Highlights
Print Post- Married motherhood during the pandemic wasn’t so miserable after all. But some moms did better than others. Tweet This
- Even in worst moments of pandemic, more prosperous moms fared better than poor moms. One explanation: wealthier mothers were more likely to have had a co-parent. Tweet This
- In 2020, 69% of mothers ages 18 to 55 were completely or somewhat satisfied with their life, compared with 61% of childless women the same age. Tweet This
Judging by its press since COVID began, you might think that married motherhood is a pathway to misery and immiseration. “Married heterosexual motherhood in America, especially in the past two years, is a game no one wins,” wrote Amy Shearn in one of many New York Times op-eds about the difficulties of marriage in the time of COVID. “Moms Are Not Okay: Pandemic Triples Anxiety and Depression Symptoms in New Mothers,” read a headline in Forbes. Bloomberg went so far as to suggest that family life was a financial dead end for women in an article headlined “Women Who Stay Single and Don’t Have Kids Are Getting Richer.”
The COVID-induced stresses of juggling work, child care, kids’ schooling, and lockdowns clearly made life difficult for many mothers, and navigating all of this with a spouse could bring its own challenges. “During the height of the pandemic, my mom-friend group chats roiled: I’m going to scream, typed women trying to do it all. I am seriously going to kill my husband and/or devour my young,” Shearn wrote. The New York Times parenting columnist Jessica Grose had a similarly dispiriting article, titled “America’s Mothers Are in Crisis,” pointing to a group of New Jersey mothers who had become so anxious during the pandemic that “they would gather in a park, at a safe social distance, and scream their lungs out.”
But was all of this negative commentary about marriage and motherhood, primarily written by and for left-leaning, affluent, educated mothers, an accurate reflection of reality? And today, aswe put the worst of the pandemic behind us, are America’s moms still “screaming on the inside,” to borrow the title of Grose’s new book? Are they socially and emotionally worse off than women without kids?
Actually, no. As tough as motherhood was during COVID, mothers were both happier and more financially secure than childless women during the pandemic. This gap existed before COVID, but it continued during the worst days of the pandemic and has remained since then. This phenomenon is especially noteworthy because moms, and parents more generally, used to be less happy than childless adults as recently as the 2000s.
Continue reading at The Atlantic . . .
Appendix: Additional Figures
