By: Lindsey Feitz

We made it in 8 hours flat, a personal record. I peed behind a dumpster in a lonely gas station somewhere in the middle of Kansas. Sammy was a trooper and slept the entire way. I pulled over in Flint Hills to make sure he was still breathing. He was, thankfully. Everyone says that I need to document this experience so I can tell him about the night I drove him through the state of Kansas in the middle of a pandemic and peed behind a dumpster. So, Sammy, if you have ever read this, tales from the COVID pandemic are true. I spirited you away in the middle of the night to keep you safe and sound and alive.

—Journal entry, April 4, 2020

In early April 2020, I decided what many would consider extreme: packing my seven-month-old son into the car and driving nine hours through the night from Denver to my parents’ home in Kansas City. Eighteen days of solo parenting during a global pandemic had brought me to a breaking point. This moment—fleeing to safety, peeing behind a dumpster rather than risking infection in a public restroom—crystallizes the impossible situation many mothers faced during COVID-19. It also reveals something deeper about the fragile networks of care that sustain families, particularly those headed by single mothers like me.  This autoethnographic reflection examines my experience as a single mother and professor from March through May 2020, during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on feminist scholarship and my journals, I analyze how the pandemic created what scholars have called a “cascading failure of infrastructure,” in which the support systems that mothers rely on collapse simultaneously (Collins et al., 2021;Li & Laughlin, 2023). I argue that this crisis exposed not only the vulnerability of childcare infrastructures but also the essential yet chronically undervalued role that mothers’ labor plays in sustaining families and communities.

Focusing on this critical three-month period when lockdowns first began, I aim to contribute to a scholarly understanding of how mothers experienced and navigated the pandemic’s early disruptions. While my experience reflects specific privileges as a white, middle-class professional with job security, it nonetheless illuminates broader structural issues about care work, gender inequality, and the insufficient support systems for mothers in America.

Infrastructure Collapse: The Cascading Failure of Care Systems

Well, it appears that 18 days is my personal breaking point of solo parenting. The last two weeks have been a whirlwind of never-ending Zoom meetings from school, constant worrying about COVID-19 spreading, and now I’ve officially got arthritis in my hands and my feet. Sammy and I are driving tonight—we’re leaving at 6:30 (bedtime). Fingers crossed, he sleeps the whole way, and I can find a decent cornfield to pee in.

—Journal entry, April 3, 2020

A few weeks ago, before my sabbatical began, I stumbled across the journal I halfheartedly kept during the pandemic. Rereading it was emotional, not only because it chronicles many of my son’s baby milestones, but also because it serves as a testament to my experience as a mother navigating the pandemic alone. I realized that my experience of motherhood and mothering during the pandemic are forever intertwined. And yet, ironically, I rarely mention it today, even amongst my mom friends. In some ways, it feels like COVID-19 never happened as we shuttle our kids back and forth from daycare, schools, and practices. Is it our collective trauma that binds us in silence? A desire to forget? Or have we been too busy “momming” to reflect, learn, and rally around our collective anger at how social safety nets and systems failed us? And by us, I am referring specifically to moms. I do not want to imply that dads and other male caregivers did not experience stress during pandemic parenting. However, this paper intentionally centers on the multifaceted needs, experiences, and impacts of moms (broadly and inclusively defined) who also worked for pay “outside” their homes during the pandemic.

As a gender and women’s studies professor, examining the gendered impacts of COVID-19 was part of my professional work during the pandemic. In May of 2021, I discussed the impact of COVID-19 on moms in DU’s Radio Ed podcast during the height of the pandemic. I remember trying to prepare for the episode- sleep-deprived and overcaffeinated- while taking care of my 10-month-old son. Listening to the interview four years later, it is impossible to miss the frenetic energy in my voice as we delved into how moms coped, and crumbled, with daycare and school closures while navigating the demands of working from home. This duality, being both researcher and subject, as well as academic and mother, deepened my understanding of the impossible position many mothers found themselves in during this crisis.

When the pandemic struck in March 2020, the interwoven infrastructures supporting mothers began to unravel at a stunning speed. Li and Laughlin (2023) describe this moment as an “..infrastructural disruption in which the cascading failure of childcare infrastructures exposed the background work of care as well as its vulnerability and invisibility” (p.4). The infrastructural nature of this collapse becomes clear when we examine the interdependency of our care networks. When schools and daycares closed, the informal networks many mothers rely on—such as grandparents, neighbors, and babysitters simultaneously withdrew due to social distancing requirements. I was fortunate to have a wonderful nanny when the pandemic started in March 2020; however, within days, my nanny informed me that she would be sheltering in place with her family. A few days later, my university transitioned to remote teaching. Like everyone sheltering in place in the early pandemic, COVID-19 turned my world upside down, and my childcare disappeared overnight. 

Research across a variety of fields underscores how the pandemic laid bare and intensified the gendered inequities and impossible expectations that mothers faced during the pandemic, particularly those who were juggling careers and jobs while raising children. When schools and daycares closed, many mothers found themselves responsible for caring for their children, in addition to their professional responsibilities. Collins et al’s  (2021) research highlights the gendered impact of school closures on parents of young children, showing that mothers typically reduced their work hours 4.5 times more than fathers as they absorbed childcare responsibilities that had previously been distributed across multiple care providers. Studies also consistently found that mothers took on more additional childcare, homeschooling, and housework compared to fathers during the pandemic (Collins et al., 2020; Dunatchik et al., 2021). Even when both parents worked remotely, mothers often absorbed most of the extra domestic work, with Collins, et. al (2021) noting, “…that even when both parents can work from home and may be more directly exposed to childcare and housework demands, mothers are scaling back to meet these responsibilities to a greater extent than fathers” (p.181).

As a single mother without a partner to negotiate with, I felt the weight of gendered expectations to seamlessly absorb the increased caregiving my young son required while also working remotely. My journal entries from this period document the stress and anxiety I felt as I navigated my dual role as the primary (and only) caregiver for my son and as a professor responsible for teaching and mentoring distraught undergraduate students during an unprecedented time. In late March, I described the paradoxes of my early pandemic parenting as”…exhausting and terrifying but also special and beautiful. I’m so grateful to be home with him full-time (University of Denver classes are online through the spring), but man, I’m tired. Working and mommying full time is no joke.” The compounding pressure of juggling solo childcare and working remotely full-time led to my breaking point in early April, when we made our middle-of-the-night journey to Kansas City. Having the support of my parents during that time was invaluable; they watched and cared for my son while I taught and redesigned courses for online learning and joined a stream of what felt like endless meetings about the pandemic’s impact on my university. And yet when I returned to Denver in May, I was startled by how difficult it was to rebuild a care network. In my quest to find a qualified babysitter, I ended up hiring and firing our first nanny, relearning how to survive on a few hours of sleep so I could work during the wee hours of the night and early mornings, and most importantly, I was reminded of the critical role structural support mothers desperately needed but rarely received.

Becoming the Infrastructure: Mothers as Essential Labor

Expecting anyone to be their “best self,” let alone a competent “mom,” after spending 14 days alone, trapped in a house with a rambunctious toddler, for fear of contracting or spreading a potentially deadly virus is completely nuts. IMPOSSIBLE. INSANE. UNREASONABLE. And yet, we (I?) are all doing it in one form or another. One foot, one hour, one day, one month…another month, and another…

—Journal entry, May 2020

If there was ever a time to acknowledge the collective anguish and stress experienced by American mothers, it was during the COVID-19 pandemic. And yet, most of the mothers I knew, particularly those with small children, felt abandoned by their social safety nets, their government, and their employers. Some, like myself, found refuge and support within their families, while others found themselves taking on double duty as they assumed the majority of the childcare responsibilities within their families. Five years later, I can’t help but wonder what lessons, if any, we individually and collectively learn about the demands placed on mothers?

Hindsight has the advantage of showing how, during the early days of the pandemic, when all other care infrastructures collapsed, mothers became society’s de facto caregivers. Motherhood scholar Andrea O’Reilly (2020) observes that during COVID-19, “Few have acknowledged, let alone sought to support, the crucial work mothers are doing as frontline workers to keep families functioning in these times of increasing uncertainty” (p.7). Adrienne Rich’s (1976) distinction between motherhood as an institution and motherhood as an experience provides another useful framework for understanding this moment, as the institutional demands of motherhood expanded dramatically during the pandemic, with mothers stepping in to fill care work traditionally performed by teachers, childcare workers, and other support providers. When combined with the fact that for many of these moms, sequestered in their houses during lockdown, COVID-19 mothering became especially intense.

In my case, this strain manifested in what I described in my journal during the early months of the pandemic as “a series of mildly depressing choices” each evening: “Do I: Clean? Shower? Lay down? Read some low-stakes but entertaining fiction. Open a bottle of wine and attempt all of the above. Call the NY Times’ Parental Primal Scream’ hotline and add my voice to the chorus?” The Primal Scream hotline —a real service established by The New York Times—served as a metaphorical and legitimate source of societal recognition of mothers’ distress during this time. One could pick up the phone, dial, and scream into the void, adding their voice to the chorus, which turned out to be primarily overwhelmed mothers.  The hotline represented one institutionalized response to mothers’ need for connection and catharsis. Jessica Grose’s 2021 article in The New York Times describes how the hotline provided a space for mothers crying out in bathrooms, closets, and cars, which she suggests serves as a collective testimony to the impossible demands of pandemic mothering. As one mother told Grose, “This pandemic has made me realize that maybe I’m not cut out to be a mother. I love my kids, but I don’t like being a mom. And I don’t like being a mom in America because it’s just so much more clear that America hates women and hates families.” (Grouse, 2021).

This contradiction of the reality of contemporary motherhood for many women—simultaneously essential yet unsupported—reflects what Nancy Fraser (1994) has famously described as the “crisis in social reproduction,” in which care work is required to sustain families and society but remains chronically invisible and undervalued. Fraser’s groundbreaking work in the mid-1990s called for a “universal caregiving model,” where both men and women combined caregiving and breadwinning responsibilities, rather than defaulting to the traditional breadwinner-homemaker arrangement that undergirds current workplace policies and culture.   The pandemic’s lessons make Fraser’s vision particularly urgent.  A universal caregiver model instead encourages policies that allow everyone, regardless of gender, to participate in caregiving.  This would include universal childcare, parental leave, and flexible workplace policies that take into account the demands and costs of childcare.

Feminist policy makers, sociologists, moms, and allies have long advocated integrating Fraser’s universal caregiver model into public policies, workplace practices, and interpersonal conversations to help lighten the load (physical, emotional, and financial) that many mothers experience. And yet, many women continue to struggle with the demands of juggling a career and childcare.

Looking back at my journals, I realize how lucky I was to be able to stay home with my son for months at a time and still keep my job. However, that relief was short-lived, as the realities of pandemic mothering began to set in as time passed.  Even with shelter-in-place orders lifted, I remained responsible for Sammy’s care, safety, entertainment, and emotional well-being 24/7, while also working full-time from home and managing our household. I felt the weight of what Andrea O’Reilly (2004) calls “intensive mothering” more acutely than ever – the societal pressure to be constantly nurturing, stimulating, and self-sacrificing for my child. Without childcare or the ability to socialize, I was isolated in my house, with my beautiful but busy son. The village I had envisioned and spent years building for us disappeared, literally overnight.

The pandemic provided us with an unprecedented opportunity to observe what happens to mothers when their care networks suddenly disappear. The results, not surprisingly, revealed devastating impacts on maternal mental health and professional trajectories. For heterosexual married couples, mothers reported greater increases in anxiety, depression, and sleep disturbances compared to fathers (Ruppanner et al., 2021). Research indicates that the pandemic intensified both the expectations placed on mothers and their mental health struggles, with studies documenting increased rates of depression and anxiety among U.S. mothers during this period (Henderson et al., 2022; Czeisler et al., 2021). Not surprisingly, the pressure of balancing work, childcare, and homeschooling led to exhaustion and burnout for many moms (Dunatchik et al., 2021). For me, this meant that when I wasn’t feeling like a failure as a mom, I often felt like a failure at work. My reflections on watching other mothers excel professionally during this period reveal the impossible standards many mothers faced: “It’s hard not to watch with envy how some of my peers have had the energy to run the ball over the finish line in meetings and on task forces that keep cropping up… They are destined for professional greatness, and I’m waving them on, unshowered, with wine in hand.”

Reimagining Care Infrastructure

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the fragility of America’s childcare infrastructure and the unsustainable expectations placed on mothers. As we emerge from the acute phase of this crisis, we must reimagine care as an essential societal infrastructure deserving collective investment and support. My personal experience navigating the pandemic’s early months with my then-infant son illuminates both systemic failures and possibilities for resistance. The infrastructural collapse that sent me fleeing to Kansas City in the middle of the night reflects broader policy failures that left mothers without adequate support during a global crisis. As I wrote in January 2021: “The silver lining, of course, is that COVID-19 helped make one of my dreams come true. I get to be a stay-at-home mom AND have a challenging career. It’s ironic. I’ll be a bit more specific next time someone asks the 15-year-old version of me about my future dreams.” 

Five years later, I cannot help but wonder what happened to moms during the pandemic. Are we okay? Did things get better for us? It is difficult to say, as little research on the multifaceted impacts of COVID-19 examines its effects on mothers. Recent studies suggest that maternal mental health challenges have persisted well beyond the acute phase of the pandemic, with mothers continuing to report elevated rates of depression and anxiety compared to pre-pandemic levels (Bahn & Sanchez, 2021; Shafer et al., 2022). However, comprehensive longitudinal research tracking mothers’ recovery and adaptation remains limited, leaving critical gaps in our understanding of the pandemic’s lasting effects on maternal well-being. Anecdotally, I am not convinced that the mothers in my orbit have fully recovered. I get the sense that many of us, including myself, have tried to put the stress of COVID-19 behind us; yet, there always seems to be something new for mothers to navigate—whether professional pressures, family crises, or the myriad daily challenges we shoulder with little institutional support.

Like many feminist scholars, I argue that moving forward requires both individual adaptations and structural changes ( Hochschild, 2012; O’Reilly, 2021). The pandemic has demonstrated the essential nature of care work and the unsustainability of privatized care arrangements. We need policies that recognize care as a collective responsibility: universal childcare, paid family leave, and workplace flexibility. Most importantly, we must elevate the value placed on care work in all its forms. As mothers continue navigating the pandemic’s aftermath, our stories provide crucial testimony to both the failures of our current systems and the resilience that sustains us through crisis.   

The lessons from pandemic mothering are even more urgent as we face contemporary threats to our social safety net—from cuts to Medicaid and Medicare to the ongoing absence of any long-term support for mothers- that disproportionately burden single mothers and families already stretched thin.  Dismantling our care infrastructure and structural supports makes it even more challenging for mothers and families to flourish.  Until we collectively recognize care work as essential and undervalued labor, mothers will continue to shoulder the burden of caregiving—but at what cost to their health, careers, and fundamental right to support when they need it most?

References

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