You are not a bad parent because you didn’t anticipate a global pandemic
By: Modern Parent
Tags: Advice, Family, Parenting

Photo by Dimitri Houtteman on Unsplash

By Theodore Bozevelt

You are not a bad parent. You are not a bad person.

You are not a bad parent because you are overwhelmed by a situation that none of us anticipated. You are not a bad parent because you didn’t anticipate this.

I have seen some people express the following idea, either thinly-veiled or overt: If you didn’t want to take care of your kids 24/7, you shouldn’t have had kids. What did you expect?

You expected difficulty. You expected challenges and rewards. You expected sleepless nights. You expected diaper blowouts and the terrible twos, some weird problem where the baby only sleeps when being rocked or listening to Paula Abdul, neighbors who are nosy about details but scant on providing help.

You expected to continue with your chosen plan of staying at home or going to work. You expected to find a babysitter and worry that the babysitter would hold the baby at a wrong angle when feeding and make the baby spit-up. You expected to be able to find a babysitter, and you’d worry that they’d let your kid watch a different TV channel than normal while they sat on their phone. You expected that, when worst came to worst, you could call a friend or aunt to hold the baby in the middle of the night. You expected that someday you’d need an hour away from your 5-year-old and 8-year-old, and you’d let some other parent take them to the park, and maybe your8-year-old would get a cut and bruise because they fell off the top of the monkey bars, and you’d feel guilty.

You expected that your mom or mother-in-law could come to “play with the baby,” and she’d end up doing laundry. You expected that you could drop them off at your dad’s place for a weekend and have a romantic night with your partner, just the two of you. You expected that your husband or wife could hold the baby when the baby got their shots because you can’t handle seeing them hurt even a little bit. You expected that you would cry when you bought their first backpack for pre-school, marveling at how the backpack was twice the size of them when they were born, and now they’re wearing it for a whole day away from you.

You did not expect that it’d be dangerous to go to the playground. You did not expect that you couldn’t get out of the house in cold weather because you didn’t expect indoor places to be closed or restricted. You did not expect that you would have to be a working parent AND a stay at home parent at the same time. You did not expect that Lysol and toilet paper would become scarce in March, and you’d have to explain to your recently-potty-trained 4-year-old that they can’t pull down the whole roll. You did not expect to see them in their child-sized mask, and you’d want to hold them because a kid in a mask is so, so fragile.

You did not expect that your 60-year-old mother or your 78-year-old aunt would not safely be able to take the baby if you needed it. You did not expect that every friend or coworker might be a risk. You did not expect that safety policies at the grocery store would spark political debates in your family. You did not expect that your spouse or family member who worked outside the house would either not be able to play with the kid or that you’d be terrified every time they played with the kid. You did not expect that hearing someone sneeze would fill you with fear because you did not expect someone else’s sneeze to be dangerous.

You did not expect that you would get annoyed at your spouse for how they acted while home 24/7 with you all day, because for most of history in most of the world, people got to leave and walk around and, at the very least, go to work or bicker at a market. You did not expect that you couldn’t call on your family or neighbors to help you because, for most of history in most of the world, your parents and your aunts and your neighbors could safely and easily step in, and you’d do the same. You did not expect that you had to play with your kid all day every day because, for most of history in most of the world, kids could entertain one another.

We didn’t anticipate this. Being fearful and angry in a world we didn’t anticipate doesn’t make you a bad parent. You are a good parent. Believe me, you are. Stay strong.