Last week we found out that 545 children who were separated from their parents at the border have parents who cannot currently be found. I just spent a bunch of time writing a whole essay about the Trump administration’s policy of family separation at the border, how horrific and cruel it is, and all about how the U.S. has always been racist. But it all feels trite at this point. It’s nothing new. Mostly I just can’t stop thinking about those parents and children.
Parenthood, especially in the context of a pandemic, is an exhausting daily grind for many of us, and those of us who have neuro-divergent children (and/or are neuro-divergent ourselves) or children with other special needs are especially tired. I feel parenting guilt every single day. My kids spend too much time on screens, not enough time outside, I don’t spend enough quality time with them, I am too impatient, I yell too much. I long to hold them close and long to push them away. They annoy the living shit out of me sometimes, and I annoy the shit out of them too.
A thought that has come to my head often since the beginning of this reign of terror and unimaginable, inhumane cruelty at the border is that the parents who have had their children forcibly removed from their arms don’t have the luxury of getting annoyed by their children. They don’t have the opportunity to remove their child from their leg 17 times in a row, or to ask their child…
