I Became A Pandemic 'Wine Mom.' Here's What I Learned.

"Wine moms represented motherhood as revolutionary refusal, as 'who cares,' as 'don’t judge me,' as 'get out now.'"

Before the pandemic, I fought for years to make enough money to send my two kids to day care so I could write and teach ― so I could engage with a world beyond my domestic one. I wanted to be something other than a backdrop in my children’s lives. In 2020, when they came home from school, seemingly never to return, I lost work, freedom, everything I had built. I watched my life evaporate. The problems of the American care economy, problems that had always been there, were brought to the fore by the pandemic. Like the hidden mothers who in the 19th century draped themselves in black fabric as they held their babies still in photographs, there they were, supporting, disappearing: caregivers, overrun by the weight of their children.