2020, The Year Known as the abolishment of Two-Income Households

My family and I reside in Westchester County, New York. One of the most expensive counties in the United States has never been easy for any middle-class family such as mine. Most households rely on both parents working full time so they can provide for their families. In recent years, more than half of American households with two parents are working full time have doubled from 1960-2000. Most families have found that there must be a balance of household chores between both parents due to both being employed full time. You won’t find many households that a wife had hot coffee and breakfast along with the mornings’ newspaper waiting for you at the kitchen table before you left for work. Then her day would consist of tending to the children and household chores. By the time her husband came home after a hard day’s work and welcomed home with a delicious home-cooked meal.

My husband and I both worked two jobs in the past years to keep our family of five afloat. My husband works as a Custodian during the day and delivers pizza four nights a week. I work in medical Administration, completing my college degree online, and two to three nights as a waitress until Covid-19 arrived. Before I jump into life after Covid-19, I want to discuss how our life was before the virus imploded our lives.

Here’s to hoping as you read, you can keep up with our schedule because it sure was hard for my husband and me too. My husband left for work at 6 am, while I handled getting three kids up and ready for school. There were years when all three kids went on separate buses to different schools simultaneously; please imagine the fun in that. After I got the kids off to school, I headed into work for the next 8 hours. My husband gets off work between 2:30-3:30, so his job was to handle pick up, after school activities, preparing dinner, and straighten the house because most days, I left it a mess in the morning because there simply never was enough time. I would usually get off work around 5-6 only to get stuck in traffic most nights only to come home to having to eat dinner standing up while assisting with homework, preparing for the next day, getting the kids showered and in bed between 8-9. Finally, hitting the pillow only to hear the alarm at 5 am again the next day. Keep in mind that some nights it was only one of us handling the tasks mentioned earlier because either my husband and I were out working our second job.

They say weekends are for relaxation, well cheers to those people because I don’t know what the hell relaxation is, especially on weekends. Weekends in our home consisted of deep cleaning the house, yard work, food shopping, meal prepping, and the kid’s activities. We have three kids, and there are times all three are involved in at least two activities, which are at all different times on separate ends of the earth. My husband and I try our best to juggle which of us takes what kid to what activity and many parents in the same boat rely on other parents for carpooling. On Sunday, I spend most of the day food prepping for the week. I like to make at least 3-4 different meals and freeze them to make it easier and faster to get dinner on the table during the week. Therefore, what is weekend relaxation, and how do I get one of those weekends? These days I’m lucky if I can fit one of Tito’s dirty martini into my weekend schedule.

I’m going to be completely honest, and please don’t tell my husband I am saying this cause I don’t need to blow his head up but, I would never be able to do this without him. I look at single parents in awe and am amazed at their accomplishments to support a family on their own. My husband and I are a team; we share household duties, always make sure one of us is home for the kids. My husband cleans, cooks (BBQ), and isn’t afraid to drive a mom-mobile to get all the kids to baseball practice. Over the years, most men have had to evolve to sustain a home with both parents working full-time.

The year 2020 bought an unforeseen change to our world that nobody expected nor was prepared. In March 2020, my job cut my hours to part-time as I had to be home with my kids as their schools were mandated by the state to close. By the end of March, I lost my waitressing job because restaurants had been advised only to provide take-out and delivery, and there would be no indoor dining. In June 2020, I lost my job entirely, and our world crashed, savings depleted, and we relied solely on my husband for income, which we never did before. Today, as I write this story in October 2020, I am still home every day with my children and still unemployed. I apply to many jobs daily, but none have worked out, and my husband and I agreed one of us has to be home with the kids. Right now, they are in school 2-3 days a week but could easily be home five days a week should the state be shut down again due to Covid-19 cases growing. I’m not going to lie sometimes; I feel lucky to be home with them while other days I lock myself in the bathroom, sob for 15 minutes, get over it, and back to tending to sibling matters such as who called who a loser first.

Without a doubt, Covid-19 has bought a tremendous amount of tragedy to the world. However, staying home with my kids and not having sports to rush off to or work meetings and deadlines to comply with has bought a sense of togetherness to our family, something we have never had before. And although this was given in a time of grief, we are lucky to be safe. I would love to think I can stay home forever with my kids, but I know that’s unlikely unless we want to give up the house for a cardboard box. Instead, I look for jobs daily that I can either work from home or part-time so I can be home with my kids when they are not in school. On the bright side, my 15-year-old daughter asked me the other day as I was ranting about needing to find a job because she asked for yet another pair of Lululemon leggings if I could find a job working from home. Shockingly I looked at her and asked why? Her answer was because she liked having me home. I was shocked, considering she hates me in her business and invading her presence most days, but it felt good to hear.

Mostly every parent I know is going through the same thing my husband and I are going through. Millions of Americans lost their jobs, many because of childcare issues. As we enter month 7 of the new era of freakin Covid-19, I wonder if things will ever go back to normal and if both parents will work full-time again. Many like me have to financially but will we look for more jobs that cater to parents working home, lessen our needs in life to financially support a family with one parent working, or send our kids off to other relatives to raise them because we can’t afford it? (just kidding on that last one, or am I? Either way our lives have forever changed, we need to roll with the punches and be thankful for every day we are given a clean bill of health.