Closing schools was supposed to decrease possible COVID contacts, helping to flatten the curve. But opening schools might actually be safer than the unregulated alternatives that parents have come up with for educating and caring for their kids during the workday.
Tag: Motherhood
From Latchkey to Lock-in: Solo Moms Don’t Get to Choose Between Parenting and Providing
Many women in many dual-parent households have dropped out of the workforce during the pandemic to carry this domestic load, but most solo moms can’t do that. We have to keep the plates spinning as best we can. I wonder about all the other pandemic lock-in kids living in single-mother households—roughly one quarter of the U.S. population.
Singing the She-cession Blues: How the Pandemic Is Revealing Existing Fault Lines in the U.S. Economy
The Labor Department reported an alarming 865,000 women left the workforce in the month of September.
The Female Future of Work report shows how old the barriers faced by working women are and how seldom U.S. policymakers cared. The new report brings a recognition to working women’s history.
The Future of Breastfeeding Is No Longer Over Toilets—Thanks to Sen. Duckworth’s Friendly Airports for Mothers Improvement Act
Nursing mothers need to pump regularly or they can be exposed to certain health risks, but U.S. airports have long lacked dedicated spaces for breastfeeding.
Fortunately, that will change with the recent passage of The Friendly Airports for Mothers Improvement Act. The legislation, introduced by Sen. Tammy Duckworth, requires small airports to have designated lactation spaces by 2023.
How COVID-19 Could Enable the Inclusion of Women in the Workplace
With a threatened mass exodus of women from the work force, the pandemic is prompting a national conversation about the plight of working women and the issues that impede their success at work.
If greater attention is paid to these issues, this pandemic-fueled recession could enable the future inclusion of women in the workplace for three reasons.
Charting a Future of Child Care Post COVID-19 and Beyond
The 2020 she-cession laid bare for everyone just how broken the childcare system is. Fixing the broken child care system is about getting our country back on track. But more specifically, it’s about providing women the critical support we need to participate in the labor force, as well as care for our own social-emotional health.
Trump’s Rhetoric on Suburban Women Shows the Persistence of Gender Stereotypes in U.S. Elections
Trump’s latest rhetoric reflects the ultimate gender stereotype: A woman’s place is in the home.
Rhetoric characterizing women primarily as wives and mothers harkens back to the earliest days of this republic. Now as then, such rhetoric fundamentally misrepresents the interests and identities of most women.
Women Aren’t “Opting Out” of the Work Force. They’re Being Forced Out
Crushed by the load of caregiving, women are leaving workplaces in droves, and the wage gap is an important motivator.
“A more accurate description of ‘opting out’ is in fact women being forced out of work—forced out by companies that never really wanted us there anyway, forced out by managers who are not amenable to being flexible, forced out by partners who are not willing to pick up their part of the load at home, and forced out by constantly being ground down through silencing, erasure and plain old everyday sexism in our paid work.”
Amy Coney Barrett’s ‘Happy Go Lucky’ Haitian Children and the White Savior Narrative
Despite the national political drama that is swirling, in many ways, last week’s Senate hearings to approve Justice Amy Coney Barrett were uneventful (especially in comparison to the confirmation hearings that took place two years ago for Brett Kavanaugh). But, for me as a Haitian-American scholar who writes about representations of Haiti and Black girlhood, there was a moment that disturbed me.
Colleges Must Accommodate Students Who Are Breastfeeding—Even in Zoom Classes
A Fresno City College student, Marcella Mares, filed a complaint against an instructor who told her that it was inappropriate to breastfeed her 10-month-old during Zoom classes—even with her camera turned off. This is a prime example of micro-aggressions that student parents experience in college classrooms every day. It is also a violation of the law.