When Beth Allen, 34, first heard the phrase “Black Lives Matter” during the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, she immediately bristled and thought, “All lives matter.”

Then, she stopped to listen.

She’s spent the six years since then trying to learn about the extent of racial injustice in America, a topic that she hadn’t paid much attention to before. This week, she responded to a friend from college who criticized parents taking their children to the recent protests.

“There’s a huge difference between a protest and a riot,” she commented on his Facebook post. She said she wouldn’t hesitate to take her 4-year-old daughter to one of the protests. She has avoided them because she is immunocompromised and worries about the exposure to coronavirus, but said she wishes she could be in the streets with her. “It’s important that we show our children how to use their voices and stand up for what is right,” she said.

When her friend responded that he was judging her, she’d had enough: “Well, if that’s what you’re going to judge me over, judge away. I’ll be busy not raising a racist a

hole.”

He blocked her.

Allen, who lives in unincorporated St. Louis County, is part of a wave of suburban white families engaging their children in the movement for racial justice sparked by the recent police killing of George Floyd. Some had never uttered the words “Black Lives Matter” before, let alone carried a sign saying as much in a march against police brutality. Thousands have joined in protests across the region, including politically conservative areas in St. Charles and west St. Louis County.

There is a growing understanding that acknowledging that the problem is bigger than “a few bad apples” is not the same as criticizing all cops.

Some, like Jennifer Harris Dault’s family, were drawn into the movement after a Ferguson police officer fatally shot unarmed teenager Michael Brown. They have leaned into an infrastructure of anti-racism connections that were established then, and that continue to grow.

Harris Dault, 37, is interim pastor at St. Louis Mennonite Fellowship. When she and her husband began attending protests and vigils six years ago, she was pregnant with her first child. This past week, they took their 5-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter to a small protest in Ferguson. They had told their son, Simeon, that a man named George Floyd had been hurt by the police, and they needed to speak out and say that it was wrong.

Simeon came up with the words for their sign: “Hurting people is not right.” He and his sister were both wearing masks and riding in their double stroller when he spotted a protestor’s sign that said, “I can’t breathe.” Alarmed, he read it and called out to his mother, “That woman can’t breathe!”

She bent down to the stroller and said, “Buddy, people are holding those signs because that’s what George Floyd said. Those are his words that people are using to remember him and say that what happened to him is not OK.”

Simeon and his little sister, Madeleine, chanted their slogan as their parents pushed their stroller down the street.

Harris Dault has been encouraged to see a number of white people engaging for the first time. She belongs to a couple of Facebook groups that support BLM. One of them approved 200 new members in a single day. It seems the words went from controversial to mainstream almost overnight, embraced by celebrities and brands that had been silent before. White people started posting questions in these groups about how to protest for the first time.

She wants her children to grow up internalizing the importance of being present to witness the pain of others, to stand in it with them, to take that story with them and share it with others.

“It’s essential to being human,” she said.

Those joining the protests can more easily distinguish between the millions of peaceful protesters across the country and the rioters damaging property and resorting to violence at night. It’s a distinction they’ve also pointed out to their children.

Bryna Williams, 43, of Oakland, Missouri, took her three children, ages 3, 5 and 10, to a recent march. It was the first time her older children participated in a protest, although they have had many discussions about racism at home. She wanted to start teaching them about how to recognize and try to dismantle systemic racism while they are still young.

“It’s easier to learn to ride a bike when they are 5 as opposed to when they are 20,” she said. ”Kids are more reflective about things than we give them credit to be. They can handle it.”

She is aware of her role as a mother raising two white boys, who she hopes will recognize their role in the system and what they can do to make it more fair.

Several parents said the difference in this case may have been the unambiguous horror of the video that showed Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling into Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes, during which Floyd pleaded for breath and called out for his mother before dying. Meanwhile, three other officers watched.

After nine days of protest, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison increased charges against Chauvin to second- degree murder and charged the other three officers, as well.

For most students, virtual school is over by now. For parents, the panic about what to do next has been building for weeks.

The summer offers a break from the pressure of trying to teach children while also working from home. But it also opens up vast expanses of time to fill without the same availability of summer camps that working parents rely upon during these months.

Blueprint4Summer, a free resource that allows families to search for camps in the St. Louis metro area, surveyed 558 families from 80 ZIP codes in Missouri and Illinois to explore families’ needs during the summer. Across the region, families shared a number of concerns:

-- Safety. Families are weary of stay-at-home orders, but also deeply worried there won’t be safe, engaging, affordable camp options this summer as states reopen and employers require parents to return. Half of those surveyed said they would consider in-person camps once stay-at-home orders are lifted.

-- Socialization. Families prefer in-person camps to virtual ones, pending public orders and robust camp action to maintain safe spaces. Only 33% of those surveyed said they would consider virtual or online camps. Some reasons given: Some are concerned about the amount of time children have already spent inside, staring at devices, in the past few months. Other parents said they aren’t sure what virtual camp will look like, and they don’t want to be in charge of teaching during virtual experiences. If they did opt for virtual camp, they would expect it to cost less than in-person camp.

-- Enrichment. Many families use day camps as child care for children who are too old for day care centers. They are looking for fun, educational and creative experiences for their children. There’s a documented summer slide -- learning loss that affects children who lack opportunities to continue learning during summer -- and camps help stave off that effect.

Meanwhile, discussions have been raging for weeks in parent chat groups about how to handle the summer. Some of the ideas include finding one other family to merge with to share child care duties. Other parents plan to implement online lessons of some kind, along with household chores that must be completed before the screen-time bingeing begins. Those who have been furloughed or laid off have the added uncertainty of waiting to see if they are called back to work and trying to scramble for care at the last minute.

Some have asked grandparents to self-quarantine for two weeks, while their children are also on lockdown, so they can provide child care with less risk of exposure to the coronavirus.

Those with more flexibility to continue working from home are hoping to schedule play dates and pool time to occupy some of the hours and burn off energy for their little ones.

One mother said, perhaps jokingly, “I think we are just going to shove them outside and let them fight?”

The uncertainty of how to handle summer offers an opportunity for startups like Happy Camper Live, a subscription-based app that provides programming for children. Allison Miller, a camp director of 22 years, launched the app two years ago with a vision to create a virtual summer camp platform. Parents and campers choose from activities and programs led by camp counselors. The app’s programming is not based on a conferencing platform like Zoom, nor does it offer one-on-one interaction.

The desire for reintegrating face-to-face human contact for their children has led parents to consider what level of risk they can handle during the pandemic. Some are comfortable with creating mini-camps with a few friends or neighbors. Others will have no choice but to hunt for affordable child care options near their home or workplace.

The scramble for parents to try to work around a disrupted $4 billion summer camp industry means the summer will provide little relief from the ongoing pressure of the pandemic.

And let’s not even get started about what might happen in the fall.

Pick one: your child, your health or your job.

It’s a cruel and impossible choice. Parental love compels us to protect our children, even at our own expense. But how do we provide for our children without an income? Who takes care of our children if we get seriously ill or die?

This is the wretched calculus some families are grappling with during this pandemic. Parents with young children who must return to work as states reopen are dealing with difficult questions: Is it safe to send my child to day care, where children will inevitably be in close contact with one another? Should I risk exposing an elderly parent to the potentially fatal coronavirus by relying on them for child care? Can I trust an older child to watch younger siblings all day? Should I reach out to high-schoolers and college students for babysitting, even if they may not be following social distancing protocols?

And the most desperate situation: What should I do if there isn’t any child care available that I can afford?

About 45% of licensed day care providers closed their doors during the state stay-at-home orders in Missouri, according to Child Care Aware of Missouri. It’s unknown how many of those providers will reopen as workers are asked to return to their jobs.

“The only way the economy is going to recover is if there is enough child care for children to be left in safe places,” said Robin Phillips, CEO of Child Care Aware of Missouri. “If this child care situation does not improve, we’re going to be in a world of hurt.”

Seven weeks into this crisis, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson addressed the issue last week. Funds from the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act will be used to expand the number of families who qualify for child care subsidies, offer child care support for low-income parents looking for work and disburse grant money to centers that remained open during the shelter-in-place orders. However, there are still significant gaps in the plan: The fate of centers that had to close during this time still needs to be addressed. They will need financial support to reopen.

And while families are struggling with questions about their basic survival, the Republicans in Missouri’s state legislature spent their time last week debating whether to prohibit state and local law enforcement from enforcing federal gun laws. Talk about a complete disconnect from reality.

Perhaps it’s a big ask for those dedicated to the needs of their donors, but, legislators: Consider focusing on the welfare of the children in your state.

Social services departments need to communicate directly and clearly with child care providers who need guidance about how to reopen with new health and safety practices. Incorporating the guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as state and local rules, means adding to the costs for child care programs. Providers will need protective equipment for staff, additional cleaning and sanitation supplies and increased staffing to accommodate the smaller class sizes.

Day care centers already operate on thin margins, employ low-paid workers and rely heavily on tuition, which will take a hit as parents who have lost jobs keep their children at home. These added expenses will go beyond June, when the additional financial support for care programs is scheduled to expire.

Craig Stevenson, director of policy and advocacy with Kids Win Missouri, a child well-being organization, said there is still much more to do if we want our families to get back to work. In the coming months, parents who were counting on summer camps or summer school may no longer have those options as many camps cancel or move online.

“There’s not a lot of clear answers, and that’s a big problem for parents,” he said.

Given that an available workforce is critical to restarting our devastated economy, that’s a big problem for everyone.