‘I have to provide’: How these California moms are making it through the pandemic

Silvia Alvarenga of Sacramento has felt constant stress over her family’s finances since her business saw sharp declines in real estate clients during the pandemic.

She worries. How she will pay for her teenage daughter’s college textbooks? Who will drive her 86-year-old mother living at home to the store or next doctor’s appointment? When is the next utility bill due?

Nearly ten months into the pandemic, revenue continues to decline at her real estate brokerage. If the business doesn’t pick up soon, she fears giving up her Sacramento office space to work from home and save money.

“As a single mom, I have to provide for everybody,” Alvarenga, 54, said sighing loudly. “Life is not the same.”

A new UC Davis study underscores the financial and psychological toll that low-income Latina mothers like her in Sacramento and Yolo counties are facing during the coronavirus pandemic. Most of the mothers surveyed for the study were contacted through a previous UC Davis study on Mexican-origin families in Northern California as part of an ongoing, multi-year project.

About half, 52%, of the 70 mothers surveyed, told researchers they were struggling financially during the pandemic and had to make financial cutbacks.

“The families that participated in this study are engaged in a number of economic cutbacks to save money,” said the study’s lead researcher Leah C. Hibel. “They’re forced to buy less food, they’re forced to miss rent payments, they’re forced to miss other bills.”

About 31.4% of the women who made economic cutbacks held off on buying clothes, 18.6% missed rent, 11.4% missed a car payment, 15.7% bought less food and 2.9% skipped meals.

For Latina mothers “fighting the crisis on multiple fronts,” according to Hibel, the pandemic is not solely a financial crisis, it’s also a mental one. Mothers who had to make those cutbacks were more likely to experience higher stress levels, depressive symptoms and anxiety, the study showed.

“Latinos are at higher risk of unemployment and even when employed are at risk for lower-income than non-Latino Whites, problems that are compounded during the economic recession resulting from the pandemic,” researchers said in the study.

In California, Latinas earn 42 cents for every dollar a white man makes, according to a report by the Hispanas Organized for Political Equity. In the initial months of the pandemic, about 30% of Hispanic women in the state lost their jobs, according to the report, compared to 9% of white women.

Additionally, the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on communities of color, particularly Latinos, according to the report, “is likely to present downstream consequences for their mental health and well-being.”

Most of the stress Alexis Martinez experiences stems from not being able to accept as much help from relatives to care for her 7-month-old daughter to stave off COVID-19.

“Being a first-time mom during the pandemic is pretty difficult,” the Sacramento resident, 25, said.

Early on during the health crisis, Martinez was forced to cancel her baby shower. When she and her husband, a correctional officer, received their first round of federal stimulus checks, they used most of the money to buy diapers, wet wipes and clothes for her daughter, which are items she would normally be gifted at a baby shower.

While taking maternity leave from her job at a waxing salon, Martinez’s family made cutbacks on groceries and stopped ordering take-out from restaurants. But weeks after she started working again, she was laid off in December amid business shutdowns in Sacramento County.

The amount of money she said she received from her unemployment checks was nowhere close to what she made at the salon, where a good-sized portion of her income comes from clients’ tips.

Alvarenga has made similar cutbacks and has relied on buying more canned and frozen foods.

“It’s kind of (embarrassing),” she said. “We didn’t have to do that before.”

She has yet to receive her second stimulus check, but plans to use it to pay off past-due utility and phone bills. She used her first stimulus check last year to pay for car repairs.

The last two rounds of stimulus payments may not be enough for low-income families, instead, Hibel believes struggling families need monthly payments to stay afloat.

“This crisis is not a one-month crisis,” Hibel said. “One-time (payments) are not going to suffice.”

This story was originally published January 19, 2021 at 5:00 AM.