How Do Artist Caregivers Do It All? We Asked Them.

I Don’t Know How They Do It! is a new HowlRound Journal column featuring anonymous diaries from artists who are caregivers. To celebrate its launch this week, column curator Anne G. Morgan sat down with HowlRound co-director Ramona Rose King to discuss the column’s origins, their own parenting journeys, and how our field can better support caregiving artists.

Ramona: Anne! Ideating and launching this column with you has been such a labor of love. We’ve been friends for almost fifteen years now—long before either of us was a caretaker for anyone—and now we both have small children! It has been a joy and honor to grow alongside you all these years, professionally and personally. I just love you and am grateful for you.

Where did the idea for I Don't Know How They Do It! come from?

Anne: Thanks, Ramona; I’m so grateful for our long friendship and this new partnership.

As to your question, not to simply parrot the column title, but it came from a selfish curiosity to better understand how caregiving artists do it. As I navigated my postpartum journey, I struggled to imagine a world in which I was creating in the same ways and with as much fulfillment as I had had before I had my child. A Substack called Working Moms Make It Work was chronicling weeks of working mothers, but they were largely white-collar, non-artistic jobs. So, I was reading these diaries and trying to gather as much guidance as I could, but I was hungry to hear from folks in artistic work or with artistic practices. I still am.

Ramona: What preconceptions about balancing artistry and caregiving did you have before you became an artist caregiver yourself?

Anne: I feel fortunate that in my early career I was surrounded by various examples of artist caregivers. I saw playwrights holding a newborn while doing rewrites, other folks caring for elderly parents. I had this assumption that it was all possible. But I wasn't sure if I wanted kids or if I would have kids, so, I confess, I had a real sort of lack of curiosity about the how of such a thing. I was like, “Of course it's possible. No further questions.” Then, I became a parent, and it's only subsequently that I've realized that being a caregiving artist is only possible with a great deal of labor, intentionality, and complications. What about you?

Ramona: I had some artist caregiver examples like that, especially on the playwright/freelance artist side. I remember an early National Playwright Residency Program convening that Mike Lew and Rehana Lew Mirza brought their baby to, for example. That was so beautiful. But in my very early career I never had a boss who was a mother of young children. I did work with some dads with school-aged kids.

I did always know that I wanted to have kid, so it was sort of a blind faith—”We'll figure it out.” I didn't, for a long time, have specific examples of how to have a full-time creative job and raise a family.

Everyone's caregiving situation, family dynamic, artistic practice—there's such variety there. It's all a little mysterious to me, even though I'm in it too. 

Anne: I still look at peers who have caregiving responsibilities and feel like I literally don’t know how they do it. Everyone's caregiving situation, family dynamic, artistic practice—there's such variety there. It's all a little mysterious to me, even though I'm in it too.

Ramona: What would you say are the biggest challenges that you face right now as an artist caregiver?

Anne: Unpredictability. The unpredictability of caregiving, but also the unpredictability of artistic work. If there’s a hand, foot, and mouth disease outbreak at school, I have to prioritize caring for my daughter through that over whatever else may be on my plate. On the flip side, I had an experience where I had very carefully calibrated my childcare arrangements so that I could attend a run through for a show I’d been doing some dramaturgy work for. Knowing that this run through was going to be an important moment in the play’s journey, I prioritized getting all the pieces in place to be there in person. Then, a miscommunication between an actor, a stage manager, and the director meant that at the last minute they decided not to do a run through during that rehearsal block. And I had expended all my caregiving favors to make that work.

So, in general, unpredictability is a big, ongoing challenge. I hope that I am better at navigating emergent situations on both the caregiving and artistic front, but it's never not a challenge. What about you?

Ramona: The biggest thing for me is probably the emotional and mental divide and pull. For a long time after my older son was born, I just didn't want to work at all. Even now as I'm at a really exciting point in my career, it's just horrible sometimes to walk upstairs to my office and close the door and hear the baby crying for me downstairs. Even though he's with my husband or with my mom—he's loved and he's being taken care of—he still doesn't want me to go upstairs. He just wants to sit on my lap all day. It's very hard to not feel like I'm making the wrong choice in a moment like that.

On the flip side, every time I'm working and I'm a bit distracted by something with my kids, that doesn't feel good either, because I care deeply about my work. That constant push-pull is probably the hardest thing for me.

Anne: As I'm hearing you, I'm realizing I have a much lower tolerance for nonsense now as a result of that push-pull. Having my own professional artistic life is really important to me; as a parent, I want my daughter to grow up seeing that she has a mom who works and takes great pride in her work and has ambition. But when I'm in meetings that could have been an email and my daughter is playing right outside my door, that’s so frustrating. I feel like I work more efficiently as a result, because my work is a part of something larger rather than my whole life.

I hope other caregivers might similarly encounter strategies they haven’t tried or considered. I also hope that they don't feel alone in the parts that are challenging or isolating. 

Ramona: Absolutely. Switching gears: What, if anything, has surprised you as you've been putting this column together?

Anne: Roughly half of the diarists thus far are men. The data show that the majority of caregiving work is done by women, and I suspected that we would see largely women among the diarists. I was very pleasantly surprised that that hasn’t been the case as we’ve recruited these early diarists. I think it is indicative of a direction that I hope our society is going where men are taking on more of the caregiving labor and becoming more present in these conversations about sharing caregiving labor. That being said, I also wonder if fewer women are signing up to put diaries together because they are so overwhelmed by their caregiving and artistic work that they don’t have the capacity to take this on. It’s too early to say; we’re just getting this started.

Ramona: What do you hope caregivers and non-caregivers take away from this column?

Anne: Selfishly, I hope to take away tips, ideas, and strategies to make me better at both artistry and caregiving. I hope other caregivers might similarly encounter strategies they haven’t tried or considered. I also hope that they don't feel alone in the parts that are challenging or isolating. I hope that they feel seen; that feels really important to me.

I hope non-caregivers take away from this series the variety of forms that caregiving work takes and that one size does not fit all in terms of supporting artist caregivers.

Ramona: Yes! So, what can our industry do to better support artist caregivers?

Anne: It’s about actually having a conversation and responding to an individual’s needs for support. So, for example, when my kid was really little, if I were to travel for work, she would have needed to come with me. Now, she’s older, so it’d be more challenging for her to come with me; I’d rather do shorter trips (even if more frequent), so that I can come back home quickly. That’s a small example of how the same artist caregiver’s need for accommodation might change within a span of about two years. Tuning in to that, rather than looking for a one-size-fits-most solution, will make a world of difference, which is part of the much larger, ongoing call for humanity and human-centeredness in our industry.

I’m curious about the HowlRound of it all. What are you hoping that folks take away from the series?

Ramona: I agree with that—so much of it just comes down to flexibility and openness to individualized solutions. I’d like to see folks at institutions working on an employee-to-employee basis around things like in-office vs. remote work, scheduling flexibility, etc.

But many of these issues are structural. In the United States where we both are, our healthcare system is so broken. If we had universal healthcare, my early parenthood experience would have been so different. I wouldn’t necessarily have had to go back to full-time work because our family needed that health coverage. It would have given me a different level of flexibility in the early days of my child's life.

I'm really excited that we’re having more conversations about universal basic income (UBI). Ireland just made a guaranteed income for artists pilot program permanent, which is really exciting. I’m interested in anything like that because we know that for all kinds of artists, but especially for caregiving artists, output really fluctuates over time, and those periods when maybe productivity isn't as visible are ultimately so important for the work that is created. Just not operating from a place of pure survival gives us the most beautiful and powerful work in in many, many cases. So, moving towards more programs like that feels so important, and if this column inspires anyone to get more involved in systems reform work, that would make me really happy.

I’m excited about the work Moms First is doing to advocate for paid leave and affordable and accessible childcare. In our industry, I’ve been a longtime fan of Parent Artist Advocacy League (PAAL) and everything they do to find solutions to the issues facing caregivers in the arts and media.

Anne: To your point of flexibility, I want to add that caregiving artists bring so much to the table, right? We’re skilled at pivoting when something goes wrong (we work in the arts, something’s bound to go wrong). We’re really efficient. I think those of us with young children are thinking about story and play constantly. I think we're more attuned to the world around us. As we name the ways in which we may benefit from additional support in a particular situation, it's important that we also name the assets that we bring to the table as artists whose artistry is enriched by our caregiving work.

Ramona: This culture of individuality is so broken in so many ways, and it's especially clear to me since I’ve had young kids. None of us were supposed to be doing this alone, right? Not even alone as an individual, but alone as a nuclear family. Anything we can do to encourage that village and network of support is key.

Anne: We are very intentional in this series of speaking about caregiving writ large, rather than just parenting. Of course, you and I both have young kids, so I think that that tends to be our point of entry. But while folks can choose whether they want to have kids, there are countless other folks who will have caregiving duties for partners or parents in their future. Caregiving will come for most all of us in some format at some point, and I think we have to be ready to lift each other up in that work.

Advocate for what you need from your employers, from your family, from your friends. Because you're not supposed to do it alone. 

Ramona: Beautifully said. Last question: Do you have any advice for folks who may be early in their caregiving artist journey or nearing the start of that journey?

Anne: Despite what I just said, I will frame my response in terms of parents specifically, because I do not currently feel particularly qualified to speak to caregiving for elders or partners.

I have found grains of truth in many of the old cliches about parenting in general. The one that has resonated most deeply in terms of balancing my caregiving with my artistic practice is that it all changes so quickly; they grow up so quickly. Yes, as a parent, I get a little weepy about that. But as an artist, I can see that the week that I documented in my I Don’t Know How They Do It! diary would have felt literally unimaginable to me two years ago when I was just returning to the workforce. So I don’t even know what might be possible in my artistic life two years from now when my daughter can actually entertain herself for an extended period of time, or ten years from now when she can be home alone for an afternoon. So that is a touchstone for me: Wherever I am in my caregiving artist journey, it's not permanent. That is both a good thing and sometimes a hard thing. What about you?

Ramona: Yeah, that's so true, and so beautiful. Jokingly, to paraphrase a viral post, the only real parenting hack is to live near the grandparents.

But more than that, I’d just say, nothing is impossible. You're going to figure it out. It's going to change all the time. And ask for help. Ask for help. Ask for help. Advocate for what you need from your employers, from your family, from your friends. Because you're not supposed to do it alone.

Anne: I’m so glad we’re doing this together.

Ramona: Me too.