it's been 10 years of parenting under the thumb of Trump

we are tired, and this is hard

Made by my 8-year-old

This Saturday, like millions of other Americans, I showed up at my local “Hands Off” protest. Unlike most of my compatriots, I was late; delayed by managing grumbles about leaving the house on a Saturday morning, acquiescing requests for yet another cup of chocolate milk, negotiating the possibility of a post-protest brunch, and — highest stakes of all — making sure socks had NO BUMPS. All this and only half my kids were in my charge; the others were attending with their grandparents.

When we finally got there and started unloading our bodies from the minivan, a few people were already walking back to their cars. We had missed the crux of it. Never not stubborn, I rushed the kids, their dad, and the dog across the park anyway, to the side of the road where people with signs were still gathered. As we speed walked, I was hit by a wave of déjà vu.

Eight years ago, after a newly inaugurated President Trump had issued an executive order that came to be known as “The Muslim Ban,” I had attended my first political protest in our sleepy college town. With my three kids in tow, plus an extra I was babysitting, I’d pushed a double stroller through the campus of Iowa State University only to arrive for the final petering out of homemade signs and tired demonstrators. The only other mom with kids there bought me a coffee.

January 2017. Yes, there is a baby in my coat.

The memory came to mind this weekend as I raced against time to cast my lot among those announcing that, bidden or not bidden, we want it known that we give a damn. Then and now, I’ve been disappointed by my own limitations. Then and now, I’ve wished I could do more. One more body doesn’t change anything, not really, I have known that; but so too have I known that it does something in me. It does something in my kids.

That baby that was strapped to my chest the first time we protested Donald J. Trump will be considered a tween next month. That preschooler now has braces and shares my shoe size. That first grader is now learning to drive — and I have a new first grader, who wasn’t even a twinkle in my eye back then.

Considering the ableist, misogynistic, racist campaign he began in 2015, it has been a decade since this inhumane caricature of a man first started dominating public life. My peers and I have spent our entire parenthood trying to actively resist a cruel, fascist president and the reverberations he has caused. Even in the “off” years between his presidencies, we got no reprieve: his minions desecrated our central site of democracy, we suffered from his feckless handling of a global pandemic, and we were subjected to nearly two years of another toxic campaign monopolizing headlines.

Parents have not caught a break, or our breath, in ten years. We have shown up at rallies and at the voting booth; we have raised funds and raised voices; we have called our representatives and called out relatives; and we have done it while potty training, making lunches, driving to soccer practice, and returning library books. The list of injustices has been as endless as the litany of complaints about what we serve for dinner, and we have had to daily find a way to hold both without losing our minds.

All this on a generation of parents who have been made more aware than any before them of the emotional responsibility we owe to our children. We’re taking our anxiety meds and showing up for therapy; we’re working through our own baggage so we can give our kids a decent shot at being mentally healthy, empathetic people who will make the world a better place, only to have them come home from school repeating “your body, my choice” and asking if it’s true that the president is a felon. And now, just for funsies, we get to handle an economic crisis and an unelected wannabe oligarch too.

I’m no apologist for American presidents, nor am I daft; I know we’ve had some doozies that have made it stressful to be a parent. I don’t imagine it was fun to explain to children about Kennedy’s death or Nixon’s lies or Clinton’s indiscretion or Bush’s bogus war. But these were not relentless stressors that lasted acutely for ten years, nor were they experienced under the omnipresence of social media. It’s not the same.

This generation of parents are not overly entitled. We are not being dramatic. We are sentient mammals who have been trying to nurture our young in a hostile environment for a full decade. We are tired, and this is hard, and we are tired of yelling that this is hard, only to have our mouths muffled in response.