In fact, one recent study showed that 80 percent of parents plan to work and facilitate remote learning, and 90 percent who have both school-aged and younger children will be primarily responsible for caring for both, even while meeting their work and other obligations. Many parents are finding themselves in the position of having to provide remote learning supervision for their children even though they are enrolled in a public or private school. The fact that a child is enrolled in elementary, or middle, or high school does not necessarily mean that they do not still require significant attention from a parent during school hours.
While some high school students may be able to self-direct, elementary students require assistance navigating virtual education. This became even more apparent as many schools reopened entirely or partially online this fall. In addition to the need for child care for young children, many school-aged children require significant supervision and care as well. 7 There is an average of two children per family in the United States even if we assume that each family using paid child care has two children under the age of 6, the loss of 4.5 million child care slots would affect at least 2.25 million families. 6 To put that into perspective, there were roughly 9.7 million working mothers with a child under the age of 6 in 2019 before COVID-19 hit the United States. This number may be an underestimate as the ongoing economic effects of the pandemic are met with insufficient federal action. In April, the Center for American Progress estimated that as many as 4.5 million child care slots could be permanently lost due to the pandemic. Many providers halted their services temporarily or had families drop out and stop paying. The disastrous economic crisis precipitated by the pandemic has hit child care providers especially hard. The report concludes with a list of policy recommendations to both repair the hole in the nation’s economy by building a robust child care infrastructure and establish work-family policies that would help achieve gender equity during the pandemic and beyond. It then quantifies the potential loss to women, families, communities, and the economy as mothers reduce work hours or exit the workforce entirely as well as how racism and sexism contributed to these outcomes. This report begins by looking at the impact of the pandemic on the child care sector and how that affects families-particularly working mothers-and especially mothers of color. Furthermore, without a significant public response, these consequences will have additional ripple effects that will continue to hurt communities and stifle the economic recovery. 5 This is a crushing loss to families and communities that are still reeling from the pandemic-induced economic collapse. This report estimates that if conditions for families do not improve-and if the levels of maternal labor force participation and work hours experienced during the April 2020 first-wave peak of infections and COVID-19 lockdowns persist long term-lost wages would amount to $64.5 billion per year. The losses in child care and school supervision hours as a result of the pandemic could lead to a significant decline in women’s total wages. 4 This will have a significant negative effect on women’s employment and labor force participation rates, which will in turn have a negative effect not only on both current and future earnings but also on retirement security and gender equity in workplaces and homes.
3 Mothers of color will be the most affected. Mothers will continue to shoulder the majority of family caregiving responsibilities, as they have both historically and thus far in the pandemic. Yet the lack of a child care infrastructure or family-forward workplace policies-policies that support caregivers to both provide and care for their family members-means the challenges of this moment are leading the United States toward a catastrophe. Unfortunately, too many unknowns make it impossible to predict exactly how families will react to the ever-shifting landscape of public health, employment, and caregiving. economy? And extrapolating from those data, what are the possible implications for long-term gender equity and the well-being of women and families? This report aims to give quantified answers to two questions: What might be the impact of the pandemic-induced reduction in child care options on women’s employment and the U.S.