›› Chantille Viaud
I was on a zoom call recently when my toddler, who was at home because of a COVID exposure at his child care centre, started screaming like the world had ended. Turns out Moana had gone to credits and I hadn’t noticed in time. No one on my call batted an eye.
One of my colleagues, in an act of solidarity, turned her camera on at that moment to reveal her toddler in her lap, eating some crackers and looking at her phone.
This kind of thing, in our perpetual-virtual-meetings-while-working-from-home world, is both commonplace, once again, while still being incredibly hard and exhausting for many parents of small children. Some might say (and I agree) that it’s impossible.
Here are just a few key takeaways I have from trying to work from home while parenting during this pandemic:
Child care is an essential service. Without child care for health workers, our health system and our hospitals are unable to properly function.
Same goes for other essential services like grocery store workers, teachers, and firefighters.
A lack of child care options for families usually means fewer women choosing to join the workforce. By and large, job loss during the pandemic has impacted women more than men.
Child care is vitally important. Child care educators have a hard and incredibly important job. We have always known this, but the pandemic has underscored it in big, bold red felt marker. And yet people largely continue to take early childhood educators for granted.
These are the reasons why we so badly need a system that is universally available to anyone who needs it. And one that values and fairly compensates child care professionals for the essential service they provide.
And now I have to go, because my toddler just poured water all over the couch. At least I hope it’s water.
