The Pandemic Is Putting Marriage Even Further Out of Reach

It seems insensitive to admit it, but this pandemic hasn’t been too hard on my family. My husband and I already worked from home with our toddler, and our income, such as it is (we are writers), has not yet shrunk. Our legume-heavy diet was apocalypse-proof, and our budget had already made restaurants the stuff of memory. Sure, our view of the future is obscured by a haze of anxiety and dread, but our present could certainly be worse.

We are not alone. No one claims to be gliding through this strange and alarming moment, but there are all sorts of silver-lining stories about families bonding over shared meals and inescapably shared space. Although most of the cooking, cleaning, and homeschooling has fallen to mothers (many of whom have left ), fathers report cleaning). My friends, most of whom have spouses and young kids, kvetch about juggling work and child care in cramped quarters, but also send me proud snapshots of their drawings, gardening projects, and fresh-baked bread. “This time is a gift,” one friend recently told me. “There’s something about ‘making do’ right now, about having the family come together to help each other, that has made us all very close.”