The Elephant in the Room: COVID-19’s Impact on Single Mothers in the Greater Toronto Area

From the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, beginning in March of 2020, it has been nothing short of newsworthy. Since then, the global pandemic has been featured on every news outlet and media source as a daily occurrence. My family and I frequently watch the nightly news provided by CityTV. The news reported daily of death tolls, outbreaks in long-term care centres, the exhaustion of frontline workers, and the detrimental economic impact related to the closure of small businesses. I couldn’t help but notice, however, there was an elephant in the room. Single mothers, a vulnerable, but less discussed, population were missing from the daily news reporting. Not a single news outlet featured the stories of a population forced to navigate already socially undesirable circumstances during an unprecedented time. After recognizing this lack of acknowledgement by local news outlets, I sought to highlight what these news outlets failed to: the disproportional impact that COVID-19 has had on single mothers, with children under the age of 13, in the Greater Toronto Area.

My Research

My research examined how the second wave of COVID-19 is different than the first wave for single mothers in the GTA, specifically in terms of new fears that may have arisen for them. Here,  I paint the picture of what life is like for one particular single mother in the GTA, in hopes of acknowledging the elephant in the room.

Sienna’s Story

Sienna was the first mother I spoke to. Her case differs from the  other participants in my study, though she does not serve as an anomaly amongst many single mothers in the GTA. Sienna is 21 and her daughter is 2 years old. Due to her young age and single parent status, Sienna was already in an unfavourable position prior to COVID-19. With the onset of the pandemic, however, she faces a plethora of new challenges she never thought possible.

Work

Sienna’s maternity leave ended in March, around the time when lockdowns were beginning to take place in the GTA. She was expecting to return to her prior drugstore job, but after contacting the drugstore and asking when she should return, they notified her that she was being laid off due to the pandemic. Having a dependent meant that Sienna had to quit this job in search of another.

_{“I had to quit because it was too iffy. Like okay we were in lockdown, and we kept on like, prolonging it. Two weeks more, two weeks more, two weeks more. I’m like how many two weeks am I able to go without getting paid?”}

Sienna stressed her fear of not being able to have enough money to provide for her daughter with her recent lay-off. She collected three months of CERB as she applied at every essential service job in her neighbourhood. She feared that she would not be able to find a job that provided benefits, like her old job provided, which she needed for her daughter’s medication. After 3 months, Sienna ended up being able to find a job as a grocery store associate, benefits included.

 _{“I had to go find another job, an essential service job, that I could work during COVID and that I wouldn’t be scared would close because I needed to continue to make money.”}

COVID-19 has increased grocery shopping tremendously, which resulted in increased working hours for grocery store workers. Sienna notes that because of this, she is caught between a rock and a hard place. Specifically, her job asks that she work 40 hours a week, often requesting that she come in early. However, these shifts are irregular and can change  every week. She finds it difficult to work around her daughter’s schedule; a problem that is common of single mothers working during COVID-19.

_{“my daycare hours are 7am to 6pm. So it’s good if you work a regular like nine to five job. And like, maybe like four out of seven days I’ll work daycare hours. And then a couple days I close and work till 9:30. And then those, well, I need someone’s help.”}

Childcare

For much of the interview Sienna spoke about how new COVID-19 related uncertainties are plaguing her daycare. She was living through one of them as we spoke. Her daughter’s daycare had just shut down for the next 5 days because one of the daycare instructors testing positive for COVID-19. This left Sienna in a difficult position because she had to continue to work yet was provided with no alternative method of childcare.

 _{“Yesterday I literally got calls, literally yesterday, that I had to pick her up early. I dropped her off around 9:30. Then I got calls around 12:00 that I had to pick her up early because one of the teachers had tested positive for COVID. So she’s now not allowed to return until Monday, because they need the like four or five days off to fully sanitize the place and make sure the teachers aren’t coming back until they’re fully well.”}

Sienna speaks to the fact that these matters are all the more upsetting as she is paying large sums of money to put her daughter in daycare. She receives government subsidies that help to cover the majority of her monthly fees, which help her significantly. She was only granted these subsidies as a result of being on maternity leave prior to the pandemic because she was making only 33 percent of her normal pay, which allowed her to meet the minimum requirement for government funded daycare provisions. Oddly enough, she was grateful for her “low income status” as it proved to the government that she was in need of support and daycare funding. Sienna makes the comparison of daycare fees being equivalent to the price of rent, while explaining her fear that after this tax season, she will begin having to pay for daycare in full as a result of working full-time hours at her new job.

_{“But like also daycare is expensive. Daycare is rent. I’m telling you I am on subsidies with daycare as a single parent. It’s helping tremendously. But I had to pay my first month of daycare before my subsidy even kicked in to like ensure my spot… I had to pay the first month, and the first month was 1800 dollars. Just for daycare. And then for the first month, I had to pay like all the like, subscription fees, like the registration fee. This fee, this fee, like the one time fees. So it ended up being 2500 dollars just for the first month. Every month after that if I was paying for it fully out of pocket it would be 1800 dollars. It literally is rent to put your kids in daycare.”}

Government Subsidies

Sienna concludes with her criticism of government subsidies and their inadequacy of helping single mothers during COVID-19. She mentioned her fears related to the possibility of her needing to leave work as a result of contracting the virus, and her fear that the bi-weekly 900 dollar subsidy would not be enough.

_{“Because what do I do if I get COVID, I would literally have to stay home. And the benefit is like $900 every two weeks. So like 1800 dollars a month, which is only the daycare fee. And then like if a single mother is stopping working her full time job where she was probably making like double that. And now she has to pay rent. Forget the daycare fee. I can’t even pay rent and the daycare fee. You know what I mean?”}

After voicing these concerns, Sienna provided a recommendation for the Ontario government, one she felt would be helpful not only for herself but for many other single mothers in similar predicaments during COVID-19. The recommendation relates to emergency daycares for people who lost childcare as a result of an outbreak. While some may rely on a partner to care for a child while the other partner is at work, single mothers do not have this available to them. With daycare closures leaving single mothers scrambling for childcare, the second wave of the virus may be the needle that breaks the camel’s back.

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Taylor Domingos