Parents of toddlers face challenges while waiting for vaccine approval
For many parents of unvaccinated toddlers in the United States, a return to normal amid the COVID-19 pandemic seems out of reach.
Many have been forced to take time off work or change their schedules to care for their children due to school closures. Rebecca Sanghvi, a public school teacher in Washington, DC, has a vaccinated 5-year-old daughter in kindergarten and a 2-year-old son in daycare.
Working from home is not possible for her, so she juggles household responsibilities with her husband, who can travel remotely if needed. She said it was exhausting coping with the pandemic while balancing her work and parenting responsibilities.
“I think there’s not enough attention paid to the difficulties that families who can’t do this face with children being quarantined, taking time off, often unpaid,” Sanghvi said.
Mask mandates have been lifted in many parts of the country and in-person events have resumed, but many parents feel that until their children are vaccinated, they cannot move into the early stages of the pandemic.
Vaccines for children under 5 are still not available – however Pfizer said approvals could come in the next few weeks — and currently, there are nearly 20 million children under age 5 in America, according to the Children’s Defense Fund.
“People don’t realize that if you have a young child, you’re still stuck in March 2020, and we haven’t really moved on for those young children,” said Deborah Schoenfeld, a mother of three in Maryland.
The recent surge in COVID-19 cases due to the omicron variant has taken an even greater toll on parents of young children. Sanghavi said the reality that others live in, where vaccinations are widely available and daily life seems close to “normal” again, is starkly different from his own.
“We live in this reality that I think a lot of people don’t live in, and that makes those choices that we have to make in terms of risk, but also the sacrifices that we have to make in terms of our work and our care. to children, all the more difficult, because it really is a situation in which not everyone finds themselves anymore,” she said.
Some schools and daycares across the country have reopened despite rising cases, leaving young, unvaccinated students at higher risk of being infected and, therefore, bringing the virus home.
These surges in schools have left parents – like Anagha Phadkule – struggling to find ways to care for their children while working full time.
Phadkule is from Portland, Oregon, and works in a hospital, while her husband works from home. Their 3-year-old son, Aroosh, had to spend most of his time at home after his daycare center closed twice in January due to COVID-19 outbreaks among staff.
Her son’s unvaccinated status leaves Phadkule worried about his safety.
“It feels like a very reckless time to push your toddler into daycare and be like, ‘OK, whatever happens, happens,'” Phadkule said.
Frequent school closures have caused some parents to permanently change their habits. Schoenfeld, for example, made the decision to keep her son home after her daycare was shut down multiple times in recent weeks.
“My childcare situation got more and more difficult. I almost feel like in 2021 it was easier. They were still figuring out what to do with COVID, but there wasn’t as much cancellations and quarantines,” Schoenfeld said.
Other parents, with few options left, find themselves taking their children to work in hopes of juggling the two responsibilities. But the move turned out to be more stressful than expected.
“Occasionally, [my husband] I was busy and even had to take my children to work for screenings, at times when I had appointments with different clients…I had a problem with a client where she told me that it was unprofessional for me to show up with my kids,” Eddie Suarez, who has a 3-year-old, said.
Brigid Schulte, director of The Better Life Lab and Good Life Initiative at New America, said many parents felt “inaudible” and “invisible” because they didn’t feel their struggles were taken into account.
“We’re talking about real existential threats to family survival right now — at a time when so many families thought we had turned the corner,” Schulte said. “It hits everyone. It’s kind of exhausting, disruptive, uncertain and a dire situation for equal opportunity for so many families.”
So what is the solution? Many parents believe that allowing vaccines for children 5 and under will change things for the better.
“I prefer that they take their time and…that they are correct, that they are safe. I don’t want to feel like I’m being pushed into this rush to do it if it’s not ready yet” , said Schoenfeld. “But I don’t want to be like a hostage or a prisoner waiting for the vaccine, like I need childcare. It’s going to work for us right now…or something has to work, because it can’t go on. . It’s too hard. “