COVID is making martyrs out of mothers

my news broadcast in a room above my garage. If you told me a year ago that motherhood was going to get more stressful, harder, and more time consuming, there is no way I would have believed you. And I say that as a mom with all sorts of support and privilege. But the truth is right now, lots and lots of parents, specifically moms, are really truly struggling. On this podcast, we want to get straight to the point

and leave you with some time to think. So in this episode, we're talking about what it's really been like for moms during COVID and what it reveals about the reality of motherhood in America. I'm Stephanie Rule, MSNBC anchor, NBC News Senior correspondent, And this is Modern Rules, a podcast from NBC Think and I Heart Radio. I can't think of many times, at least in my lifetime as a mother, that other events have tested us more than

COVID has. So we're trying to ask the question on this episode of Modern Rules, how is this pandemic raising the stakes from mom? I want to begin this conversation by bringing in a guest. I'm very excited to introduce you to Danielle Campamore. She's a contributor to NBC's opinion and analysis site Think. She's a mom herself with a one year old and a six year old. That's quite a split, and in her piece, she looks at how moms have responded to this pandemic in a very specific way,

and that way is drinking. Danielle, thank you so much for writing this. Thank you for being here. I want you to share with us why you wrote this piece. Really, I wrote this piece because it was a personal one and I realized how much my drinking had increased as a result of the pandemic. My partners and a a central worker who works at a Amazon facility out in Staten Island. So I was managing my son's school, my one year old.

I was working, and I was taking care of breakfast, lunch, and dinner and managing our home while he was gone. You know, he's still working twelve hours a day at warehouse and having to take his clothes off before he even comes in to the house and shower before he touches me or the kids. And it got to be so overwhelming. My mental health was declining an alarming rate,

and to cope, I was drinking. And then I was drinking more and more and earlier and earlier, and eventually looked around was that this is not sustainable, This isn't healthy. But right now, when you think about a day in our lives during COVID, you're preparing three meals and snacks and then figuring out how are you getting to the store. You're actually going to school with your child, and you're doing your job. So can you just speak to us about what that day looks like in order to get

everything done. You know, you're waking up at four o'clock in the morning and trying to start your work day before your children wake up, and you have to do breakfast and then that's one load of dishes, you know, and then it's it's zoom, it's zoom meetings for you, zoom meetings for your kid changing diapers. There's no one except myself to really acknowledge all the work that is being done. And I think the thanklessness on top of everything else plays a huge role in why moms are

exhausted and depressed. And then I realized I wasn't alone, and so many of my friends who are mothers said that they're drinking was increasing. I was seeing that, you know, talked about on message boards and Facebook groups, and suddenly realized, this is something that's happening right under our noses, and I mean to talk about it. Can you speak to this actual underbelly about this drinking, because it's not celebratory drinking. It's not a funny ha ha, it's not Oh, this

is motherhood self care. You know, glass of wine turns into a bottle of wine, whoops. It's a real issue where moms are drinking and unhealthy ways, at unhealthy levels. It's easy for us to say that this is a COVID nineteen pandemic problem, but the mommy wine culture has been around for a very long time, as has our

lack of systemic support for moms. In more and more American families, both parents work, oftentimes women are the primary breadwinners, and then in other families there's only a single parent. But the American mom carries the weight of the children and put me in the luckiest girl category. I'm racing inside to a lunches that they don't want to eat, and even if it's the most basic lunch, and and an outsider could be like, yo, you just have to make your kids lunch. Y know, just making your kids

lunch still takes thirty five minutes. And so you did allows the job at it, you weren't good at work, and you just feel like this blows. I thought everything was supposed to get better. Exactly that gets reinforced with this idea that as moms, we can't complain because this is what we signed up for. This is not what I signed up for when I became a mother, though

this was not on the ticket. It was like some silence and some independent time where I can focus on any other aspect of my life that isn't tied to motherhood. And it's an impossible ask right now. So I don't. I don't know when that will change. My partner considers themself to be a feminist. I'm a feminist, and I honestly thought that we had a pretty decent division of labor, but we didn't, and we had to really base that.

But it hasn't been and easy, and it's been born out of a lot of really tough conversations and us really having to face the inequities that were existing prior to COVID in our own relationship. We'll be back after the break. Everyone has experienced some level of loss, but hasn't only exacerbated the fact that those who have more it's easier for them to see the silver linings. And because many people who can say that are in a

very privileged situation. Absolutely, I mean that coronavirus was impacting black and Latin X community is at higher rates anyways. Tack on that with just the huge wage gap between black and brown women and white women, tack on the majority of essential workers are black and brown people. Even in my own experiences as a Puerto Rican woman who's extremely white, passing the benefits from that privilege exponentially, I've literally stopped and been like, have I not only harmed

the quality of my life. Have I harmed my career to such a point that there's no going back? And have I actually harmed my children because I haven't been able to set them up the way that affluent white parents have been able to set up their kids with tutors and child and the nanny and all this stuff. And now, I mean, who knows when this will end? Is my one year old soon to be two year old going to even know how to interact with other children?

I mean, parents always worry, but the worries that parents are facing now it's on a whole another level. There's been moments, as much as I love my children, where I just think about how healthier I would be mentally and physically, um, perhaps how healthier my relationship would be if I wasn't totally responsible for the care of two human beings. This has been extra complicated because we can't rely on friends or neighbors or our moms because the

health risks. But even the mom's support network is other moms were just burying ourselves. Is there somewhere else in society they could say, we need to sound the alarm if we want our families to thrive some to how we hold a motherhood in this country. We have associated it with martyrdom. The more you give up, the better mom you are. All of these mixed messages that we've been forced to choke down as moms since forever I've

been bubbling him. Now, when that speaks to a lack of understanding and tangible gratefulness for motherhood and parenting in general, then let's talk about implications. We saw moms taking on homeschooling, housework, all sorts of job stressed that they hadn't before pre COVID. It did feel, at least from a branding perspective, like

we were closing various gender gaps. Were we actually closing the gender gap or were we just putting lipstick on this and celebrating big corporate diversity conferences and take your kids to work day, But at the end of the day,

was never actually getting better. We've never valued the unpaid labor of mothers, whether they're working outside the home or in the home, working moms worth managing the majority of childrearing and household responsibilities prior to COVID, even though more of us are working outside the home and now during COVID, while we are working and managing even more of the child care and responsibilities. Dads are three times more likely to actually get promoted during this time than we are.

Eight hundred and sixty five thousand women were forced out of the workforce just last month because we don't have access to childcare. We cannot manage both, and so women are making the difficult decision. They're choosing their children and their families, and they're leaving their careers behind. And this is all because we value motherhood insofar as it is martyrdom. The more you sacrifice, the better mom you are. Think about the way it's even reported women have chosen to

leave the workforce. How much does affordable child care play a role in this? Care is a huge issue. It's the reason why we have these non choices and get forced out of, you know, our career trajectories and the workforce. Just this year, assemblywoman in California was denied the chance to vote by proxy, so she brought her newborn to the assembly floor to cast a vote, and we covered it as look at everything moms can do. Moms are so incredible, so strong. No, that was not the story.

The story was that this was ridiculous and that we should have allowed this mother to vote by proxy in the middle of a pandemic and not have to bring her newborn to work. But we don't treat moms the way that they should be treated, which is autonomous human

beings who have needs and who deserves support. It's not necessarily a choice to leave the workforce, right when when you think about the way corporate structure was designed, whether it's business or government, it was designed in a way that as you moved up the ladder, there was another human in your life, a wife, a mother, who took care of everything else, and you just had to go to work. Moms have said that they don't feel valued.

Do you think it's worse now? If we really valued moms here, then we would pay them equal wages for equal work, and we'd have mandatory paid family leave, and we would have access to affordable childcare, and you know, we would do something about the maternal mortality rate. But we do none of those things. Instead, we just give moms a patent of back, say oh, you're such a good mom for sacrifice and so much. Here's a bottle of wine. And that's all that we do for moms.

Put all of this aside, there is no at least for me, I'm going to say, there is no greater joy than motherhood. But kind of can you blame a lot of millennial women right now who are saying, hold on a second, I'm seeing the impact this is having on mother's lives, on their careers, on their well being, their happiness. Maybe I don't want to have kids. Do you think that's a momentary thing or that could actually last.

Pre COVID, you didn't have to look very hard to see how little working moms were supporting how difficult it is to be a working um. We saw there were studies that were showing, you know, the millennial women were putting in any plans to have a family on hold so that they could establish their careers. I definitely can't blame them. Now, then did COVID just show us and

then that moms were never really valued? That makes me personally feel like I've failed, and you know, to be quite frank, and I think this is something a lot of parents are feeling, and moms particularly but are so terrified to say, a lot of moms just don't have access to any other type of support that allows them to explore other identities other than just being a mom, and that is not what motherhood is about. How unhealthy is that women? Right now it's outside of their control,

but they feel like complete failures. Is that what makes you know? Quote this time different in normal times? Like the truth is real time parenting is never that fun. This is so much more than that because you are carrying this weight, right, I mean, it's an elongated period that we don't have an end date for. So we are in crisis mode and in triage mode. I have to worry about the right here and the right now and how I get from day to day to day.

I think that if I was really valued as a mother, the shallow congratulatory you're doing great, I can't believe you are doing at all. I don't know how you do it. That would all stop, and so how we really do that? All the hallmark card congratulations in the world aren't going to make us feel any more valued or any more supported. But I also simultaneously do see a light because I

was able to write a piece like this. Working mothers, mothers who worked in and outside of the home, who are working from home now, as well as other people who aren't moms, are looking around at what is happening and saying this is not right, this is not sustainable,

this is unhealthy, and we need to change it. So when you write about this, you take the shame away, and I really appreciate you sharing this difficult time in your life, sharing what's happening to so many other moms out there, because it's got to start with a conversation. M This is such a hugely stressful time for families. We can't give a to anything, and we feel like we're failing at everything. We don't know who to turn

to because everyone's feeling loss. As stressful as this time is, the ability to just be in this moment and appreciate what we have has never been more clear. In this podcast, we're trying to get straight to the point and leave you with some time to think. Something Danielle left me thinking about is this motherhood, like almost everything else in life, isn't one thing. It's not a bucket you can just

put someone in and set aside. If we gave moms back a quarter of what they give an unpaid labor, what would that look like and what does a more sustainable view of parenting and motherhood look like? Tomorrow. If COVID is a mirror, do we really like the vision of motherhood that it's showing us? And if we don't, what do we want to see instead? Modern Rules is a production of MSNBC and I Heart Radio. The podcast is hosted by me Stephanie Rule and executive produced by

Mike Fiett and Katrina Norvell. Meredith Bennett Smith is Senior editor for NBC Think and our editorial Lead. The podcast is engineered and edited by Josh Fisher and special thanks to Katherine kim, Our Global head of Digital News. Right here at NBC News and MSNBC