How can I respond to mean comments when I tell people I’ve returned to work and yes, my baby is in daycare. I can’t believe some of the responses from my own friends. “Wow, how could you do that? In a pandemic. What if they get sick?” I need to work, so does my husband, and no one is offering to pay for our bills, so yes, that’s what I’m doing. How should I respond without wanting to bite their heads off? —Hannah, 28, CA Lauren Smith Brody: Can you even imagine having this kind of audacity? Now?! Hannah, I’m so sorry you’re having to put up with this garbage. You have every right, as a mother in a pandemic, doing her best in spite of so many obstacles—delayed vaccines, pay inequality, a childcare crisis—to respond with words that I cannot print here. Seriously, that would be an appropriate response. Curse them out, do your work, hug your baby, and be over it. But I get the sense that you’re not an “over it” kind of person (neither am I). In which case I recommend a conflict strategy taught to me by my brilliant friend, leadership communication expert Deborah Grayson Riegel, author of the new book, Go To Help: When someone is acting judgemental or awful, ask yourself, What is the most generous interpretation of this hurtful behavior? And let that be your guide for how to respond. I can think of three generous interpretations for why someone would question your decision to send your baby to daycare while you work: Generous interpretation 1: This person has been conditioned—by age, by culture—to espouse an outdated family/economic structure. They have also been conditioned—by age, by culture—to impose that on you. Your response: Ignore them. You do not need to take on the labor of being their eureka moment. Live your life. You’ll recondition them by example. Generous interpretation 2 (<–most common!): This person has mixed feelings about the choices (or forced “choices”) they’ve made for their own family, and they’re validating their reality by criticizing yours. Your response: Legitimize their identity as a full-time parent without diminishing yours. Try something like, “OMG, I would never criticize your family’s financial and emotional decisions. I’m sure you didn’t mean it that way. All families work hard and all families deserve support.” Generous interpretation 3: This person is genuinely (but irrationally! ignorantly!) concerned about your baby’s well-being, and yours. Your response: Again, you can feel totally free to ignore them. Or if you want to educate them, here is a run-on sentence full of links to high-quality articles and research that you can say: “About 2 million women have been forced out of work during the pandemic due to gender inequity in caregiving, accounting for a loss of more than $800 billion in income, but I have managed to stay employed—45% of American moms are primary or solo breadwinners, by the way—and to find accessible childcare (which is pretty safe, it seems—babies are more likely to get covid from their families than from daycare, according to this study), in spite of the fact that childcare cost has risen 41% on average, all so I can maintain my career, and my income (poverty is bad for kids’ health and cash boosts their brain development), and set an example for my child, whom, research shows, will, one day—because I didn’t quit—go further in her own career or share more evenly in his parenting, and be just as happy as if I were home with them.” BOOM. Next, Five Ways to Take Action in Fighting Existing Disparity In Access to Education, According to Lauren Smith Brody As an entrepreneur who can’t quit journalism, Brody writes regularly about the intersection of business and motherhood for, among others, The New York Times, Slate, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Elle, and pens advice columns for Parade Media and the children’s brand Maisonette. Brody is on the board of the early education nonprofit Docs for Tots. A longtime leader in the women’s magazine industry, she was previously the executive editor of Glamour magazine. Raised in Ohio, Texas, and Georgia, she now lives in New York City with her husband, two sons, and rescue puppy.
