I’ve been talking to parents about pandemic stress for nearly two years, and I haven’t heard the level of despair that I’ve heard over the past week since the spring of 2020. Some of the words parents used to describe their January 2022: “devastating,” “disgusting” and “at a breaking point.” The difference with the Omicron surge is that the upset is more concentrated among parents of children under the age of 5.
Most American children 5 and older are going to class in person, and Covid vaccines are available to them. The vaccines remain unavailable to kids under 5, and it’s still unclear when vaccines will be approved for them. To perhaps point out the obvious, if they’re quarantining, many children under 5 can’t just hang out independently or remain quietly occupied for any useful length of time by TV or sustained silent reading. Which means remote learning for preschoolers winds up either as sort of a joke or requires intense parental involvement.
At the same time, more workplaces are open now than in earlier Covid waves. Most Americans aren’t working remotely, and even for the parents who are, being at home all day, trying to keep a toddler alive, fed and entertained makes it just about impossible to get anything else done. I spoke to a dozen parents across the country last week (and heard from dozens more in my DMs), and here are the themes I saw emerging from these conversations.
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