We Need To Talk About Snow Days

By Deborah Siegel for Kveller

This week I found myself in the familiar predicament that thousands of other working parents found themselves in too: School cancelled, again. No backup childcare plan in place. Work commitments up the wazoo. As the parent in my dyad with the more flexible schedule, it’s on me to solve the problem, leaving me furious and incredulous anew.

It’s the Groundhog Day dilemma that repeats with each generation, like an unwanted legacy we can’t shake. It’s the snowball that never melts. After 40 years of fighting for the recognition that workers have families too, it’s still a truth nearly universally unacknowledged that a working parent mother on a snow day is screwed. As Brigid Shulte reminds us in her very good book “Overwhelmed,” the efforts of feminists to secure a smidgeon of the working family supports our sisters have in, say, Sweden, fail time and again. Our country touts “family values,” then leaves working families out in the cold.

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