, I was putting the finishing touches on my book about the work and family pressures that are disproportionately expected of mothers during these anxious times. That book was released this September. The Juggling Mother: Coming Undone in the Age of Anxiety greeted the world in the height of back-to-school pandemonium in BC and in the middle of an unprecedented opioid crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. The age of anxiety I was referring to has intensified beyond what we could have imagined even a year ago.
It has been incredible to connect with people over the themes I cover in my book, particularly in light of the disconnection that has characterized so much of this year. And what I might have called “juggling” in February might better be referred to as hanging by a thread ever since. Now that the book has hit delivery vans, I’ve been fielding two main questions above all others: how has COVID-19 made things worse for the juggling mother—the mother who scrambles to keep her multiple obligations together until she meets her emotional brink? And what are we supposed to do about this?
The first question is easily answered. Women juggling an unfair share of the load is a decades-old problem. We have known about it—intimately!—for a long time. But the unpaid, devalued, often-invisible work that falls on the shoulders of women more than it does on the shoulders of men is now laid bare for all—employers, in-laws, health professionals trained in COVID-19 testing (so many moms in those line-ups), and partners—to see. The effects are undeniable.
The second question is more complicated. We can easily point to social policy to help alleviate the problem. Universal access to child care, parental leave, affordable housing, and basic income would entirely change the landscape for families of all shapes, but I am afraid we can’t stop there. What I noticed when writing The Juggling Mother is the startling irony that part of what drives the unsustainable juggling act is a set of expectations I have of myself.
There is no tips-and-tricks list for this one. How can we dream up a new reality for busy families and burnt-out caregivers? How can we let go of impossible ideals of worklife balance when we are conditioned in their pursuit? We simply can’t go back to where we were a year ago: with women picking up the slack indefinitely and no end in sight. Research is already showing that women are considering leaving the workforce in numbers that would alter their financial sustainability for life.
Thankfully, we already have models for the kind of solidarity work that will be required for us to unlearn the impossibly high expectations of the juggling mother. Women across generations have been quietly doing it. Through formal election campaigns, political scandals, and economic downturns, they have been dropping off prescriptions, picking up children, cooking for special occasions, defending land, and drawing baths. They have been picking up the phone, inviting near-strangers over for tea, and advocating for people who need assistance advocating for themselves in our schools and hospitals.
This is the work that is needed now more than ever. It’s care work. It’s simple, yet it is too often seen as the clutter that gets in the way of our other goals. When I look around me and see my colleagues, friends, and relatives utterly coming undone with their impossible to-do lists, I am optimistic that this work can be seen as work. It can be redistributed across family members and we would all be better for it.
The Juggling Mother: Coming Undone in the Age of Anxiety was written by Amanda Watson, author, lecturer, and parent in Vancouver. Copyright © 2020 Amanda Watson. Reprinted with the permission of UBC Press. You can find The Juggling Mother at ubcpress.ca or by asking at your local bookstore. You can find Amanda @spindrwatson or
