How Does She Do It?: Moms Who Write About Parenting During a Pandemic

"'I need my daughter in preschool as it’s the only thing that makes everything work right now,' says Bridget Shirvell, a single mom to a three-year-old who writes freelance articles and is working on a parenting book on resilient kids during the climate crisis. She says, between her work and the stress of pandemic parenting a kid who can’t yet get vaccinated, 'I’m balancing all of this while trying to keep squeezing in writing and everything feels at a breaking point constantly. It’s just exhausting.'"

There has been much ink spilled about the state of parenting in the face of the never-ending pandemic; bizarrely doubly invisible are people who write and live those pieces: the parents, usually mothers, who write about parenting. Parenting publications, with few exceptions, pay their writers and staff less than, say, finance or politics-focused publications. Part of this devaluation can be blamed on the patriarchy, of course, since women tend to write more in the parenting space and men lead the world of finance and politics. Part of the problem is also that parenting itself, especially mothering, is devalued in that it is not seen as an important function of society worthy of news.

We know it’s hard to work from home and freelance in the best of times, but how are the writers who identify as mothers in this particular space coping with this seemingly unending disruption to our and our kids’ lives? What’s it like to be covering one of the most urgent topics of the pandemic — while living through the unique hell you’re writing about — even as your beat is often considered fluff?

Logistics of Being a Writer/Mother

It’s never been easy to be a working mother. “We still don’t provide any support for the fact that school ends at three and jobs end at five,” says KJ Dell’Antonia, a novelist and co-host of the #AmWriting podcast who previously worked at The New York Times and ran the now-defunct “Motherlode” blog. Public school, aka the “semi-paid occasional childcare when there isn’t a pandemic and it isn’t snowing and it isn’t Columbus Day nine months out of the year that only happens once they’re five,” as Dell’Antonia called it, isn’t enough. She says the government and other systems in place “can either support (parenting) financially or we can support it by providing healthcare, but we do neither of those things.” There is no village.

The lack of support from governmental systems was never so clear as in March 2020 when every child was sent home. “In March of 2020 I went from having the house to myself all day to fighting for space to hear myself think,” says Maureen Stiles, a mom of three young adults in Washington DC whose college kids moved home and were working alongside a senior in high school and both parents. “The issue with older kids is that your house becomes a 24/7 operation,” she says, mentioning that, unlike littles, young adults are up at all hours which “leaves very few quiet hours for productivity and writing or editing.”

Since freelancing doesn’t pay unless you work, moms of littler kids often lost time and work during the school shutdowns because they had to facilitate online learning or come up with something to do with kids too young to tether to a computer all day. Then there were hybrid schedules, then a blissful period of full-time school this fall, and now, with the disaster that is these variants, some schools are back online and many kids miss full weeks of in-person school when sick or exposed.

“I need my daughter in preschool as it’s the only thing that makes everything work right now,” says Bridget Shirvell, a single mom to a three-year-old who writes freelance articles and is working on a parenting book on resilient kids during the climate crisis. She says, between her work and the stress of pandemic parenting a kid who can’t yet get vaccinated, “I’m balancing all of this while trying to keep squeezing in writing and everything feels at a breaking point constantly. It’s just exhausting.”

If everything is copy, the pandemic was a cornucopia of copy for parents who write, while also creating circumstances making it almost impossible to write it. “Having so much more to say but with so much less time and support to do the work of saying it, feels like a punishment only Zeus could have devised,” says Gail Cornwall, a freelance writer and mom to a blended family of five kids ages 7-17 in San Francisco.

Childless people turned to freelancing during the pandemic for the freedom of working from an empty home where they were safe from exposure and possibly boosted from unemployment or stimulus checks. Parent writers, however, had the opposite experience; they found themselves in a more crowded professional field and had to overcome a crowded home, as well. Until the child tax credit partway through this year and kids returning to in-person school in the fall, parents were largely without childcare or specific government assistance.

Devaluation both in money and importance

The 2020 census reported that 40% of families live with children under 18. The USDA says it costs at least 200k to raise one child, not counting college costs. During the pandemic, many young adults, especially those still in school, moved in with their parents, increasing the amount of support parents provide both in terms of time and money.

Except for a tax break, being a parent doesn’t pay. Neither does, in most cases, writing about parenting. Mommy blogs are a thing of the past, no longer popular, and not lucrative unless very successful. Famous Mommy Bloggers like Jenny Lawson, aka The Bloggess, and Glennon Doyle, whose Momastry blog isn’t linked on her homepage anymore, are more well known nowadays for their books. Some other famous bloggers have quit outright.

Writing about parenting often pays less than writing about nearly any other topic, like finance or health. Anecdotally, even within the same digital publication, parenting content budgets from editors for an 800-word piece seem to range from $100-300 for a personal essay in the family section, while in the finance or health section, even with a parenting first-person hook, rates often start at $200-$300.

There is value in parenting writing, though not monetary value. Parenting writing is “worth it as a way to communicate with each other and make people feel less alone. Whether it’s going to be financially renumberative for everyone, probably not,” says Dell’Antonia. Speaking from her experience at the Times, she says, “You don’t have to pay people to write about this because they are so desperate to be heard. Why doesn’t that work in sports? Why do we take sports writing so much more seriously? Is your sports team so much more important than your children?” Motherlode only paid $50 an essay, which is low compared to the $1/word in other sections of the publication but is commensurate with other parenting sites, especially for personal essays. As an editor, Dell’Antonia reports she was also paid less than colleagues in other departments.

Not only is parenting writing devalued in terms of pay, it’s also devalued in terms of whether or not it’s deemed “important” compared to other news, something Dell’Antonia felt strongly at the Times. Now, “There’s an interesting (and frustrating!) juxtaposition of the world needing more focus, advice, and solidarity on parenting while not having the bandwidth to hear about it,” says Angela Dallesandro, a parenting educator who homeschools her two kids, four and six, in New Jersey. While most publications have a parenting or family section, parenting content is only front page news in the case of a mass shooting (though, with the prevalence of them, that’s not even always the case). The lack of treating parenting issues like paid leave or equitable education seriously contributes to the lack of resources for parents and children.

Pandemic parenting pivots

Many moms who write, due to the devaluation of parenting content, are forced to change their schedules or pivot to other niches or professions altogether, a practice the pandemic amplified. “I had to shift my schedule to wake up at 6am and work before everyone else got going for the day,” says Stiles. Other parents said they worked at night or did a “split shift,” working hours opposite from their partner to maximize parenting and work time — something single parents cannot do.

Many parenting publications got COVID fatigue in terms of the types of stories they wanted to run. “As far as writing and creativity, I really pivoted to more editing work as I exhausted COVID topics to publish fairly quickly. I supplement my passion with long-standing editing jobs which are steadier and more lucrative,” says Stiles. Parents were still pandemic parenting, but no one wanted to read about it anymore. Many parents moved away from parenting writing, specifically, and wrote about health, wellness, finance, or other, better-paying topics.

Giving up the dream

Many moms had to take a step back or stop writing, a trend that affected mothers more than fathers during the pandemic across all professions. “The weight of all the bodies in my house and crushing disappointments of missed opportunities (my son was due to graduate college May 2020) were too much to overcome creatively. That blinking cursor on a blank page became the symbol of all the emptiness we felt, so I gave myself the grace to step back for a bit,” said Stiles. She’s not the only one. “I have taken six months off of my own work, something I’m privileged to be able to do, just to be more available to my kids,” says Dallesandro.

Dell’Antonia thinks that, someday, all parents give up on writing about parenting, saying, “I think most of us age out of this. My kids are older and I am older.” Moving out of the parenting writing space and onto other things might be a natural progression, leaving room for the new batch of exhausted parents who are desperate to discuss the highs and lows of raising children.

The future of freelancing mothers

We keep saying the pandemic is going to end, and, please oh please, let it be so, but the toll it took on women in the workplace is significant and will have long-lasting effects, according to a study by McKinsey and Company. Their analysis of the data finds that to repair our global economy, we need to make “investments in education, family planning, maternal health, digital and financial inclusion, and correcting the burden of unpaid-care work related to childcare and caring for the elderly.” All of these tasks, especially education and childcare, are traditionally “women’s work” or relating to gender disparity.

Writing about these topics and giving a voice to the issues that will help our economy, yes, but also our women and children, is the task moms who write about parenting now face. Even though parents are told their work at home is of less value than work outside of the home and, even though those who write about it get less money, parents who write about parenting are going to increase visibility and transparency.

“To ask parents to take this on a third year into a pandemic feels almost cruel, although it’s also the perfect time to spotlight how our own mental health impacts the culture of our household,” says Dallesandro. Parents can also speak out about the impacts of inequalities in classrooms, healthcare, and other areas that affect families. In this “unprecedented” crisis, change can occur, but the power of the press requires parental guidance.

In terms of valuing that parents’ problems are worth writing about, Dell’Antonia urges parents to avoid “devaluing that you are suffering by saying others are suffering more…mourn the losses that are smaller and yet still worthy of mourning.” She has hope for the parenting writing space, saying, “I think that as much as it feels like screaming into the void, the void is getting more receptive,” and that these stories are “getting more play. And it’s not all women’s voices anymore and it’s not all white upper middle class voices anymore. It’s a much bigger conversation that everyone is part of.”

While parenting writing and the parents themselves are still devalued as we round the corner of the third pandemic year and face another potential round of school closures, parenting journalists have an important job, which is to demand pay transparency and higher rates, tell stories of parenthood that shed light on issues, and, of course, raise the next generation.

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