Singleparent strain
Sheltering with no one to help: ‘This is all pretty overwhelming’
“I’m hiding in the bedroom,” says Izabel Arnold over the phone.
The 26yearold startup founder and single mom is hiding from her 3yearold, Arlo, without much success. He’s perfectly aware where the bedroom is and has made cameos on calls with her chief technology officer in New York, her developers in Belarus and a reporter from The Chronicle.
“He’s 3. I can’t just tell him, ‘Mommy needs three hours to get something done,’ ” she says.
It’s a familiar struggle for families sheltering in place with young kids at home. Many parents are trying to fill the roles of teacher, nanny and playmate — then, between snack time and FaceTime, maybe get a little work done too. For twoparent households, juggling the demands of the pandemic is a challenge. For single parents navigating child care, custody issues and concerns about getting sick with a single set of hands and often a single income, it can feel utterly overwhelming.
According to the American Community Survey’s fiveyear estimates through 2018, 22.7% of families with children in San Francisco are singleparent households, and 9.4% of adult residents are divorced or separated and not remarried.
For Arnold, the pandemic has put the support she relies on out of reach. She and Arlo usually live in an apartment in Noe Valley. Arlo attends a day care he loves and spends a couple of nights each week at his grandparents’ house. But now his day care is closed, and Arnold has stopped seeing her parents for fear of exposing them to the coronavirus.
The pair recently left their home for a friend’s empty place on Twin Peaks after Arnold worried about social distancing because of her roommate. Now Arlo spends days video chatting with his grandparents via the Caribu app, doing arts and crafts projects, watching TV, and splashing in the outdoor hot tub, while Arnold sneaks in work where she can.
There’s never a good time for a global health catastrophe, but for Arnold, the coronavirus has hit at a particularly difficult moment. In the fall, she quit a wellpaying job as an investment analyst to launch a startup with her sister. Their company, Arnie, is creating an automated investment adviser that builds portfolios based on users’ sustainability values, but right now they’re trying to fundraise amid economic upheaval while Arnold lives off savings and wonders how long she can cover her rent.
“In the back of my mind, I know this is probably going to go on for a long time, but I sort of try to hold onto that glimmer of hope that it ends in a month or two,” Arnold says. “This is all pretty overwhelming. And the loneliness of figuring it all out on your own without a partner has only intensified during the virus situation. I think other working single moms share the same sentiment — that we feel we’re failing at our jobs and at being moms because both require our full attention, but neither can have it.”
Arnold has sole custody of her son, but for parents who share custody, the coronavirus is complicating courtordered visitation agreements and alimony payments.
“The short answer is, it’s a mess,” says Debra Schoenberg, founder of Schoenberg Family Law Group in San Francisco. “Our proverbial phone is ringing off the hook right now.”
Some parents aren’t in agreement on safe social distancing measures. Others have lost jobs. Courts are closed for all but “capital E mergencies,” Schoenberg says, so she’s spending lots of time talking with opposing parties and their counsel, trying to work things out through mediation. “We’re really struggling right now trying to find extrajudicial solutions. The system is not set up for pandemics,” she says.
Jessica Rose Kwalick discovered that for herself when her 4yearold son got sick in February. He was diagnosed with pneumonia and adenovirus, and his doctor recommended they quarantine at home. But her son’s father has courtordered visitation every other weekend and didn’t want to miss time with his son.
“In a perfect world his father and I would be able to agree on the greater good of our son, but that’s just unfortunately not the case for a lot of people who are separated or coparenting or parallel parenting,” says Kwalick. “It’s probably one of the most challenging aspects of my life on a good day.”
Eventually, she and her son’s father agreed to skip one weekend last month and make up the time later on, but not before the discussion devolved into threats and accusations.
“There’s this gray area. In a shelterathome (order), for now, visitations are still happening. Kids are still seeing both of their parents,” she says. “But there’s nothing about what if your kid — God forbid — has coronavirus or has pneumonia or is immunocompromised. There are these pockets that are unaddressed.”
Mark Britt and his coparent, Amy, have pulled closer to confront the pandemic. They’ve turned their two homes in Berkeley into one quarantine zone, with 10yearold Noah going back and forth every other day. They’ve synchronized errands to reduce shopping trips, agreed on social distancing protocols (no on parks, yes on bike rides), worked together to design a virtual school plan, and had the tough conversations about what would happen if one of them got sick or had to care for someone outside their circle.
“Amy and I worked very hard and compromised a lot to get to where we are,” Britt says. “Times like this, I’m very grateful we put in all that work.”
Britt considers himself lucky — to have a stable job as a graphic designer, to have a strong relationship with Amy, and to have a son like Noah, who’s an upbeat, optimistic kid. But as a single dad, Britt says he’s also felt lonely over the past few weeks, segregated from friends and coworkers, wondering how much longer the pandemic will keep people at least 6 feet apart.
However, sheltering in place has provided one unexpected pleasure: bike rides with his son.
Before the coronavirus, biking together was an occasional outing. Now, father and son cruise the neighborhood almost every afternoon. Sometimes they’ll ride to a friend’s house and yell out their names till they come to the windows and wave.
Before shelter in place, “we would never do that. And it’s a real treat,” Britt says. “The only joy I really get these days is from Noah. I don’t know how people get through this without a Noah in their life.”