- As major companies started restructuring in response to a lagging economy, my husband was laid off.
- For me, it's easier to be the default parent when I know I have backup.
My husband and I had just cleared another hectic Tuesday morning earlier this month when our normal treadmill of routine screeched to a halt.
As usual, I had dragged myself out of bed an hour after our 8-month-old's last-night waking and spent two hours getting him fed, cleaned, changed, and packed for day care. My own breakfast was the working-mom special, bites of applesauce and yogurt as I measured out his portions.
My husband was on calls with colleagues in Europe for his remote job with an international pharmaceutical firm by 7:30 a.m., which obliged our baby and me to zip around our two-bedroom condo as quietly as possible, adding another layer to the morning's stress.
And then, with no warning, the calls were over. My husband was laid off, along with half his team. We had made our first mortgage payment just days prior. Like many working parents without family nearby, we were paying through the nose for day care.
Crisis-response mode
We are privileged in many ways, but financial security without two incomes is not one of them. My husband's job was a big part of the reason we were finally ready to have a child after 10 years together, and now here we were, staring down a looming recession with the most responsibility we've ever faced.
The lowest point for my husband came when he did the day-care run that afternoon. He said he felt like he had failed our son. The job was the realization of his years-long effort to switch careers. It came with more money than we or any of our parents had ever made. It had been a big risk that paid off — until it didn't.
The first order of business was trimming some of the lifestyle inflation that came with the pharma gig. I broke things off with the wonderful woman who cleaned our apartment twice a month and the nice man who'd been helping me lose the baby weight. We paused or canceled subscriptions and had come-to-Jesus talks about our Grubhub habit.
Finding our feet
Our life has gotten a little quieter and more chore-heavy. In some ways, it's been similar to the thinning of activities and relationships new parents experience when after-work happy hours start to create more pressure than they relieve.
But now, instead of both of us working and me, the default parent, dashing around like wild trying to get 85% of the preparation, nurturing, playtime, admin, tidying, and endless laundry that goes into modern child-rearing done on the margins of my full-time job, my husband is here. Now he's not just physically present while on an endless string of Zoom calls in the living room but doing meal prep for the week and calling out to me while I write this to come to see our little guy's newest skill.
We haven't switched roles. Like many moms, I'm still the default parent. The difference is that now he's available to us, and project management is always easier with implementation support.
Removed from the grind, my husband is also reconnecting with the ingenuity that spurred his career advancement in the first place, and our conversations about cutting costs and diversifying our income are about possibilities, skills, and problem-solving.
So for now, when the alarm goes off tomorrow, what feels like minutes after we got the baby back to sleep, I can ask him to handle breakfast while I take a shower.
Our situation is still in flux, and we're both hoping it won't stay like this for long, but I'm thankful for this renewed partnership.