The difficulties of working parents in caring for their children worsen

More parents are missing work, working part-time or remaining completely inactive for childcare reasons than before the pandemic, according to a new study, reflecting a steadily worsening situation for parents. 50 million working parents in the country.

The number of parents citing childcare-related work interruptions has increased 19% from pre-pandemic levels and is 17% higher than at the height of the COVID-19 crisis, according to an analysis of census data by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Researchers found that mothers of children under 5 were twice as likely as other parents to cite childcare difficulties as a barrier to working.

“Child care is a growing problem, and mothers of young children are affected to a much greater extent than other parents,” said Mark O’Dell, senior research analyst at the Chicago Fed and co- author of the report. “When you look at the number of potential working hours lost, the vast majority come from parents working part-time rather than full-time, with childcare being their main issue. »

Another report released Friday showed nearly 200,000 people left the job market in November, pushing the unemployment rate to 4.2%, up from 4.1% a month earlier.

Labor economists say the sidelining of working parents could get even worse in the coming months as more employers require full-time office attendance and threaten to cancel some recent progress in the labor market.

Nearly one in three American workers has a child under 18, making parents a crucial part of the workforce.

The findings highlight the growing challenge of finding and financing reliable child care so parents can work. More than half of the nation’s children live in “child care deserts” without enough licensed child care, according to the Center for American Progress. And even when child care is available, it’s expensive — between $6,552 and $15,600 a year for one child, exceeding the median rent in some parts of the country, according to the National Home Price Database. Department of Labor child care services.

Victoria McMyne quit her full-time office job in 2021 because caring for two children would have cost her $800 a week, $200 more than she took home each week. Today, she works part-time as an administrative assistant at a local church while her children, ages 4 and 7, go to school.

“Would I like to work full time? Oh absolutely, if child care wasn’t an issue,” said McMyne, 41, who lives in Endicott, New York. “But food prices have gone up, everything is more expensive – so how can we afford childcare on top of that? I did the math and it doesn’t work.

The pandemic’s initial shock dealt the biggest blow to the nation’s child care providers, forcing about 20,000 child care centers to close permanently and driving out dozens, child care experts say. thousands of workers in the sector. Emergency federal funding helped slow the damage, but that money ran out earlier this year, raising costs for child care providers and parents, and adding new pressure to a situation already precarious.

“Child care was already a failing industry before the pandemic, but this federal funding was a critical lifeline that allowed providers to stay afloat for a few more years,” said Elizabeth Pufall Jones, director from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment. at the University of California, Berkeley. “But now that is no longer the case and our situation is even worse.”

The number of child care workers nationwide has barely rebounded to pre-COVID-19 levels, even as employment has grown rapidly in many other fields. More than 360,000 educators lost their jobs in the first two months of the pandemic, and many quickly found better-paying jobs in a job market desperately short of employees. Day care centers have struggled to find and retain new employees – a crucial element in an industry governed by strict teacher-to-child ratios.

“These are highly skilled, physically demanding jobs that pay poverty wages,” Pufall Jones said. “That’s really the crux.”

In Woodland, Washington, Jennifer Rowland lost her job at a call center in 2017, after she was unable to find someone to care for her special needs child during Saturday shifts.

Since then, the single mother has worked a series of odd jobs – as a painter, cashier and online content creator – but says it has been difficult to find work she can do strictly during her school hours. child. Now 13, they are too old to go to daycare but too young to stay home alone, she said.

“The lack of child care has completely derailed our lives,” Rowland, 37, said. “I’m really limited in what I can do and when I can work. And now I’ve been out of the workforce for so long that I don’t know how to get back into it.”

Workplace flexibility also plays an important role in parents’ ability to keep their jobs, according to Huanan Xu, an economics professor at Indiana University South Bend. Many working parents have benefited from the pandemic-era shift to remote and hybrid work, allowing them to fill child care gaps. But those gains could be fleeting, she said, as major employers — including Walmart, Amazon and Apple — require workers to return to the office more frequently. “These policies further pressure parents, especially mothers of young children, to reduce their working hours or leave their jobs altogether,” Xu said.

Ashley, a tech worker in California who The Washington Post identifies only by her middle name to speak freely about work-related issues, said the shift to remote work has made it much easier to manage the needs of her three young children and of his aging parents. -the laws. But now that her company requires employees to return to the office more regularly, she wonders if it’s time to stop.

“With remote working during the pandemic, we really felt like we were on the precipice of such a great opportunity: allowing parents to work in a way that was conducive to raising children,” said the 34 year old man. “But reversing that trend, going back to the previous system, makes it virtually impossible to have a solid family life while working full time.”