This story is part of Fast Company‘s Reinventing Education package. As millions of students begin school during a deadly pandemic and global recession, we’re highlighting the ongoing efforts to keep children safe in the classroom, educate them remotely, and help their parents manage a new second shift. Click here to read the whole series.
After having three kids in a span of 18 months, Susannah Bradley had chosen to take a step back in her career and only work part time. When her twins started kindergarten last year, it seemed like the right time for her to jump into a full-time role again, so she accepted a job at a major tech company in Seattle. “I was thrilled about that because it felt like I made this seamless transition right back to where I wanted to be,” she says. “But then COVID happened, and the schools closed, and I was suddenly managing Zoom calls for three kids.”
Bradley found herself in a bind familiar to working parents all over the country. Her employer gave her the option of flexible hours, but that meant she would have to work an eight-hour shift after a full day of tending to her children’s remote learning needs. She quickly realized that wasn’t sustainable, coupled with the constraints of her husband’s demanding schedule. “My husband and I had agreed on this arrangement where I would be the primary parent,” she says. “Before COVID, his job involved a ton of international travel. But now he’s just on conference calls from six in the morning until 6 p.m. at the earliest. It just wasn’t possible for him to jump in and help with the remote learning, so it was all falling on me, and I essentially had two full-time jobs.”
The choice was clear, Bradley says, given her husband’s earnings far outstripped her own. “I was incredibly lucky to be in a position where I could walk away, but it also felt like a real personal tragedy because I would much rather be working,” she says. “I never wanted to be a 1950s housewife, and I feel like that’s kind of what I am now. A few years ago, I was at the White House interviewing the First Lady, and now I’m adjudicating battles between Pokémon players.”
Bradley’s new reality mirrors that of many working mothers, for whom the pandemic has meant putting their careers on hold or bowing out of the workforce altogether. With daycares and schools closed, many women have struggled to take care of their children while working full-time. Women in heterosexual relationships have long borne the brunt of childcare responsibilities, which now includes the parental chore du jour—overseeing distance learning or homeschooling. The pandemic has only exacerbated this disparity: Working mothers have reportedly cut back on their work hours four to five times more than fathers have. And as schools across the country opt for only remote learning or a hybrid model with staggered in-person instruction, there seems to be no end in sight. “Let me say the quiet part loud,” food blogger Deb Perelman wrote recently, “In the COVID-19 economy, you’re allowed only a kid or a job.”
I never wanted to be a 1950s housewife, and I feel like that’s kind of what I am now.”