The collapse of child care and traditional schooling is having a devastating effect on women in particular.
By
I’m a teaching assistant in a family sociology course, and inequality is one of the most important things we study.
We strive to understand how inequalities are being
produced, maintained, and especially during the coronavirus crisis, deepened.
With child care
centers closing down and schools going virtual, taking on extra child care has
fallen disproportionately to women. As a result, many women are falling behind
at work or leaving paid labor altogether. The Washington Post reports the percentage of
American women in the labor force is at its lowest since 1998.
As sociologist Jessica Calarco put it, “Other
countries have a social safety net. The U.S. has women.”
Part of the problem is the gender wage gap. Women tend to go into lower paid jobs, but jobs associated with women pay less because so-called “women’s work” is devalued. Part of the problem is just plain sexism. But another part is more complicated.
In most
heterosexual couples, the man earns more. In 2017, women earned more than their husbands in only 30
percent of couples. Often women marry men a few years older than them, so their
husbands have also had a few more years of work experience and raises.
When they have
children, if one of them needs to cut back hours of paid labor, it often makes
financial sense for the woman to do it.
But norms are
still part of the problem.
Sociologist Arlie Hochschild found that women in dual-income
couples usually work a “second shift” at home. Why? Because many women as well
as men still believe that cooking, cleaning, and child care are “women’s work.”
Over the last
half century, women’s and men’s housework has become less unequal, but not
necessarily because men are doing much more. Instead, families now simply lower
their standards, rely on technology (microwaves, dishwashers, etc.), and
outsource (daycare, eating out, hiring house cleaners).
But all that
takes money. And when it comes down to it, society places pressure specifically
on mothers to take on the responsibility of raising children.
“Intensive
parenting norms,” Calarco says, still “push women to put their children ahead
of their careers. In the workforce, that makes it harder for women to compete
with men for top positions, because they’re seen as less committed to their
jobs.”
Dads basically
get a free pass. When he became a parent, journalist Matt Yglesias found
himself universally praised any time he held his infant son without killing
him. It was as though even the smallest parental labors he made were seen as
going above and beyond.
“No,” he wrote. “I’m not babysitting this
morning, I’m parenting.”
In a pandemic
that’s ruthlessly targeted the most vulnerable, all this only compounds
existing inequalities.
In their papers,
my students noted that children from low-income families are disproportionately
falling behind in school now, which could limit their social mobility over the
course of their lives. Without school and daycare, for instance, women
farmworkers are finding themselves forced to bring their children with them to work.
Many of my
students are intelligent, motivated women with ambitious career plans. It’s
painful to see it dawn on them that their desire for a family will force them
to choose between giving up opportunities or working at home after they work at
work.
Social norms
take time to change, but policies don’t have to. My students want gender
equality, but they aren’t going to get it until we improve our social safety net
for parents.
OtherWords columnist Jill Richardson is pursuing a PhD in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.