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Pandemic Dilemmas: Parenting in Unchartered Territory
The parenting choices I made in this pandemic made me a stronger person.
My daughter and I spent most of 2020 in a cage. Our tiny apartment in downtown D.C. had 550 square feet and a view of a parking lot. We never moved there with the intention of being indoors much. But as the pandemic hit, we were confined to this cage. I had to muster a lot of inner power and strength to develop convictions about getting fresh air, outdoor time, and wearing masks on playdates.
I always thought wearing a mask at a playground was pointless. There had never been any study I could find about the transmission of COVID-19 in outdoor situations or from surfaces. All we had was anecdotes that made headlines and spread fear. I spent months trying not to be an obvious dissenter, trying to get along with neighbors in our densely populated neighborhood. I had crippling anxiety about strangers yelling at me or humiliating me in public for standing too close to them or not wearing a mask. (Sometimes it even happened when I was wearing a mask. Being yelled at wasn’t predictable.)
As an example, on the day before we moved out of the city to the suburbs, an older man tried to avoid walking past us on the sidewalk outside our apartment building. He nervously went up the steps of a…
