COVID Lesson #4

Caregivers had better put up and shut up.

If caregivers cannot put up and shut up,

then they’d better blame and yell at each other.

It struck me just this morning that these two assumptions have been revealed in the barren landscape — that is, the foundational reality — that COVID has exposed.

When I say “caregivers,” I’m mostly thinking about parents — mothers in particular — and teachers.

I’m thinking of this evocative podcast in which an obviously excellent teacher is utterly flummoxed.

And I’m thinking of this evocative podcast in which mothers describe how incomprehensibly overwhelmed they are.

And I’m thinking of the war that parents and school systems have been waging over opening and not opening. The personal attacks on teachers and administrators. The wholesale frustration felt about unions that put teachers’ health before students’ needs.

In an impossible time, why did (at least some) mothers and educators

see each other as enemies?

What is it about us and our society that we caregivers go after each other when all of us are drowning in the same

impossible situation?

Shouldn’t we be linking arms and fighting the terrible unspoken unconscious assumption that caregivers — women primarily, women of color even more primarily — will just keep making the world go ‘round? Without help? Without acknowledgment? Without pay or with unforgivably low pay?

Isn’t that assumption worth revising?

Now I’m thinking about the debate over the definition of “infrastructure” inspired by President Joe Biden’s American Jobs Plan. Where the vast, fungus-like “care economy” finally becomes visible — and valued.

What are we going to do with this COVID lesson?