 So welcome everyone to another crisis conversation live from the better life lab. I'm Bridget Schulte. I'm the director of the better life lab. Welcome once again to my home office. When we started these conversations as you all know, we started with the idea that we were all isolated and that this virus and pandemic was upending everything about how we work and live and our, and our family life. And it was it was an opportunity to come together to share stories and now as it continues on a week after week, we're really looking for understanding what is this virus showing sort of the cracks in the system. What can we learn and how can we emerge better and stronger. So today we're going to be talking about single parents. And we're going to start with Allison. Allison, we had an episode a couple weeks ago where we looked and we were talking about the gender division of labor at home, that women are still doing twice the amount of housework and childcare typically pre pandemic. And that's really an open question about whether the pandemic is making things worse or if there's more sharing or if this is an opportunity to reset. And you got in touch with me and you said that's all well and good but what if you are a single parent. And we do live in a country where the majority of children are being raised. You know, we have the most single parent households for children in this country. So tell us what what was it like before the pandemic and how are you navigating and surviving in the pandemic. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me Bridget. My name is Allison Griffin. I am a single mom of two boys. They are 12 and 10. Let me just start off by saying, and this is something that I tell them everyone has a story. And people are single for a lot of different reasons sometimes they choose to be single. Sometimes divorce forces them to be single they lose a spouse they lose a partner. And so I share my own story in the context of my own perspective and experience. I will say the pandemic has upended routines that I had very carefully stitched together over the last four years. I work remotely. I have worked remotely for 13 years. My current employer is based in Washington DC. I live outside of Boulder, Colorado. I travel frequently for my job. My boys, I have a custody arrangement where my boys spend half the time with their dad and half the time with me. And I will say up until about seven weeks ago, the process of my life was very carefully stitched together and what the pandemic has shown me is where the fault lines lie in the system that I had constructed for myself. My boys, you know, of course attend school full time, but they then partake in an after school program. So between the hours of 730 to six, I have consistent childcare or school arrangements for them, which makes I imagine makes being able to focus on work a whole lot easier. You can actually get it. You can actually get it done. Absolutely. And I would say over the last, well, so when all of this started, we were upon spring break and our schools closed for the week before spring break and then of course we had spring break. So for two weeks, as we were sort of starting into a new normal. I had to figure out what my boys were going to do for that time, but I think I took for granted that we that we weren't going to be in that situation for very long. I speculated it might be a few weeks. I certainly didn't expect that it would be months and now as the governor of Colorado has talked a lot about planning for the fall and planning to possibly be online intermittently. Wow. And so, you know, I begin to think not just about the next three weeks of school ends in 13 days. Yeah. And what summer will look like, but then how this routine is really going to change as I get into the fall semester. One of the things that's that that strikes me you talk for a lot of single parents. I mean the time use research shows that single parents are among the most time starved and busy of all people on the planet just because you have to do everything. And that you really rely on networks networks of friends networks of neighbors, informal informal networks, other family members, but in an era of social distancing you, you have no network. It's really all of you isn't it. That's right. I've been talking to a lot of my friends who are in dual adult homes, you know whether that's a spouse or a partner or a parent or grandparents or a friend. I don't have that luxury right now. It is me and my boys. And so what I said to those who have another adult in the home, think of all the things you do, and then think of all the things that the other adult does. Take that other adult out of the scenario and you are now doing what both of you do. And so for me, you know, I'm helping with homework at the same time that I'm on, you know, five to six hours worth of conference calls or zoom meetings. Resolving technology glitches when the you know my boy say the internet went down and I have to figure that out for all of us. I have to go to the store during the day because the store is closed at eight o'clock and so I can't wait until eight or 10 at night or just run out to pick up a single item. In Colorado, it snowed four times since the beginning of March. So I'm shoveling the walk while I'm helping with homework and thinking about dinner that night. So to your point, there isn't anybody else who can pitch in and even in the pre-pandemic era, when I would rely on friends and family or I would pay a sitter, I can't have anyone else in the house to help me with those things right now. Right. You know, we're waiting for Nasus Davis to join. We've had some technical glitches. If some of you are wondering why we got a little late start. So hopefully Nasus will be joining us soon. Let me come back to you Allison, because we were we were talking about work, you know, and what single parents. So you're juggling all of these things you don't have anyone else. And now you're doing homeschooling and, you know, taking care of children on top of all of that. We have work cultures that typically really reward people who are work first and are able to, you know, work long hours or drop at the hat. What's that? What's it been? What's that been like for you in the pandemic to try to meet some of those kind of ideal worker norms? Or do you, you know, how does that affect single parents in a way that maybe people with more support don't have those kinds of expectations? Sure. So again, just speaking from my own experience, my work, you know, even pre pandemic was pretty not stressful just challenging right pretty demanding between travel and expectations we were I worked for a client services firm and so you know being available to clients whenever they need that support is just a function of my my job. What has changed for me actually is, you know, given that I'd worked remotely for 13 years, a lot of my colleagues had not. And so now that the norms that I had established for myself as a remote employee, our organization is having to adapt and surface new norms for all of our team members who are working remotely. I would say that, you know, that has created, you know, created certainly a different work culture, but that's extended the day in a different way that I was not prepared for. My day is starting earlier as I try and connect with colleagues, sort of before the workday starts the work extends into the evening. And a lot of us have felt this, you know, we've lost track of days and time, as all of these activities have blurred together. And I would say, you know, the same as has been true for me but more so because everyone is is working at a different pace and at different hours because they are juggling and managing families in a different way. Right, right. Well, thank you so much for that Allison it looks like we've got noses on the line now. So if we could I'd love to go to you noses, you know, when we spoke we were talking. When I was doing reporting around health and health workers that you're a nurse practitioner in the Chicago area. And then you also became a foster mother to three very young children early on, just as the pandemic was starting to hit. So, can we go to noses. Let's see, are you there in us, can you tell us your story. Oh, great. Can you hear me. Yeah, now we can hear you. So, yeah, tell us your story so you, you went from, you know, working, being a nurse practitioner and working in the middle of this pandemic to working in the middle of this pandemic and all of a sudden being a mother to three children on your own. Tell us what it's been like for you. A total nightmare. Let's just say that I came from not having any responsibility but myself to having responsibility for now four of us. The kids are through the DCFS services, but they are not helpful at all either better they did not plan for ever having any kind of state of emergency situation. I had to figure out babysitting on my own, because of the simple fact that all of the day cares clothes. But when they close the, I was informed that the DCFS day care center was not supposed to close to these children. Well, that was a joke. So I have missed work. I've missed money. I've DCFS would not answer their phones. I did not return any of my calls when I did reach out to numbers that I did have until I call like spring field to get information. And finally I reached somebody who was not even on my case. And she kind of helped me through, which was a little bit helpful but I still struggle with the fact that I have more than one mouth to feed now still. I have itself is not that that helpful and being the understanding that I didn't cause this pandemic. And so when I need time off for these kids because I have no one to watch them. They kind of don't understand that and that's been a huge nightmare. Many wise it's been very tight. Again, I have more than one mouth to feed and milk is not free out there. Neither are the services obviously. And when you try to go into places I think I heard one of the people on here say something about, you know, not being able to make it to the store until eight o'clock but the stores have closed. Yeah, that ours here in Chicago, we're closing at five o'clock. So if I didn't get out, pack the kids up and have somebody help me or sit in the car. While I run in because of course you don't want to take the children in there only five month old twins and then a 15 month old. Wow. It's kind of scary because how are they going to eat for the rest of the night. I mean, you know, so you have these three, three children to five month old twins and you know, a baby just over one it sounds like. When the childcare center closed, you know, what did you do, you know, were you able to get like the emergency paid family and medical leave that Congress passed that was supposed to help people in your situation. When did you were you able to use that or what did you do. So, again, with that, I laugh at that. They got on TV, and they talked about how you were supposed to have free health care, I mean free childcare if you were a frontline worker. They gave a website that was already up and running prior to the pandemic, which was not free you had to put your credit card on there well if I'm not working I sure don't have money on my credit card. And then nobody could like stuff you through it you call you try to call around to get help to go through the website, not helpful at all they're like yeah well here's a website and just go figure it out. So what did you end up doing to, you know, to get childcare so you could go back to work. Honestly, I have to fly one of my friends in from out of state who was not working due to the same pandemic. So, I haven't even been able to pay her really, but because she's a good friend. She's been here with the kids. Helping to take care of them and do things for them. From time to time my boyfriend when he's not out going to look for certain work. He's here helping out to. I mean but it's been a total joke. You know, have you been a total. Did you did you have any like paid sick days that you could use to cover the. I had absolutely nothing. And the reason why is because I had a mother that just recently had a kidney so I was off with her prior to the prior to receiving these kids. And so I had no more sick time for a family lever anything so all of these days that I've been off have been literally out of my own pocket my savings is like completely depleted. I went from a 700 now to the 500. I mean, I've been trying to make ends meet and when I like I said when I reach out to DCFS. No help, no help whatsoever. And the money that I spent out I said hey could you guys at least reimburse me for that maybe I can make it a few more weeks. They tell me what you should have just told us what you needed and we would have got it for you. We don't plan on. We don't we don't we're not going to honor these receipts. I say well that's not what you tell me when you drop these kids off. Thank you for sharing that you're I mean I hate to say it but it does sound like a nightmare but thank you for sharing your story, you know we'll come back to you in a minute but at this point let me go to Nicole. I'll let you introduce yourself. You, you run an amazing project where you look at families and kind of 21st century families you, you know, you've heard Allison talk about all of the, the additional pressure that single parents face in a pandemic and narcissus story where she you know, if we're looking at how the pandemic is showing the cracks in the system she has fallen through every single one of them. So, you know, Nicole, what are you seeing out there what are single parents struggling with and what is this showing in terms of our system that isn't working and that does need to change. Well, thank you for having me. I think the short answer is that all of our systems to support families are broken. And if anything this has made that even more crystal clear. I think it's very, it's very clear that nobody raising children survives on their own. Everybody needs help. And I think what has happened to people like you, Nasus during in the midst of this is really a disgrace. And, you know, the only good I can hope from any of this is it's a wake up call to everybody that we're all independent interdependent. Nobody is an island nobody is completely self reliant, and our policies and institutions have failed entirely to keep us afloat and, you know, I think one thing I've been thinking a lot about in the midst of this is, you know, what's been so dangerous about the idea that is so this sort of cultural idea that sort of two married parent families, nuclear families are the sort of self contained and self reliant units that don't need anybody else and and that's really, you know, that's why they're there's something we should desire. And the reality is that even for two parent families, they're, there's everybody requires outside help whether that's paid help, paid domestic labor, or whether that's friends and family and neighbors stepping in is not possible to work and raise children with no other help. And, you know, I think one thing when it comes to single parents who are, you know, a quarter of children are being raised by single parents. And the, what has always struck me as really in the sort of the most insulting idea that people sometimes carry about single parents is this idea that somehow the reason to discourage single parenthood or the reason not to support single parents is, well, they'll become dependent on the system. Well, first of all, look at a person like Nazis. She's taken in and is trying to raise three children. If that's not being the opposite of that is helping the world in an incredible way. But I think, you know, what's so crazy to me is that if this moment doesn't prove to us that it doesn't even work for those nuclear family homes I mean how do we expect it to work for single parents, it doesn't work for anybody. And single parents are the front lines of so much of this and the fact that you know we can pass a stimulus bill that gives dual income earners that gives homes with two parents who are both earning incomes, twice as much money as really single parents is in itself I think an outrage. I mean what we know about single parents versus two parent homes is that if you have two parents you tend to have not always be almost always have more savings, more income and more hands to help. But if anything, in this moment, single parents should be getting at least as much if not more than dual income earner families, yet, just in the way that our policies tend to be punitive in general towards families outside of some nuclear kind of idealized We're doing it in the way we support single parents or I should say not support single parents in this case I mean it's it actually strikes me as it almost comically outrageous that that that essential workers are often exempt from a lot of the stimulus support. So we're telling people, and I'm assuming that noses you might be considered an essential worker because you're a nurse practitioner, we're telling people, you're exempt you have to go, you need to go to work. You don't get paid time off you have to go to work and Congress never provided any backup for those families when it came to childcare I mean that putting everybody in an absolutely impossible position and it was never good before the pandemic. But it is truly impossible for people now. Thank you so much Nicole, you know at this point, we've got Anne Hoffman on the line she's one of the participants. And are you there and you tell us your story. Yep, I'm here. Hi, my name is Anne Hoffman I am a single parent. But I also teach at a community college and my research area is actually on single mothers. And so many of my students who I work with I don't work exclusively with single moms but I can tell you my life has upended in the last eight weeks very similarly to Allison's in that I have a shared custody agreement with my ex husband but he's an essential worker is he's a he's a physician. So I am aware that I'm in a very different financial position than my students who are struggling right now. But my life like I said has upended in the sense that I don't have a 5050 custody arrangement right now because my my kiddos need to be with me, because my ex husband is working full time kind of around the clock. So I have this perspective and sort of understanding while my life is really hard and and it's just very difficult to focus right now to be honest. I hope my kiddos through their, their coursework and the things that they're working on here thank God I've got, you know, kiddos who don't have special needs that's a whole nother layer. But my students are not in that same position many of them are essential workers they're trying to juggle going to school, taking care of their kiddos many of whom are very quite young. They're putting themselves at risk each day and there are no safety nets for for their protection in terms of, you know, pay time off, even, you know, health care, more than because of their part time if they're going to school part time many of them are also working part time. So I'm just so aware of the vulnerabilities of this population and it's, it's terrifying to watch as scary as it is for me to walk through as a single mom I'm just aware that there are many people in much worse positions than I am and aware of the way that this rupture in our country is revealing so many of the revealing a crisis that has always existed, but is now visible because people who are in more privileged positions are feeling the crunch as well. Right. Exactly. Thank you so much for sharing that and let me go back to you Nicole. You know so here we've got this pandemic that's showing us these these ruptures across across race and class in particular. So what do we do what do we learn what should we do moving forward what are you know what are some policies and how do we design them. You know what are some things that need to change in our culture in terms of, of what we. How do we remove some of the stigma you know how do we how do we accept 21st century families and support all of them in whatever form they they choose to be configured in. How many hours do we have a few more minutes that's about it. I mean there is, you know, a lot to do. You know I think there's some obvious policy fixes and they're not going to be easy but I think if we haven't realized how critical they are now I don't know when we will. You know in the policy front, obviously, we need paid family leave for everyone we need paid sick leave. We need the broadest definition of family in those bills so we need to make sure that when we say you can take leave for your family that family includes foster children that it includes family like relationships chosen family etc. That is free or affordable health care for all that is not attached to employment and I'll add one of the things family story works on not attached to marriage the idea that somehow any of your benefits are contingent upon or on a marriage is is a is a really crazy idea that no no other, you know, none of our peer countries ever consider even our even our tax policy favors, not only you know, sexual married couples that also favors breadwinner homemaker couples that we really haven't seen since the 1950s. There is the yeah it's stuck in the, there's a few of our policies that are literally stuck in the 1950s none of them have evolved enough but things like tax policy, which favor the sort of breadwinner homemaker dynamic married parents, and, and also things like social security I mean you can live and raise children, your whole life with a partner that you are not married to but is just just like a married partner, and they can't collect your survivor benefits there's no real good reason for things like that so things like that have to change and I would say in general anything any benefits that's conditioned on a particular family relationship like a marriage is not really a good one because that is those are things that are really low and changing people's lives you can't assume everybody will get married that they'll stay married that their marriage will be good that they won't have to leave for a variety of often very dangerous reasons even so that's that's the I think on the sort of institutional front in our workplaces you know we have to walk the walk we can't just say balance is important. We have to think particularly I think one thing I hear all the time from single parents is, you know, there's a few particular practices that make single parenting completely impossible one is things like just in time scheduling not being able to know your schedule in advance is impossible if you're trying to plan care. It also makes your finances impossible. The other thing is even for higher income earners who are single parents who have more professional kind of white color class jobs the expectation that they travel and that they do evening events. Without stipends or anything to sort of help buffer that assumes they have somebody else who can care for their children the evenings and when they travel and that's not the case either for a lot of people why don't we give people stipends for for child care in those cases. And I think in general the only last thing I'd say is, you know, the major change we need going forward is we need to stop sort of assuming there's this hierarchy of family types that work. That we're all to have a similar one and that the goal is for everybody to get there because it's just not reasonable and it's not what everybody wants and even if they want it's not what everybody gets. Yeah, yeah. Great point. You know we have Liz Willen is an old friend of mine. I'm so thrilled that you're here we're in graduate school together I'm afraid to say how many years ago. Liz you've been writing a lot about the single parent challenge is going to college love to hear your perspective and what you're what you're writing about what you're seeing. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. I spent the week talking to single parents most of them who are students at community colleges. And I was trying to figure out how to make people understand just how vulnerable this population is already and I started with I got a study came to my desk that showed that even before this crisis one in five. There's one in five college students or our parents by the way that is not a statistic that anybody really thinks about and or aware of and now they're trying to navigate education at the same time as think about it's a perfect storm right there day cares are closed. And maybe they're working if one of the women I spoke with is working at a waffle house now she's only able to work one day a week on takeout and her friend and she and her friend are trading off for childcare on those other days. Well, childcare is closed schools are closed. And they're also trying to homeschool their children while finishing their education. We already had a college completion crisis in this country particularly community colleges have abysmal rates but now for this population it's so challenging. The other piece that we really haven't discussed here is the lack of internet and a lot of the community colleges that I spoke to realize as they try to reach out to students to help, how few had hotspots, iPads, computers, and if they did think about the competition you've got a couple of kids working trying to do their remote schooling and the parents are trying to do their work as well or at least their schoolwork. So I heard a lot of challenges but the one thing I can tell you that was really heartwarming about that story was that a lot of community colleges are doing a great deal to help these students there's food banks set up. They're calling regularly they're doing video chats. They're obviously highly invested in keeping this population in school. But the irony struck me out being a single parent going back to school to the woman at the Waffle House and Nisha Thomas that I was saying you've got 35 years old decided to go back to school to be an example for her children, single mom. And something like this happened and she just said I can't do this I can't do this too and everyone just got together there and said, we'll give you extensions will help you, you've got to finish. Yeah. And so she's staying in school. That was hard. Well that's, yeah, but look at she's bearing so much of that load on her own shoulders. Alison I saw you nodding vigorously let's go to you. What were you what's going through your mind as you're hearing some of these stories. Well actually just even as Liz was talking, you know, a lot of the work that I do on a day to day basis is in the higher education space and so, especially Liz illuminating you who today students really are. And the fact that yes one in five are parents, you know they're managing school and home and and childcare responsibilities. And I think you know the thing I'd like to at least maybe leave, leave, leave with from my perspective is, you know I think we have to be really careful about you know not making policy around just anecdote, but to really dive into the data. I know there's, there's work being done by imaginable futures. They have a and they're working with a lot of other organizations on the rise prize to begin to elevate solutions for not just student parents in college but you know parents across the board who are trying to support education and family at the same time. And I think if we can begin to gather data from, you know, so many different sources but you know like a USA facts right who they are calling data from government sources, both on single parents but also on coven response and how do we begin to do some of that data together to actually inform a lot of the solutions that Nicole was talking about. We have an incredible opportunity right now to, to tell these stories in a pretty powerful way, and hopefully make some really powerful change. Well I'd love to, you know, we're coming to the end of our time I'd love to go back to you Nosses. You know, here you are you've been through this nightmare, but you know opened your home to to three children who really needed that needed your help. You know as you, you know as you're dealing with the pandemic and moving into the future, you know what do you think that single parents need, you know what do we need to be learning and where do we need to go from here. Honestly, especially workers who are considered essential. They should have a stimulus package set aside for them so that you can be able to help the people that's in your household, and you won't have those those worries on top of, am I going to get sick just to go out and help somebody else, trying to work, trying to bring resources back into the home. As far as them offering out different resources it needs to be open to everyone and not just people who are not considered at a certain caliber so like nurses for instance, who don't even don't even count for the resources that you put out there. Congress really does need to do big time changes. They need to offer more hands on truly offer more hands on and not just stand on the news and say things that really does not exist. Yeah, you know, in your own experience so you know you you had said when we were talking earlier that you know that you'd really wanted to become a mother and so that's why you open your home as a foster mother, you know, given this experience is this something that you think you might do again. That's a good question. Speaking, if I did it, it would totally be on my own DCFS would not be involved so that means that I would have set aside the resources that I need to be able to take care of the children that I'm taking in. I would never open up my home and I hate to say that I would never open up my home to do it through DCFS and be put in a position where I have to now kind of it's like a, you know, sink or something like, are we going to be able to make it tomorrow. Or, and, and when you're your back is up against the wall that makes you so it's been crazy like, oh my God, I got all of these kids and me, I can't go to work because I have nobody to watch them. Almost maybe want to take the kids into the job and just sit them at the counter and say here I am I need to make money and you guys aren't helping me so here we are as a family we're going to try to do this together. Wow. And you go to work in a hospital where you're caring for for COVID patients which is dangerous for you for them to go to the emergency room now that's correct. And so, to be perfectly honest with you it kind of made me not ever want to go this route ever again. And I hate to say that because so many kids in the system that need to be cared for but when you're in a state of emergency, and Congress has the right to say well we're only going to help them but we're going to help them over here. That that's not a good look. Not a good look at all. Well, thank you so much for sharing your, your story analysis and Allison, Nicole, thank you for for coming and sharing your perspective and and Liz for sharing your stories as well. All of you for for being part of these conversations, helping us figure out what's going on and what we can learn and how we can emerge better and how we can support, you know, our single parents so that they don't, they aren't in this sink or swim kind of a situation moving forward. I'd also like to thank the new America and the events team, my own better life lab team my producer David Shulman. Thank you to all the participants for being here. Thank you for joining us next week we're going to be revisiting our the emergency paid sick days law and we're going to be talking to Jodi Heyman with the world policy. Research Center and where they've looked at paid sick leave policies all around the globe and how the US stacks up. So we hope you'll join us then. And until then, wash your hands, stay healthy, safe and sane and we'll see you next week. Bye.