In this premier episode of the Bespoke Parenting Hour, host Julie Gunlock explains what it is the be a bespoke parent and why we should all embrace the bespoke philosophy, which encourages you to create your own parenting style that perfectly fits your family.
Julie also spoke to IWF President Carrie Lukas and Independent Women’s Law Center director Jennifer Braceras about the question on every parent’s mind: will schools ever open again. Jennifer focuses on the data, which shows kids are at very low risk of contracting or spreading the disease. And Carrie, who currently lives in Germany, explains how Europe has handled the Covid-19 pandemic and how most schools in Europe are fully opening in the fall. The women also discuss how politics has filtered into the decision making process on school openings, making it clear that a decision won’t solely be based on what’s best for kids.
Transcript
Julie:
Hi everyone I’m Julie Gunlock your host for the first ever episode of the Bespoke Parenting Hour where the focus will be on custom tailored parenting that best fits you, your family and most importantly your kids. So I guess the first thing that I should do on this podcast is tell you what I mean by bespoke parenting, what is it? Or even more fundamentally what in the heck does the word bespoke even mean and what does it have to do with parenting? That is a good question and I will try to answer it.
First things first, the word bespoke means custom made and it’s usually used when talking about clothing. So, bespoke clothing a really fancy dress or a very expensive suit. It is the opposite of off the rack clothing or readymade clothing. So when summer comes around and you need a couple more shorts or t-shirts you go to Old Navy there are 60 t-shirts. They all are exactly the same in different sizes. You pick your size, it fits fine. May not fit perfectly, but it’s good enough. That’s off the rack clothing. That is a fairly new phenomenon. It really only became ubiquitous in the 20th century. Before that people made their own clothes. That’s why if any of you have ever bought a house that was built in the 1930s or before, you have these bedrooms with one teeny closet. Walk-in closets are a new thing, okay? These teeny closets were perfectly fine because people had a couple of dresses or a couple suits. They had their Sunday best.
But they didn’t have a tremendous amount of clothing and the reason is they either had to have it made at great expense or they made it themselves. So bespoke clothing still exists, the really big designers have what’s called haute couture clothing and that’s bespoke. That is made, that is tailored to the person and that is exactly what bespoke is. It is clothing that is tailored to your precise measurements and it fits you perfectly. So how this relates to parenting, like is this a fashion podcast? Are we ever going to talk about parenting? So, the reason this to me made a lot of sense with parenting is because when I first became a parent I was, as most new parents are, I was eager to read all the parenting books and all the how-to’s and how the best ways and really trying to understand really what I saw as the best way to parent, but also try to establish a parenting philosophy.
Nothing really felt like it quite fit. I wasn’t reading something that fit with my lifestyle, with my children, with my needs and wants and desires and hopes. It felt if you will, off the rack parenting advice. I started to think I need to really come up with my own parenting philosophy that’s tailor made that fits me and my family perfectly. So that’s why I call it the bespoke parenting philosophy. No one knows my kids better than me. No one understands my family circumstances, my needs, wishes, what I hope for and my children. Their likes, their dislikes. I am the best expert on my family. So, that’s why I believe in tailoring a parenting philosophy that’s best for you.
Now I want to be very clear here. This does not mean experts aren’t valuable and can’t be helpful, they certainly can, especially when it comes to medical questions like vaccines or any health issues that your child might have. Certainly developmental issues. You should really talk to qualified people in that field and psychological issues. It is really, really critical that you trust people who have studied these issues. I do not want this to be the anti-vac podcast or the, “I’m just going to feed my children miso soup because I think it protects against measles better than the vaccine” as one Hollywood star said. I think experts are important. What I’m talking about are more of the things that you do everyday. Is my child mature enough to walk around the block without me being with them? Can they ride their bike alone to school? Can they go up to the store with a grocery list and five dollars? When to potty train. When are they read to get out of their crib?
A lot of these decisions should be made based on your own instinct and so that’s what I’m talking about here is trying to get people to trust their instincts and trust themselves to make good decisions. Not totally ignore the experts, but maybe not rely on them quite so much. So that’s the elevator speech on bespoke parenting and we’re going to have a lot of guests on to cover those issues, to talk about different parenting strategies, to talk about how they do it. Not to say it’s right or wrong, but just to give people a little bit of information. I’d like to also talk a little bit about myself and I’m going to make this very quick because I don’t want people to tune out because they’re so bored.
But I am the mother of three boys, all boys. One is 13, I have an 11 year old and a 10 year old. So it’s what’s called stair steps. I had them one right after the other. So it has … I at one point had three boys in diapers, it was not fun. I am married to a guy I met when I was 24 years old working on Capitol Hill. We now live outside of D.C. in a suburb outside of D.C. and my kids all attend the local public school. We will be talking about that a lot on this podcast because it is just always a source of humor and shock and awe. This year actually though I will be homeschooling my oldest, possibly more. So that too will be a great subject as I try to navigate a very new educational system. I’m very excited about it. Luckily my parents live close by. They are very energetic, very healthy grandparents and they spend a lot of time with their grandkids and they help me a lot. So, I’m very lucky in that regard.
But I will say one of the best things about my life is that I get to work with an amazing group of women who are also my dear friends, two of which will be on this podcast today talking about school openings. We all work at the Independent Women’s Forum. It is a think tank in Washington D.C. that focuses on economic and cultural issues and it is producing this podcast. So thank you to IWF and thank you also to the producer Tim who is a whiz. So I would be remise if I did not thank IWF for producing this podcast. At IWF I run a program called the Center for Progress and Innovation. It focuses … this is like the official line on what it does. It focuses on how human innovation is the key to improving the human condition and that the modern world is something to celebrate, not regulate into nonexistence. So that’s the fancy explanation of what the center does.
But really what the center does in a more common-sense language, is I try to reassure moms that the modern world is not going to kill them and their kids. I know that may sound weird, but you see it every day. Every time you go to the grocery store and you see the organic fruit and you think to yourself, “Oh, I think that’s healthier” right? So you buy the more expensive organic fruit or every time you see something labeled BPA free, you may not know what that means but I guess I’m supposed to get the BPA free stuff right? Even though it’s more expensive. Or every time you go to apply sunscreen on your kid who’s at the beach and you think, “Oh is it okay? I read this article that said that sunscreen causes cancer so should I do that?” Well the sun also causes cancer okay? So use your sunscreen. This is the world that we live in right now where everything is worthy of alarmism.
The most mundane task from packing your kid a snack to being rushed and needing to get them a quick dinner to deciding on which apples to buy in the grocery store is a frap decision. You are often told if you really want to be a good parent or the best parent or if you want to do it better of if you want your child to truly thrive, you will buy a particular thing. Often that thing is a product that’s more expensive or is somehow missing something that is deemed harmful. Most of those claims are untrue and they encourage parents to spend more money on items, but they also encourage parents to get behind attempts to ban other products or put restrictions or taxes on other products. That’s a cost that affects everybody.
So, in my center for progress and innovation we try to knock down those myths that everything in the marketplace is harmful. So we do it in a very friendly way and understandable way. Taking on the science and making it a little bit more understandable. I think that fits in well with this podcast again because I said parenting in general has become scarier, it’s become more intense, more competitive, more judgey and a lot of this is because of the narrative we hear from the so called parenting experts, but also non-experts like celebrities and mommy bloggers and green mommies and activists and Instagram mommies. So, I hope to have on a few guests over the next year to really talk about that. Talk about how parenting has changed and talk about how it’s become more difficult and talk about how parents really are told there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. If any subject deserves a huge gray area it is the parenting issue. There is no right way to do it. There is no wrong way to do it. Of course do not hit your kids and there’s some common sense things we all know. But in terms of some of the questions about what to feed them and their screen time and other things, it really is subjective and parents need to make the best decisions for their families and for their individual children.
Children are really like snowflakes. None are the same and you have to adapt your parenting style to each child. Each family is going to have a different way of doing that and as parents we should respect other people’s decisions. So of course it would be weird to launch a new podcast on the subject of parenting without talking at least a little bit about the thing that’s paramount on every parent’s mind, school openings in the age of COVID-19. So, a show of hands, will it ever happen? My hand did not go up. Before I introduce my guest today let’s talk a little bit about where we are. So I live in Alexandria, Virginia. They made the announcement last month that they will not tell parents the final plans until August 12th. So I have no idea what my child’s learning is going to look like. It hampers my ability to make decisions on whether I should pull the trigger and homeschool. Whether I should consider private schools. Frankly by August 12th, you’ve already missed most of the online application time. You can’t enroll your child in a private school after August 12th, that’s just far too late.
So, my school district is really I would say, and I willingly use this word, is keeping parents hostage to the public school. Again, in order to make a decision I need to know the facts and so the Alexandria public school district is not telling parents until August 12th, so that is a real shame. Other schools are giving parents some sense and I think even in the neighboring town, Arlington, they recently changed the guidance. But they did give the guidance. They gave the guidance in I think late June and said basically you have two choices. You can do all online or you can do a shorter … All online for four days or you can do two days of in person learning. Those are two terrible options, but at least it gave parents a sense of what the options were. At that point the parents could say, “You know what, I’m not going to do this. I’m going to homeschool or I’m going to go to a private school.” At least they knew.
Arlington has since walked that back, but they walked it back I think like three days ago. So again there’s still time for many of these parents to make other decisions and when I say walk back, they said that there will be no in person learning. So Arlington is going to go entirely online and that is what a lot of school districts are doing and I think the ones who haven’t announced will probably do that. We’ve seen some calls, renew calls to shut down. Several states have reversed reopening plans and are now shutting down businesses for a second time. There has been an uptick of cases due to the Black Lives Matter protest as well as many of the large gatherings, the Black Lives Matter gatherings. So we have seen an uptick in that. What nobody seems to be talking about is are we seeing an uptick among young people? It’s clear that we are not. We are seeing an uptick in the same demographic that are vulnerable to this disease.
The decision of whether to open the schools has also become quite political. We’ve seen President Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos urging schools to open. But, that is not popular with the Democrats who seem to just react opposite to what Trump says. I in fact wish Trump had said, “Let’s close down” because maybe then the Democrats and the teacher’s unions would have said, “Hey no let’s open up.” It’s opposite day with Trump. Whatever he says they say the opposite, so I was sort of hoping, I was thinking maybe if Trump says let’s keep them closed, these two officials, these two groups the Democrats and the teacher’s unions but I repeat myself, would urge a reopening. But they have not. The teacher’s unions are saying that schools should remain fully closed. Many Democrats, Nancy Pelosi and many other Democrats and leadership are saying the same. Also of course the never Trump contingent is echoing that.
What’s interesting though too is we had an announcement from the American Academy of Pediatrics. This is the professional organization for pediatricians. They came out with a very strong statement in favor of reopening schools. But then the teacher’s unions jumped all over AAP for having the nerve to suggest that and said all this stuff about how teachers are going to be in grave danger. So the AAP said, “Well only reopen if things are going to be safe.” Well of course. Nobody thought the AAP was saying you should reopen with no cleaning guidelines, with no distancing guidelines. I think it’s pretty clear that when Trump and Betsy DeVos say open the schools, they mean with appropriate guidelines, social distancing or wash stations or the kids not moving around the classroom. Certainly putting some steps in place to ensure that there’s a lower risk of transmission is obvious.
It’s been very interesting to read some of the articles on this New York Times. There’s been some great coverage on how the online learning hurts minorities and poor children. Just this morning school districts also have these new problems like I saw this just this morning in the Washington Times that school bus drivers, there’s a massive shortage of school bus drivers. Some are not going to return, so how do you transmit these kids? New York Times also had an article yesterday talking about how in some towns you have this split between public schools and private schools. Many public schools have already announced that they’re going to totally shut down whereas private schools are opening up. So there you have another one of these splits that’s adding to the anger and frustration for parents that are stuck in the public schools.
The last thing I want to talk about is some of the poling of parents, of working parents of young kids. There was a pole done in April of working parents of young kids and they ask them how they were holding up as childcare providers and preschools shut down, the answer was obviously not great. But at the time only six percent said that they expected that they would need to leave their jobs in order to care for their children. Half said they currently had some form of childcare and 53% said they expected to change up their current situation in order to get more help from family members. So that wasn’t good, but when the same polling firm repeated the pole just last month, so June, the situation had grown really, really bad. In the new pole a full 27% of respondents said they expected to have to leave their job. 35% said they have some form of non-parental childcare and only 28% managed to get family help.
So, these stats are deteriorating. When you add to that in the summer months, most summer camps, certainly the summer camps my kids usually go to and they don’t go to many. I usually do one each, but all of them are closed. Most summer camps are struggling or closing altogether. Summer camps tend to survive on a razor’s edge here. They’re not huge money makers and they carry tons of liability. So, for many of them I suspect it’s just too hard to survive a summer of not operating. 40% of daycares are saying that they expect to close their doors permanently. What are parents going to do if their regular daycare closes and there isn’t … first of all there isn’t an obvious replacement, but also it seems like there’s probably going to be less daycare centers out there. Then less competition. So that’s a scary reality there. Coupled with the continued school shutdowns. Once your child gets to school age you can take them out of daycare and schools usually offer before care and after care.
So, you can do a full day of work just using the services through the public schools and private schools. Many private schools also offer some sort of before care and after care. So here to talk about this a bit more are my two good friends Jennifer Braceras and Carrie Lucas. Before we hear from them let me give you just a quick bio on these two fabulous ladies. Carrie is the president of the Independent Women’s Forum. She’s the co-author of Liberty is no War on Women and the author of the Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex and Feminism. She is a writer for National Review Forbes and a number of other impressive publications. Sells the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post.
Jennifer, the equally impressive Jennifer Bazares is the director of the Independent Women’s Law Center. She is a former commissioner of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. She went to Harvard Law School and she frequently contributes to the Wall Street Journal and the Boston Globe, The Hill, National Review Online and Jennifer is actually joining us from vacation. So, an extra big hand for Jennifer for joining us. Thank you ladies for coming onto the first episode of the Bespoke Parenting Hour.
Jennifer:
No problem.
Carrie:
Thanks for having us on Julie.
Julie:
So, Jennifer I want to start with you. You wrote a piece about a month ago talking about the data. Talking about the impact on school closures and why schools should fully reopen this fall. Talk to me a little bit about that piece. It’s very, very data heavy. You really provide parents some good information. I actually used your data to write a letter to my school board which I’m sure was totally ignored, went straight into the trash or the shredder. But I think a lot of parents have used this information. I certainly have tweeted this out. So tell us a little bit about that and then if you could also pivot to do you think things have changed? We can talk about that further, but first tell us a little bit about what you found when you were researching the risk of COVID-19 to kids and schools.
Jennifer:
Yeah so, it’s interesting. I mean I started to collect the data just for myself and some other moms in my community when we were preparing for a meeting with the superintendent. We wanted to have the data at our fingertips. So I started to put it together and organize it in this document, by topic. Well as you know I shared it with you and you said, “Well you should really publish this as a blog post because other people could use this information too” which was a great idea. So we put it up at IWF and hopefully it’s helped other parents find some of the resources as well because there are a lot of long form articles about it. The take a position one way or the other, but it’s hard to just find bullet points that tell you what you need to know about specific things.
Julie:
Yeah.
Jennifer:
The risk to kids of getting COVID. The risk to kids of getting seriously ill rom COVID. The risk of them spreading it to each other. The risk of them spreading it to teachers. So I went through each of these points and provide the information that shows that there is very little risk of getting it. They’re at very low risk of becoming seriously ill from COVID. They are not super spreaders. They rarely spread it to each other or to adults. If anything, adults spread it to them. But usually only within the same household and at the time I felt like this was information that just wasn’t really getting out and there was a lot of fear amongst the parent community.
Julie:
Yeah.
Jennifer:
I wanted to try to dispel some of that fear.
Julie:
Well just for parents that are listening I want to just give you a couple of the bullet points that Jennifer put in her piece. She divides it up also by children and teens are much less likely than adults to contract COVID and she has some bullet points there. For instance, international research confirms that the percentage of children among the confirmed COVID-19 patients is low ranging from one percent in young children to six percent in older children. Mass General has said that children appear to have a lower attack rates than adults if exposed to COVID-19, are less likely to become infected. So, they might actually touch something that has COVID-19 and they will not then become infected.
You also go into the area of super spreaders as you mentioned and you give several links to Wall Street Journal articles, Dr. Scott Atlas at the Hoover Institute saying that children rarely transmit the disease to adults. We have a clip of him actually talking about that. Let’s listen to that.
“There is zero, virtually zero risk to children for getting something serious or dying from this disease. Anyone that thinks schools should be closed is not talking about the risk to children, that’s factually true and they should say that. It has nothing to do with the children’s risk. Now let’s talk about the risk to teachers. The teachers are …. yeah because this is probably the big fear here obviously. The teachers first of all are a young population in the United States. K through 12 teachers, half of them are under 41. 82% are under 55. These are not high risk age groups. We know this by now and it’s true that there are high risk teachers and those teacher should be able to believe in their social distancing and masks like they do for every other essential business when they go to the grocery store for instance. They can teach using social distancing. If they’re still afraid they can stay at home. There’s no reason to lock up the children.”
Julie:
So, there’s just a tremendous amount of good news out there of good data out there that should be reassuring people. But, the closer we get to school openings we’re seeing more of the alarmism out there. President Trump talked about this as well. He and Secretary Betsy DeVos have been very clear that they want schools to open. Maybe we could listen to that clip as well.
Mothers can’t go to work because all of a sudden, they have to stay home and watch their child and fathers. What’s happening there’s a tremendous strain on that whole side of the equation.
Speaker 6:
So, it’s a balancing act?
President Trump:
It is a balancing act but we have to open our schools. I also say a decision like that is politics.
Julie:
So, Jennifer, and I want Carrie to weigh in on this too, but Jennifer just quickly talk a little bit about the political. Trump also mentioned the political aspect of this. What has the reaction been since Trump said that? He also mentioned the American Academy of Pediatrics which came out. NPR called the American Academy of Pediatrics statement a firm endorsement of opening the schools. Then all of a sudden you see some … And so Trump mentions this and you see some whoa, whoa, whoa let’s back up here. Tell me a little bit about the political aspect of this.
Jennifer:
Yeah I mean I think we were moving in the right direction prior to the president weighing in and then unfortunately, I think what happens is a lot of people, school administrators and teachers who don’t particularly like the president, once they heard that he was for schools opening they figured they had to be against it. You had writers like Jennifer Ruben tweeting out, “Donald Trump wants to kill your kids” and completely over politicizing it. It’s just insane and what I try to tell people is this really shouldn’t be political at all. I get it if you don’t like Donald Trump, that’s fine. But even a stopwatch is right twice a day and he is right about this, whether your agree with him on any other issue or not.
Julie:
Right, right. Carrie I want to talk to you a little bit. Carrie actually for listeners I didn’t mention this in her bio, but Carrie actually lives in Germany. So I thought bringing her on to talk about how things have been handled in Germany where schools are open. I want Carrie to give a little bit of perspective on … I know the schools in Germany are open. So you can tell us about that. But what are the conditions? Is there social distancing? Are the desks far apart? Is there cleaning stations? Give us a little insight on what’s happening in Germany and also just how is Germany about the subject of opening schools? Did you see this type of alarmism before it happened or absolute resistance from teachers unions and teachers in general?
Carrie:
Yeah it has been really interesting because I think one thing that’s been lost in the conversation about how different countries have approached the problem is the tremendous similarity. I felt like when COVID was first breaking out there was this sense that Germany was doing everything right and America was doing everything wrong. I was a little baffled because if you look at the timing of when Germany chose to close at the extent of their lockdown, I think you’ll find a lot more similarities than differences. But one thing that’s been definitely an incredibly different thing, is just how the public reacts to policy maker’s decisions. When Germany first started reopening which I believe was in early May you started having some things open. Then by mid-May my kids were back in school on a staggered schedule and it went on like that for a little while.
Julie:
Wait, so sorry to interrupt. So you are actually in Germany and they have reopened … I think you had mentioned this to me. Carrie and Jennifer are very good friends of mine so we do talk. We don’t only talk during the podcast. But, so I had forgotten, so your kids actually went back in essentially the spring to end the school year?
Carrie:
Yep. Yeah, exactly. It wasn’t full time. So, my kids are in elementary school and high school and they started going back a couple … staggered weird schedules. It was definitely different. They had as soon as the kids walked in they had to wash their hands and then instead of changing classrooms they were more confined to one desk. Classes were smaller. So it was definitely a very different experience. But I feel like everybody in Germany the focus has been getting life back to normal. It’s not considered political. But I think one thing that I find, and it makes me sad as an American, is that there was no sense I feel like the Germans were very much they want things to reopen. But with the idea that heaven forbid something went wrong, they could reverse course and nobody would be calling people murderers.
Julie:
Right.
Carrie:
There wouldn’t be the virtual you see in the states where anybody who opens and it goes badly you feel like … There’s just such a horrible perception of it. So I do think that Germany has a lot more leeway when it comes to making these decisions.
Julie:
Well you’re right. It seems like I think that’s why some people are very afraid of this is because if something goes wrong they’re afraid of …. And certainly local school administrators who have really frustrated me and I talked about it earlier about my own school district not telling parents what is going on. And that does make me mad, but in some ways Carrie you make a good point that part of the reason they’re not saying anything is that they don’t want to have to reverse and make people mad or announce and then proceed. Then when they see things like Jennifer Ruben saying people calling to open schools want to kill kids, that does make it very difficult to ultimately make any decision.
Carrie:
Yeah.
Julie:
But I will say it’s interesting though when you look. I look at Jennifer’s data. I look at a statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics and most pediatricians saying that schools are really important and mentally children are suffering now. I also think that it’s really important because online learning is just terrible. It does not work for the vast majority of kids. New York Times has been doing some pretty amazing reporting on this talking about how the ones that are hurt the most on online formats are minority and poor children. This is pretty obvious to us. So, what frustrates me a little bit is when you politicize it and say, “Oh, you open schools you’re going to murder kids” it doesn’t allow you to consider these other variables which are really important, that kids are suffering.
Carrie:
Yeah. Julie if I can jump in.
This is Carrie.
Yeah sorry Jennifer. This is Carrie again.
Jennifer:
Oh, no you’re fine.
Carrie:
I think the one thing that … I don’t want to throw online learning under the bus. I think that there are some families for whom it works well. I think there are opportunities to incorporate it. But it’s funny, if you think back to just a few months ago before COVID became a thing, the things we were worried about when it came to kids. We already had a problem in the developed world with worrying about kids spending too much time online, worrying about their mental health. Worrying about things like obesity, whether or not they were going to … their motivation level, substance abuse. Here we are it’s funny I feel like now this was the big focus. Michelle Obama all she talked about was how kids were not exercising enough and needed to get out of the house more and now here we are and it seems as though we don’t care about anything other than COVID.
Julie:
Any of that.
Carrie:
Obviously, it’s a big problem. There’s real risks. I definitely think school administrators should be monitoring things, make sure that they’re taking care of vulnerable populations. Be ready to close if something crazy happens. Have the leeway to close, but man aren’t we worried about any of these things anymore? Are we really just willing to sacrifice a year of our kid’s lives?
Julie:
Right.
Carrie:
An incredibly important time developmentally and just say, “Nope. You get to do absolutely nothing other than sit there and here stare at a computer for the next nine months.” That seems really kind of sad.
Julie:
I want to expand on that a little bit, but Jennifer I wanted to give you a chance because I heard you were going to mention something as well.
Carrie:
Well no, I mean I agree with Carrie 100%. I think the data is clear that this has had an effect on anxiety and depression levels, particularly amongst teens in the United States. People really are forgetting that education isn’t just about content delivery. I mean, kids go to school and they learn from their peers and they learn from face to face interactions with adults and they’re not just learning the content. They’re learning social and emotional things. That’s all been taken away from them with online learning. It doesn’t mean that online learning can’t be a piece of it and our school offers virtual high school for kids that can’t get into a certain class. They can take something online that’s offered by a content provider. I mean, there are lots of ways to incorporate online learning into the curriculum. But it cannot take the place of face to face interactions with other adults and kids. It just can’t.
Julie:
Right. One thing that really bothers me and I’ve noticed this with my own school district is the utter lack of curiosity and lack of creativity in looking at this new reality. So, you have a situation where what I’m seeing from school districts and I mentioned this earlier, but Arlington which is the city right next to us, announced, they gave parents only three days to decide and gave them two choices. It was either your child goes to school for a longer period … Well I think it was probably six hours, four to six hours, and you do intensive learning in those two days. But it’s in person, it’s in the school building. That was one choice. The rest of the week those remaining three days, there’s nothing. Or, you do a four day online course and it’s entirely online. So parents are really struggling because it’s pretty much, it’s a Sophie’s Choice. They’re both awful. Which one do I choose?
What’s so interesting to me is I’ve really found it fascinating how good the coverage is in the New York Times on this issue because they’ve been doing a lot on the equity question which can sometimes get bogged down in social justice language. But this is really interesting how they are talking about how, like I mentioned, minority and poor children are really suffering. And so they have actually been thinking creative. The New York Times has been thinking creatively in talking about school districts should be hiring armies of college students that are interested in taking a gap year or my dad is brilliant. He’s an engineer. He’s a retired engineer. He’s incredibly bright in terms of science. Put a call out to retired people, “Hey want to come?” You don’t necessarily have to have an education degree. Then set up really creative ways of learning. Learning outside, learning in a gymnasium or actually deploying teachers into neighborhoods for small groups, bubble groups of students who again there could be a parent who hosts it. But this would take a lot of curiosity and a lot of creativity.
I find that what the schools are doing is they’re just giving parents the same awful options that are no different from the spring. So a lot of people are frustrated that in this time we started chatting about COVID shutdowns in February and March. They’ve had a lot of time and then here come the fall plans and they’re no different and no better than the spring plans. So that’s what’s really frustrating to me.
Jennifer:
Well I hate to say it Julie, but a lot of that is because of the ambience.
Julie:
Right, of course. Absolutely, absolutely. I should have said that from the beginning. And talk to me, the teachers unions are now, I think I’m right here Jennifer, that the teacher’s unions are now calling for basically a total shutdown or no in person, no going to school until what February or January I think is what I heard?
Jennifer:
Well it’s interesting. I mean in our, I live in Massachusetts, and where we live most of the teachers I think do want to go back. They recognize it’s frustrating to them to try to deliver the content online. To not look their students in the eye and have that accountability piece. But the unions don’t necessarily represent the wishes of their members and the Massachusetts Teachers Association has been horrible on this. I mean they’re essentially saying that nobody should go back until the federal government passes X, Y and Z legislation to give them more money to do this, to do that.
Julie:
Right.
Jennifer:
Until we redesign the curriculum to incorporate Black Lives Matter stuff. I mean they’re basically throwing up every roadblock possible to keep the schools closed.
Julie:
Yeah. It’s interesting. We’ve all talked about, especially people that follow the homeschooling community, how interesting it is to see people who normally would never be interested in homeschooling or even take five minutes to learn about it are suddenly considering it for their families. You’re starting to see frustration, I’m getting … It’s funny I live in a city where you just don’t gripe and you don’t complain about city officials and city services. But I get a lot of private messages and people are saying things like, “I’m paying property taxes for the schools to educate my children and now I’m getting substandard” or “My child has an IEP. He has special needs and there’s no way they can fulfill his IEP.” IEP’s are specialized educational services for kids with special needs. The schools are legally bound to meet those needs and to do whatever they can and if they can’t, they are supposed to pay for that child to go to another school or to get certain services. I mean they will even pay if you need your child to go to a certain public school because certain services are offered there, but they don’t live in that area. You can require the school to pay for transportation.
I know families who have had taxis paid for by the school district. So, there is this legal question too about extremely gifted children and IEP students that normally need special services that cannot possibly be accommodated under these circumstances. So you’re seeing parents now suddenly go, “Huh, boy I wish I had more choices or I sure do wish that they’d give me my money back that I could put toward tutoring.” So I do think it’s interesting how we’re seeing a real awakening to the possibilities out there. Carrie, go ahead.
Carrie:
Julie, one thing if I can jump in and say is I think that when you … One thing that’s disturbing I think about a lot of this conversation and a lot of what’s going on surrounding the education is how little, well how much the kids seem to be and education seems to be secondary. I feel like so much of the school conversation is about the vulnerability of teachers. Well not to get you wrong, I mean obviously it’s incredibly important. There’s a lot of hardworking dedicated teachers out there who shouldn’t be pushed out of their jobs. They need to find ways to incorporate them. But the innovative thing you’re talking about earlier with bringing in some recent college grads who obviously have this huge problem with them lacking employment. There are a lot of things you can do. I do have the sense in Germany that there is a focus that this actually really matters and that even the default so that the freedom of movement. Government should be … If you’re not sure which to do, if there’s a question of should we open, should we not open? I think oh, my gosh as Americans we’re supposed to be the land of the free for heaven’s sake, there should be a basic … If you’re not sure, then people should be free. We should not tell people they have to-
Julie:
Stay home. Yeah, yes. Right.
Carrie:
Yeah that they have to do something.
Julie:
Right.
Carrie:
So, I do think that when it comes to some of this, it’s sad to me that so much of America and especially when it comes to this school thing, is now like do no harm. If that means locking kids in, sticking a laptop or a Game Boy in their hands for the next nine months that that’s an okay default. That really shouldn’t be. We should be figuring out ways to get people … Life is for living, not just for sitting safely in front of a computer.
Julie:
Yeah and there is something about a quality of life. Living isn’t just sitting there and breathing. It’s a quality of life and for children it’s educating them.
Carrie:
Exactly.
Julie:
And getting them ready to be citizens of the world. I also think it’s really interesting and I feel like this is a whole other Bespoke Parenting Hour we’ll have to get into this. I’ll keep you guys on for two more hours if I go too far down this route. But it’s interesting to me that when the, and I wrote an OpEd on this for the USA Today, about the other services that are being offered through the so called closed schools. Continued school meal distribution is one thing that when COVID shut down you had people going, “Oh, my gosh kids are going to starve.” Now okay, we should all be asking ourselves what? Why? Right? I mean look at the number of social services now provided through the schools. I mean part of the reason people are freaking out is because they have to work outside the home and essentially if they can’t send their kids to school they don’t have essentially daycare for their kids, right?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking just about the teaching itself. I’m talking about there is before care. I can drop my kids off at I think 6:30am without breakfast. Not only will they watch them, they will feed them. I can leave my kid at after care until I think around 7:00 and they will feed them, okay? There are wellness centers in schools. There are daycares for children who have babies in schools. All sorts of condom distribution and other things. Schools have become essentially social centers, social service centers. So, it’s interesting to have watched the panic on a lot of the panic from people when schools shut down. Should schools really be doing all of this stuff? I mean it’s obvious why education is secondary to a lot of these folks because education has been secondary for a long time. Schools do a lot of things outside educating. So it really is, again I think this is a whole wider issue that we should dedicate a podcast to, but it really has I think shown just what a mess our educational system is.
So, I want to wrap up here by just asking maybe Jennifer you could give me a sense of we have seen an uptick in the number of infections and of course the media won’t at all mention this. But that is largely due to the demonstrations we saw after George Floyd’s death. The Black Lives Matter protests and some of also the violence that we’ve seen of large group gatherings. So, that is going to scare people and I think that’s going to strengthen the argument to keep schools closed or to go entirely online. How do you feel about this uptick and do you think that there’s any way that schools will open, despite this?
Jennifer:
I think the only relevant question when it comes to schools is not whether there’s been an uptick in the general population, but whether there’s been an uptick in schools and daycare centers that have reopened. The answer is that there hasn’t been and so if there’s an uptick in the general community because a bunch of college students went to some bar or because people went to some protests, that has nothing to do with the question we’re trying to address here.
Julie:
Right.
Jennifer:
The question we’re trying to address here is will there be a danger in opening schools? And the answer is very clearly no. You can look at the daycare centers in New York City that stayed open for essential workers the entire time. Teachers did not get sick. Teachers did not die from exposure to children. It just didn’t happen and we keep pinning the teachers against the kids. Well okay, what about the teachers with underlying conditions? What about the teachers that are older? The fact of the matter is, yes they have to take precautions, as Carrie said they’ve been doing in Germany. Mostly they need to take precautions from each other. They can’t sit next to each other in the teacher’s lounge. They can’t take their masks off in front of each other because it does transmit adult to adult. But the fact of the matter is that teachers are at very low risk of getting this disease from going back to school.
Julie:
Yeah. Well Carrie you’re coming back soon and your kids are probably going to have to go back to that COVID type schooling. You’re probably not looking forward to that.
Carrie:
Yeah, we are staring into moving back to the United States this fall, most likely. It’s funny it’s the kids. The moves are already always hard on kids, but boy when you’re going from fully opened schools which is our kid’s school here in Berlin is expected, planning to open fully functional. I’m sure there will be some additional spacing and they’re going to be encouraging kids to wash hands. So there’s no mask expectations or anything, but that’s starting in mid-August the kids are supposed to be back. Will be, kids here in Berlin will be back in full time school and my kids are thinking about going back to the states where we’re going to be in at best once or twice a week in person regime with masks and no sports. My kids are at sports as we’re speaking.
Julie:
Yeah.
Carrie:
My kids are at a lacrosse camp. It’s a wonderful thing. The kids, it’s really been healthy for them. It was hard when they were all home and they’re dreading the idea of having to be back in that environment. So it’s worrying.
Julie:
Well there’s no time now, but Jennifer you also have college aged kids and there’s a struggle there too with what will college look like.
Jennifer:
Well we could do a whole other hour on that Julie, don’t get me started. Yeah they’re bringing them back and putting them in prison essentially.
Julie:
I think I will fully ruin your vacation if I make you talk about that, so we will skip that topic. But I will say just from a … I think all of us are very, very lucky because we work from home. IWF the women of IWF work from home and we have a tremendous amount of flexibility that said, “I did enjoy eight hours of quiet time at my house. My biggest annoyance was when the dog scratched the door to go out.” So I am actually locked in my bedroom right now. I have a lovely desk downstairs where I could be doing this podcast. But I’m locked in my room and desperately hoping that the dog doesn’t paw on the bedroom door or that a kid doesn’t come in and beg me to make him scrambled eggs. So there are complications with this and it doesn’t look like there’s any ending to it.
So, ladies thank you for coming on today. You are my first guests for the premier episode of the Bespoke Parenting Hour. So thanks so much for joining me.
Jennifer:
Thanks, it was fun.
Carrie:
Thanks Julie.
Julie:
So that was a great conversation with Carrie and Jennifer and I think it really highlights just how difficult this is for children to be out of school, to be out of their social interactions with other kids. To be out of their routines. Parents are frustrated, particularly working parents really worried about things. But I do think, I want to leave this podcast on giving people some perspective that it’s obvious that kids today are experiencing something completely different from anything they’ve ever experienced before. But other generations have experienced similar frightening, upsetting schedule disrupting hardships. I think it’s always good to put things in perspective. I often do this with moms when they worry about occasionally taking a break, using a shortcut. Putting a frozen pizza in the fridge and they’re just riddled with guilt. I tell them, “Look 100 years ago so many kids died of malnutrition. We’re very lucky to have these conveniences and life is different and life is busier.” So I want to give people a little bit of perspective on that.
In recent history, just the past 100 years. So that is very recent history. Kids have experienced war, food shortages and hardships we can’t even imagine today. During the great depression 34 million men, women and children were entirely without income. There was no safety net. This was 28% of the American people then and a quarter of a million children were homeless. At least one in five were deeply, deeply despondent and very seriously hungry and malnourished. Many of them did not have adequate clothing. I think it’s really important to understand the condition of children during the depression and immediately after it. It was a really horrible time in our history and children suffered terribly.
In some regions, especially coal mining regions, as many as 90% of children were terribly malnourished. We’ve seen the pictures. I’m sure all of you are familiar with the pictures taken by Dorothea Lange and Marion Post Wolcott, Lewis Hine. These are heartbreaking photographs and they capture the physical and emotional toll that these terrible living conditions took on children. In the 1930s we had our first child labor laws and that was great. That was a really positive sign. But when you read about this, you realize that this was not because of an altruistic desire to help these kids. It was because too many kids were competing with adults with menial jobs.
So, I leave you with this image because I think that it’s important to remember that kids are strong, that parents are strong. That we have, this country has been through terrible things before. We have survived. We’ve grown stronger. Today we have a lot of services in place to help people, the social safety net to prevent these horrors that happened in the great depression. So, I just wanted to leave you with a little bit of perspective. We will get through this. It will get better and eventually we will return our children to school. Thanks everyone for being here for another episode of the Bespoke Parenting Hour. If you enjoyed this episode or like the podcast in general please leave a rating or review on iTunes. This helps ensure that the podcast reaches as many listeners as possible. If you haven’t subscribed to the Bespoke Parenting Hour on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play or wherever you get your podcasts please do so, so you won’t miss an episode. Don’t forget to share this episode and let your friends know that they can get Bespoke episodes on their favorite podcast app. From all of us here at the Independent Women’s Forum, thanks for listening.