A new study has revealed that working mothers in the US are leaving their jobs to take care of their children amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The new research from the Census Bureau and the Federal Reserve found that one in five working-age adults has become unemployed because the pandemic disrupted their child care arrangements, particularly working mothers.
The study showed that women are nearly three times more likely than men to remain home for the kids.
No real choice
According to some women, the pandemic has forced them to reconsider how to balance their professional and home lives.
Kelly Bebout from California, who has been working in health care for almost 10 years, mentioned that she is able to take 12 weeks of leave when the school year starts to support her children in distance learning but she's uncertain of what will happen after that.
Bebout said: "I fully expect to have to choose between my family and my job of almost 10 years very soon, which really isn't a choice. It will mean being unemployed for the first time in my adult life, but my family has to come first."
Michigan-based mother Katie Simon has been contemplating on quitting her job since the onset of the pandemic. She narrated: "I had to fight for my employer to continue to allow me to work from home because we had no options for child care ... They had suggested I take a voluntary layoff with no promise of return."
Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said: "We cannot ignore that many people just cannot quit their jobs."
While some employees may be able to work remotely for longer while their children continue schooling from home, others do not have this option as their jobs require them to be present at their jobs, such as health care workers or those returning to a retail job.
Distance learning in groups, or pods, for school-age kids may lessen the burden but some parents may continue to face difficulties.
Unequal impact of the pandemic
Shierholz explained: "We know that women still shoulder the majority of the responsibility for care work. When these care work demands go up it's totally reasonable to assume that this falls more to women than men."
"Women will see income declines, because of cutting back hours and some will just end up dropping out. All of this exacerbates gender inequality," she added.
Figures have shown that while the US labor market has started its recovery, it is still 13 million jobs lower than its February level. The crisis has been worse for women than for men, and worse for Black and Hispanic people than for White workers.
The coronavirus pandemic has had the most impact on the service sector and consumer-facing jobs, which are predominantly populated by women.
In July, the unemployment rate for women over the age of 20 was 11.1% before seasonal adjustments, compared with 9.2% for men while Black and Hispanic women fared much worse than White women, with unemployment rates north of 14% in the same category during the month.
