I sat down to write this at least a hundred times. Well, that’s not true. I have thought about sitting down to write this several times. But like most of my thoughts these days, they were interrupted, either by an alarm buzzing to remind me to start that Zoom on poetry for my daughter, or my son asking where his taekwondo belt is for his virtual lesson, or by my toddler having a meltdown because he needs another snack opened.

And once I help with all of those tasks, I have four more emails from work that need my attention.

Mine is a familiar struggle for families sheltering in place with young children because of the coronavirus. Luckily, my husband and I both have jobs that can be done mostly from home, and I already worked from home twice a week. So you would think this adjustment wouldn’t be so hard, but you would be wrong.

Memphis and Shelby County to reopen Monday

Adding three school-aged children 24/7 into the mix makes completing the simplest task exhausting. And while being home together has provided some unexpected pleasures, like family bike rides through the neighborhood or sitting in our hammock reading books in the sun, juggling the demands of my work and my kids in quarantine is a challenge. It is like suddenly having five jobs at once, and at least two have new technology and foreign lingo to learn and coworkers who are very impatient with my inability to adapt on the job quickly.

On top of that, I have added soccer coach, art teacher and science experiment safety coordinator to my résumé. Plus, my youngest is 3. I can’t just tell him, “Mommy needs three hours to get something done, so just sit there and don’t bother me.”

As long as the WiFi keeps working and the snacks don’t run out, I think we’ll be all right, but the mental and physical tolls of around-the-clock child care responsibilities for those working from home are no joke.

But, I am not writing this to vent (well, maybe a little). I am writing because I have a serious question. When our governor tells us we should close the schools (rightfully so) one week, and then tells us the next week that we should open business back up, I can’t help but ask – what should we do with all these children?

With schools shut down in almost every state due to the unprecedented events of the day, more than 50 million kids have been sent home, complicating life for parents, like me, and shining a spotlight on the ever-present challenges of balancing work life and family responsibilities in a society with no mandatory family or sick leave, unaffordable child care, and an always-on work culture.

Gov. Lee calls for schools to close through end of school year

Thankfully Congress has temporarily extended paid family and sick leave to millions of people, and some states are offering free child care to front-line workers, but in most cases employers are just forced to be more flexible about when and where the work gets done because the boundaries between work and home have completely broken down. And the truth is, this will remain the case, and life will not really return to normal, as long as parents don’t have any place to send children during the day, for the rest of this school year and beyond.

Confusion still reigns about whether or not to open child care programs and summer camps, and schools in the fall. And if they are open, how can we keep the children and the workers safe? The CDC recommends placing children 6 feet apart at naptime, and if a teacher holds a crying child, s/he should change both the child’s clothes and their own shirt afterwards. While you are rolling your eyes at this, also consider that many day cares have been hurt so badly financially already they may not be able to open back up, causing an even greater shortage of places to send children when parents are called back to the office.

During even the best of times, our nation incomprehensibly tolerates a scarcity of suitable and affordable child care options, despite the fact that it is clearly an essential component of our economic infrastructure.

To put it bluntly, this just isn’t sustainable. Something will have to give.

And I am one of the lucky ones. I have an amazing partner and we both still have our jobs, and our bosses are being wonderfully flexible. For single parents navigating child care, custody issues and concerns about getting sick, all on a single income, I am sure this feels even more overwhelming. For parents out of work or those who have seen their hours and wages cut dramatically, I am sure they are more focused on how they will pay for the next month’s rent or even tomorrow’s dinner.

Essential workers who are seeing significant increases in their hours of work, and health care workers who are having to be quarantined from their families completely, must be longing to just be with their families more.

The point is, this is hard on all parents, and no one is talking about it.

Perhaps this pandemic will force us to forge a new parental voting bloc, that sees the value in affordable and accessible child care, that pushes for better parental leave policies, that values the work of our teachers and votes for them to be paid accordingly, and that requires leaders to have solid plans in place for families before making broad proclamations. Let’s hope so.

Until then, we have to continue to juggle FaceTimes with grandparents, algebra problems and our own workloads, forging ahead one day at a time.