Explore the Archives
A Journal of the Plague Year Arizona Collection Australia Boston Bronx Community College New York Brooklyn College New York Canada Las Americas Lockdown Staten Island New Orleans Oral Histories Philippines Sacramento Community Based Organizations Southwest Stories Teaching the Pandemic The City College of New York

Collected Item: “Motherhood during a pandemic”

Give your story a title.

Motherhood during a pandemic

What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?

screenshot

Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.

I am researching the unintended consequences of the pandemic. One way to find some answers is to learn what real people are going through. It is easy to find people’s thoughts about the pandemic on social media, so I took to my mom groups and found people willing to let me share their thoughts anonymously. In the first screenshot, a mom talks about how she is trying to stay positive through the pandemic. From losing her job temporarily, to missing her work and family, to missing simple everyday things like shopping, this mom is feeling the brunt of lockdown in California. It is easy to pick out the negative consequences of the pandemic, but she looks for positivity anyway.
The next mom is worried about how her child is going to come out on top due to homeschooling. She wants advice on how to keep her son motivated and not give up when things get hard. There is no way to tell exactly how this pandemic has affected our kids, only time will tell. But there have definitely been some unintended consequences. This example shows that while we are parents and we love our children, we have no idea what the teachers were doing to help our kids through each class before the pandemic. Perhaps one consequence of the pandemic will be a larger respect for teachers.
I plan to further use social media for my research, along with academic studies, and oral interviews.

Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your story. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?

#HST494, #ArizonaStateUniversity, #facebook, #homeschooling, #motherhood

Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)

Alisha Downs

Give this story a date.

2021-03-28
Click here to view the corresponding item.