That’s it. I am so sick of my career taking a nosedive when we have a child. I did the math today and the next time I will be able to work a FT 8-5 in-person job, I will be in my mid-50s. I have a masters, graduated with honors, and have worked most of my life (80s kid who first babysat at age 9 and got my first job in a grocery store as a checker at age 15). Every time our child is an infant and toddler, I’m sick with stress about trying to pay our bills and stay afloat. I’ve successfully worked remotely for more than one employer for a total of almost six years of remote work, including a high-stress job in the legal industry during the first years of the COVID pandemic. The U.S. government seems to actually want new mothers to just die – there is zero support. The same politicians who pride themselves on family values vote against anything and everything to help families and parents. It is soul-killing to have been applying for jobs for two years and be unable to find remote work for 10-25/hrs a week that allows me to also care for our youngest while working – I could kill some data entry work, research, investigation, so many things, but no, the jobs hiring are SO many sales jobs (in so many industries that is an almost useless profession) or crappy call center work that pays 10-13/hr and is a constant back-to-back grind that chains you to a computer. The indeed assessments are total bullshit – I can score Expert in one and Proficient in another and they are almost the same test. I just needed to vent this out to a community that might hear and respond with empathy, because our government sure does not.