Yahoo News Amy Schumer doesn't have childcare and parents can relate: ‘What's a clean house?'
If not having childcare means you have less time to clean, Amy Schumer isn't judging — instead she'll show you her own messy kitchen in solidarity.
In a Monday Instagram video, the comedian and actress, 39, stood makeup-free in her kitchen, the counters of which were lined with dirty dishes, pantry items and appliances. "Yeah actually, we were worried, not having childcare," she said, trying to suppress her laughter. "But we're actually doing really well —I think we're a lot more capable of a lot more than we realized we were. All this help we've grown accustomed to, we don't need it."
Last month, Schumer and husband Chris Fischer said goodbye to their nanny Jane, who cared for their 21-month-old son Gene. "We have evolved to having no child care," Schumer wrote on her Instagram Stories. "Love to Jane who is focusing on her studies. Any tips for cutting a toddlers nails? We are strugglin!"
Supportive comments piled onto Schumer's new post: "What’s a clean house? Haven’t seen one since February 2020," "I love that I can relate to this! My houseplants are dying, and there are pots and pans in the sink, but hey, the kids are alive and happy. It's all that matters, right?" and "How did you film this in my kitchen?!" Someone else wrote, "This truly made my day — that’s my life."
While Schumer has credited Jane with making "it possible for me to work and know that our baby is happy and healthy" (her Food Network show Amy Schumer Learns to Cook, wrapped two seasons last year), as a celeb, she's in a different boat than most working parents.
According to USA Today, many families cannot afford childcare or choose to avoid potential exposure of COVID-19 by not welcoming non-household members into their homes. And with parental unemployment having reached "historic highs" last year (with the impact hitting mothers more so than fathers), according to Columbia University's Center on Poverty and Social Policy, "Mothers are twice as likely as fathers to attribute their current unemployment status to care responsibilities."
And our homes might reflect this state of emergency, as families spend much time inside, merging their work and personal spaces. As one mother wrote last year in the New York Times, "My home is in a constant state of use, and so the clutter gathers and the dust settles. With no deadlines on the horizon — forget summer parties, we don’t even aspire to leave the house on Monday morning — the days bleed into one another, each a surreal version of the last. Even with lockdown orders lifted, we remain perpetually quasi-homebound. Where is there to go anyway?"
74 percent of people admitted their homes had never been dirtier, according to a study of 2,000 parents conducted by OnePoll on behalf of BISSELL Homecare, Inc.
True words to Schumer's fans. As one wrote under her post, "Never felt so seen."
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