A Mother’s Case For Bringing Parental Socialization Back

While the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic may seem like old news, Americans, particularly American moms, are still reeling from the lockdowns. Depending on the area, Americans were functionally isolated from others for anywhere from three months to three years. In that short span of time, we got used to doing without certain informal social gatherings and in-person commitments, although our hearts and minds didn’t need them any less. The social fabric has yet to recover.

For moms, post-COVID social isolation is uniquely difficult to shake. As certain segments of society slowly revert to pre-lockdown norms, a mom’s social life is far harder to rebuild. For instance, back-to-office mandates force employees back to daily socialization with other people. But there’s no such mandate for full-time homemakers. The life of a stay-at-home mom does not necessarily require socialization. She can simply be in her house all day and still do her work as a mother. That’s right there in the name we commonly use to refer to moms who don’t work outside the home full time. Moms should resist the temptation to isolate as much as they can. Yet when the network of other moms is itself lacking, bleak statistics on maternal loneliness make all the more sense.