Hey everyone,
It has been a damn year.1 One year ago this week, it all started. Offices closed. Schools closed. Daycares closed. Everything closed. Life turned upside down. People got sick. People died. Women erased decades of job gains in months as they dealt with the new reality. Faced with parenting, caregiving, working, teaching, housekeeping, cooking, refereeing, all at the same time, they made difficult choices. Safety nets, networks — all the things that helped us Do It All — were gone. Overnight. Frailties in the system, weaknesses we knew all too well, were suddenly exposed on an enormous scale. Some 2.5 million women became jobless last year, whether by choice or not. We were — and are — filled with rage.
Time has been so strange, fast and slow all at once. It seems hard to believe we’ve been in this purgatory for 365 days and counting. I’m uncomfortable/panicky/nervous just thinking how especially terrible those first few months were.
So here are my feelings about this one-year milestone in my preferred method of conveying emotions: gifs.
I don’t know, Bea Arthur. I don’t know.
There are signs that things are looking up. (Some) schools are (partially) reopening. Vaccines are being distributed (May 1 goal from Biden for all adults. Cue the memes2.) Headlines are pouring in noting the crisis caregivers face. Communities of parents and friends are trying to take care of each other in the face of our “individualist society,” as journalist Kate Washington writes in Time this week. (We looked at her upcoming book on caregiving burnout in a prior CC issue.)
Congress is enacting what would be a ‘policy revolution in aid for children’ and their parents (New York Times). Momentum is starting. It takes work. This isn’t a crisis we can ‘self-care’ our way out of. Everyone must band together to fix a real systemic problem. (Still, try to take that bath or linger in the Target parking lot, ok?)
May the pain and trauma of the past year not have been in vain.
Thanks, as always, for reading. Thank you for being a friend3. Be gentle on yourself this week and always. Message me with any and all feedback. Hang in there.
What To Know About the Caregiving Crisis This Week
NEWS WATCH: THIS TIME IT’S STIMULUS — Joe Biden signs the massive $1.9 trillion stimulus that includes 'Social Security for kids.' The president signed the bill a day early, on Thursday, to get relief to people as quickly as possible. Additional $1,400 stimulus checks are coming as soon as this weekend. The Cut looks at how women play to spend it — one wants to buy clothes for her 1 year-old and another wants to put it toward IVF.
Relief expected for children and caregivers is “difficult to overstate,” a director of poverty and welfare policy at a think tank told the 19th. "I would put this up there with the '35 Social Security Act in terms of its significance, but also qualitatively, they are similar in the sense that this is Social Security for kids,” he said. Some specifics:
The child tax credit will benefit about half of all Black and Latinx children, and has the potential to reduce child poverty by half — per the 19th.
The tax credit will rise to $3,000 from $2,000 for children ages 6-17. (Families with kids under 6 will get $3,600 per child.) Funds will go out monthly or quarterly from the IRS, as opposed to annually.
The nation's poorest will now be able to get the full amount. About 10 million kids will be lifted to or above the poverty line. This is notable for a country that is considered to have one of the highest child poverty rates among developed countries. The full credit will go to people earning up to $75,000 a year, heads of household earning up to $125,000 a year and married couples filing jointly earning up to $150,000. It phases out after that, CNBC reports.
The credit lasts just one year but Democrats and the president want to see it expanded long-term. They say they hope the initial expansion will build a case for permanency.
Friday marks 18 years to the day that Rep. Rosa DeLauro first introduced the idea of expanding the credit to the poorest children. (A child born that day could now vote for her!)
"It’s a remarkable day. You think about why you serve and you think about what motivates you. … This bill is going to transform the lives of families today,” said DeLauro to the 19th, which noted her voice was breaking.
Bottom line: Get ready for the stimulus. Will the aid caregivers be in a better position to work? Fingers and curls crossed.
YELLEN ABOUT THE CRISIS — Economic titan Janet Yellen4 elevated the conversation this week as she warned of a risk of "permanent scarring" from the crisis, as women face "extremely unfair" income and economic opportunities. The U.S. Treasury Secretary, in comments picked up by Axios and Reuters, called for long-term steps to improve labor market conditions for women during a dialogue with International Monetary Fund chief Kristalina Georgieva to mark International Women’s Day. (CSPAN video)
“I think it’s absolutely tragic, the impact that this crisis has had on women, especially low-skilled women and minorities,” Yellen said.
Women in the U.S. have lower labor-force participation rates than their counterparts in Europe, she pointed out. Perrrrhaps because they have more access to subsidies and broader support for childcare? That's exactly what Kjerstin Braathen, head of Norway's biggest bank, told Bloomberg when her company achieved the highest score for equality between the sexes of all corporations.
The key, she says, is making sure women aren't disadvantaged when they have kids. The best way to help? Provide adequate paid parental leave. Women around the world are facing increased risk of poverty due to the pandemic, at numbers far greater than men. This week and next, Norway is hosting the SHE Conference on global gender and diversity. Prime Minister Erna Solberg said global recovery plans must address the new reality for women.
“We need a gender focus also in our recovery plans,” Solberg said. “We do have to solve the environment and climate crisis, but we also have to do a gender evaluation.”
Bottom line: More dialogue, more voices. Yellen, we are counting on you. And for the next round, can we get more men talking about these issues, please?
WOMAN, INTERRUPTED — The Financial Times is (finally) out with a story about this crisis. I say finally because I have been waiting for major business media to give economic perspective, moving beyond the ‘moms are screwed’ narrative. The FT’s story focuses on findings from a survey of readers, so the economic perspective is lacking. Still, some gems worth raising, starting with the headline: ‘I am close to quitting my career': Mothers step back at work to cope with pandemic parenting. (Duh.) Some good quotes from the survey of just under 400 readers5, which found that two in five working mothers have taken, or are considering taking, a step back at work.
Prioritizing male work: “We had to prioritize my husband's role as he...gets a greater salary. As a female I feel [the pandemic] has taken my ability to participate in the workplace back to the 1950s,” said a tech director in UK healthcare said she took indefinite leave to care for two kids even though she has the same level of seniority as her husband.
Work imbalance: “As a mom, there's the unspoken expectation that I'm supposed to be the one doing the educating, even though I'm the main breadwinner,” said Faith, a working mother in U.S. tech.
The interruption syndrome: women are far more likely than men to say they couldn’t work even an hour without interruption: “My children are stuck to my hip all day, which means I am constantly interrupted at work, and [they] rely on me for everything from comfort to explaining their school work,” said Adie, a mother of two primary school-aged children in a senior wealth management role.
If you can manage a moment alone - look at this chart:
BTW NYT has some good tips this week on how to deal with our emotions amid all the daily interruptions and how to apologize to our kids. ::need it::
Bottom line: Major business outlets are starting to focus to this crisis. (But WSJ, where you at?) I hope the FT follows up by examining the economic toll this crisis is taking. We know we’re stressed. Lordy, we know. The biz media should investigate and publicize the future toll and trends that are developing if we don’t stop this now. That’s how we’ll get everyone on board to find faster, more lasting solutions.
INVISIBLE JOBS: OUT IN THE OPEN — I’m going to let the Irish Times take it away.
If you’ve ever fumed “do I have to do everything around here?”, while simultaneously cooking dinner, helping with homework, folding laundry and fretting about when you’re going to be able to book your daughter’s dental check-up because that will require you taking time off work . . . you’re probably a mother cracking under the weight of “the invisible job”.
That’s the Irish Times’ start of a review of a new book called “The Invisible Job.” Author Paula Fyans, who has been a mother working full-time in pharma and academics and also a stay-at-home mom, says the book is about “establishing equality in your own relationship and in society overall.” It takes readers through how to identify All Of The Work, and explains why there are imbalances, how they hurt women and how to improve them in the home.
The book's website includes a downloadable template to create your own Invisible Job Description. The document is 12 (12!) pages long and includes extremely detailed lists for categories of work including: meals, preventative and emergency health, long-term and short-term childcare, clothes, activities, toys/games/books, family scheduling, 'All that school entails' — that was only through page 6. As far as I could panic-scroll. All activities can be mapped out by frequency, flexibility, whether to outsource, etc. Fyans told the Irish Times she doesn’t expect couples to go through the full list. “God no,” she says, “it’s the principle.”
Bottom line: It’s a lot of work to show how much work we do. Good to see frameworks are coming out to ease the burden in the hopes of easing the load. The conversations need to start. (Sidebar: Have you read the Irish Times’ take on the Oprah-Meghan Markle interview? Come for the clown analogy, stay for the distanced-yet-very-much-involved perspective.)
Signing off
Thanks for reading. Please send feedback, articles, gifs, screaming mom memes. If you find value in this newsletter, please spread the word.
To honor this week’s glut of gifs, I’ll sign off with this.
Caregiving Crisis is a newsletter written by Emily Fredrix Goodman. We aim to publish weekly but other things may get in the way.
A year for those of us in the U.S. anyway. Others in more sane countries have been at this for longer.
Justin Timberlake is in the doghouse right now, but it is such a good meme.
They don’t make them like they used to.
The Hamilton-esque ode to Yellen is worth a watch.
FT readers skew male and wealthy, far more than other outlets.