'I don't want a Hallmark card, I want a policy change.'
Heidi Lewis, a mother of two, is seen working from home in Silver Spring, Maryland, amidst in-person child care and school closures, April 2020. Her 1-year-old daughter Harriet is seen playing beside her in the bathroom.
"The pandemic, it forced women to choose between [our families] and our careers. ... It put us 50 steps back in how we're viewed in society," Rodriguez said. Rodriguez admitted that most of the child care had fallen on her, though her job lends itself more to being a parent amid COVID-19 than her husband's does, she said.Heidi Metcalf Lewis of Silver, Spring, Maryland, is seen holding a book discussion from her living room, May 2020."I wanted to give him the space to prove himself," Lewis explained."Did I willingly take on this unpaid labor? Yes. But we were in a crisis, and needed his income.
The 1940s-era Marshall Plan was a multibillion-dollar U.S. program that helped to rebuild the economies of Western Europe after World War II. Lewis wrote a letter to U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., to alert him that child care was not listed on his website as an issue that required attention.