While gender inequalities between women and men who do not have children are narrowing if not disappearing, the economic gap between mothers and fathers remains large and shows little sign of closing. Quite a bit of attention has been paid in the popular and scholarly press to the “motherhood penalty,” or earnings losses associated with becoming a mother. In the US, women’s earnings drop by 30% when they become mothers.

Until recently, relatively little attention has been paid to how these motherhood penalties translate into inequalities between partners, or within couples. Most studies on the motherhood penalty compare earnings between mothers and fathers as separate groups, and less is known about the impact of the motherhood penalty at the couple level. Moving to a focus on couples is important because it highlights how couples strategize about time and money following parenthood and how gender inequalities reproduce at the couple level.

Our study uses data on heterosexual couples from the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom to study how parenthood shapes gender inequalities at the couple level. We use longitudinal data, which means that we can follow the same couples over many years. We select a group of couples who are observed making the transition to parenthood during the survey, so that we can observe couples’ earnings when they do not have a child and follow them as they become parents and up to eight years after the transition to parenthood. To measure gender inequality at the couple level we use women’s share of couple earnings (e.g., 0% indicates that the male partner is the sole earner, 50% indicates equality in earnings, and 100% indicates that the female is the sole earner). Using this measure, our study asks: how do women’s share of couple earnings change after couples transition to parenthood?

Our results show that it changes a lot.

We find that parenthood results in large and enduring increases in gender inequalities within couples in all three countries. In the US, women’s share of couple earnings drops 8 percentage points, from about 40% to 32%; this decline is larger in the United Kingdom (12 percentage points) and largest in Germany (28 percentage points). Importantly, these declines in women’s share of couple earnings are not short-lived, on the contrary, they appear to persist over time. Following couples to the end of our study period, eight years following parenthood, we continue to see evidence of post-birth earnings losses in her relative earnings. Overall, these relative losses amount to large and substantial long-term declines in women’s economic power within couples.

Because we analyze couples across countries, our study is also able to assess how different work-family policies and cultural contexts shape how gender inequalities at the couple-level evolve with parenthood.

The relatively larger decline in women’s share of couple earnings in Germany compared to the US and the UK is in line with expectations stemming from Germany’s historical (albeit evolving) policy emphasis on and public acceptance of men’s breadwinner role, including long maternity leaves and a lack of childcare options prior to kindergarten. The relatively smaller declines in women’s share of couples’ earnings with parenthood in the US and the UK reflect a policy environment where care is seen as a private family responsibility and the dual-earner family model is more widespread.

Changes in women’s share of couple earnings can result from various processes. For example, it is possible that both men and women reduce work commitments with a newborn, but that women’s reductions are greater than men’s. It is also possible that women remain employed but change jobs that pay less and result in a decline in her share of earnings. Our evidence suggests neither of these patterns.

Instead, our results show that in all three countries women’s share of couple earnings declines largely because women reduce employment and work hours, while men change neither. Our analyses show no evidence that men’s employment changes over the transition to parenthood, whereas women’s employment drops by almost 20 percentage points in the US and nearly 40 percentage points in Germany. Changes in women’s work hours are similarly large and have a significant impact on women’s share of couple earnings, while changes in women’s wages are smaller and do not contribute as much to changes in her earnings share.

When we broke down the analysis by whether or not the mother had a college degree, we found additional and important differences across the three countries. In Germany and the UK, the declines in women’s share of couple earnings are smaller among couples with a college-educated mother than those with a less-educated mother. This pattern is consistent with the expectation that women’s employment trajectories respond to their earnings potential and that women who have the most to lose from dropping out of the labor force are the most likely to remain employed after they become mothers.

In the US, however, we find the opposite, that declines in women’s share of couple earnings are relatively larger among couples with a college-educated versus less-educated mother. The difference between the two groups is not very large, but the pattern is distinct in substantive and meaningful ways, especially from what we see in Germany.

The fact that increases in gender inequality within couples in the US are smaller among the less-educated is consistent with the idea that a weak welfare and work-family policy environment puts couples under distinctive economic pressures. At the low end of the education distribution, US couples are less buffered by resources to manage work and family demands, in terms of their own earnings to purchase childcare and other services, but also in their ability to rely solely on one partner’s earnings to make ends meet. They face strong financial pressure to remain attached to the labor market following birth. At the high end, long and inflexible hours in professional jobs make it difficult for college-educated to maintain dual-earner families, and reliance on one income may prove a more viable option for some.

On the whole our analyses show that: 1) parenthood results in substantial and long-term increases in gender inequality within couples, 2) these increases result from changes in women’s work patterns following parenthood, not men’s, and 3) policy and cultural contexts shape how couples strategize time and money after parenthood. Together, these findings highlight how the transition to parenthood can deepen inequalities within couples as they navigate this new stage of their family life. Importantly, the gendered earnings disparities that emerge may negatively impact other domains of family life, including power dynamics between partners, household decision-making, and mothers’ economic independence. Although income gaps between women and men without children may be closing, our study illuminates how the transition to parenthood produces persistent income gaps within couples.

Pilar Gonalons-Pons is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.  Kelly Musick is a Professor and Department Chair of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University.  Megan Doherty Bea is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Consumer Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Reprinted from the Chicago Tribune.

We are facing so many crises all at the same time. Covid-19 infections rates are again rising statewide, a pandemic of racial oppression has spawned an uprising in our city as well as around the Globe, and sky high unemployment rates threaten the stability of Illinois families. Our most immediate crisis is what to do with the kids this fall. Chicago Public Schools are starting the year online entirely, perhaps offering a hybrid model in the next quarter. Can this really work? For children? For their parents?

How’s a parent to keep their own job with children at home as much as they are in school?  Parents lucky enough to still be employed are literally at their wits end trying to figure out how to keep their own jobs while becoming their children’s teachers. Research shows some mothers are already reducing their hours in the labor force.

You simply cannot be both a worker and a full-time parent teacher at the same moment.

We need the option for children to learn at home, without disrupting their parent’s employment. Let’s hire some of those unemployed workers to be “learning pod” supervisors for children in small groups in their own homes. All kids need supervision to learn at home, not just those whose parents can afford the time or money.

Middle class parents are already exploring the option of “learning pods” for their children’s home schooling. A “learning pod” can be several families who gather their children together taking turns supervising online education. For wealthier families, a pod might mean hiring someone to supervise (or even teach) children so that the parents can meet their work responsibilities. So what’s the catch?

Given the differential percentage of white, Black and Latinx children whose parents can create learning pods, their very existence for some but not all of America’s children will increase racial inequality. The children of bus drivers, grocery store clerks, and janitors will not benefit from pods. The children who will benefit are those of middle-class workers who can share the pod parent duty, or those wealthy enough to hire someone else to do it.

A problem with roots in systemic racial inequality cannot have a solution in the individual choice of parents.

If schools are closed, we need home-based alternatives. In an analysis my colleagues and I did for the New York Times, we found evidence that it is mothers who are doing the vast majority of home-schooling. Some estimates are that it may take a generation for women to regain the level of  gender (in)equality we have in 2020 as women are pushed out of the labor force because their children are not going to school.

I propose a child care infrastructure to be a new work progress administration (WPA). The New Deal WPA put unemployed Americans back to work during the Great Depression building roads, and other infrastructure. This 21^st Century WPA should build an infrastructure of care starting by matching unemployed people with families in their own communities, and employ them as “pod supervisors.” Teachers could have direct communication with all the Pod supervisors for their students. In the absence of open schools, “learning pods” could work for our entire community, not just for the middle-class primarily white parents who can spend the time to host it or have the money to  pay for it.

The federal government should fund the WPA again. Unfortunately, the federal government has shown itself too dysfunctional to manage any federal response to the pandemic. And so if it does not, it falls to the states, or even the cities to do so. Are you listening Governor Pritzker and Mayor Lightfoot? The organization and hiring  has to be done at the local level. We aren’t going to find people with any kind of certification for these jobs, as they must start so quickly. These “pod supervisors” are to help  children do their online work, assigned and assessed by teachers.

The WPA is the only way to move forward quickly educating students, without risking increasing infection rates. This solution does not increase gender inequality by pushing mothers out of the labor nor increase racial achievement gaps by privatizing the supervision of online schooling. There are problems that will need to be worked out, but we must move quickly. So far the United States of America has totally mismanaged this health crises, now is our chance to find an innovative solution for children without contributing to racial and gender inequality. We can do it America. Let’s fund a new care taking WPA.

Barbara J. Risman, Ph.D., is a sociology professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of Where The Millennials Will Take Us: A New Generation Wrestles with the Gender Structure.  

As summer comes to an end and professors plan their fall schedules, this week we are featuring a roundup of posts from this blog on Covid-19 and families that can be shared in the classroom. These pieces cover research on a range of issues, and are written to be accessible to students and the general public.

Covid-19 and Romantic Relationships

• In a research brief written for CCF, Amanda Miller and Sharon Sassler discuss the unique challenges faced by cohabiting couples during the Covid-19 pandemic.  Virginia Rutter discusses the implications of this report in a separate post.
• Barbara Risman discusses how Covid-19 and more time at home may impact marriages.

Covid-19 and the Gendered Division of Paid and Unpaid Work

• Amber Crowell and Jennifer Randles discuss crises of carework that have been made even worse during the Covid-19 crisis.
• Barbara Risman asks if Covid-19 school closings will push women out of the workforce.
• Virginia Rutter writes about a new CCF research brief on the increasing contribution of fathers to housework and childcare during the Covid-19 pandemic.
• Liana Christin Landivar, Leah Ruppanner, William J. Scarborough, and Caitlyn Collins discuss two newly published studies about how Covid-19 has reduced the employment and labor force participation rate of mothers much more than fathers.

Covid-19 and Children

• Sinikka Elliott discusses how the Covid-19 crisis reveals how single mothers are left behind by social safety nets in the United States.
• A research report by Anna Bokun, Jessie Himmelstern, Wonjeong Jeong, Ann Meier, Kelly Musick, and Rob Warren describes the unequal economic effects of Covid-19 on children. They track the rise in children living in households experiencing unemployment due to Covid-19, and differences by race, ethnicity, income, household composition and geography.
• Kristi Williams writes about the long-term risks to children from the economic toll of Covid-19, and new related results from the Census, in a CCF fact sheet.
• Early in the pandemic, Jessica Calarco wrote about how schools moving online will increase inequality due to the digital divide.

Covid-19 and Family Ties

• Patricia N. E. Robertson gives advice on how to stay connected to family from afar.
• Stefan Timmermans and Chloe Bird discuss the importance of making your end of life wishes known to your family and healthcare providers.

Arielle Kuperberg is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and is the editor of this blog. Follow her on twitter to get updates about new blog posts @ATKuperberg or contact her directly at atkuperb@uncg.edu.

In mid-March 2020, schools across the United States shuttered their doors. Kids were sent home and parents were expected to figure out how to work, supervise learning, and take on added caregiving and housework simultaneously. It’s no wonder parents are exhausted.

Initial hopes that schools would return to normal following summer break are now very much in question as rates of COVID-19 reached all-time highs just weeks before the anticipated start of public schools. Many school districts, including some of the largest in the country, have already made decisions to go fully remote in the fall. For working families in these districts, parents will once again juggle the competing demands of homeschooling and job responsibilities—all this as childcare centers are closed or operating on limited capacity and extended family care is limited to reduce the risk of exposure. We know that mothers already took on a larger share of childcare than fathers before the pandemic. Under these new conditions, it’s not surprising then that mothers’ employment has taken a serious hit.

A Work Crisis For Mothers

In a recently published study in Socius, we used data from the Current Population Survey to estimate just how much recent pandemic-related changes to family life have affected women’s and men’s employment outcomes. We compared a number of labor force estimates between February and April 2020, examining the period of time prior to the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S. to the height of the first wave when stay-at-home orders were issued across the country. We show that since February, labor force participation has dropped among mothers of younger children, while unemployment has risen dramatically. Mothers are also scaling back work hours among those with more flexibility to do so.

Data: Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) Current Population Survey February and April 2020
Source: Liana Christin Landivar, Leah Ruppanner, William J. Scarborough, and Caitlyn Collins. 2020. “Early Signs Indicate COVID-19 is Exacerbating Gender Inequality in the Labor Force.” Socius 6:1-3. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023120947997

Among married women employed in February, the labor force participation rate dropped by 4.3 percentage points by April, falling from 75.7% to 71.4%, for those with children ages 6 to 12. These children likely require more caregiving and remote learning supervision than teenagers. Labor force participation also fell among mothers of the youngest children (ages 1-5), declining by 3.2 percentage points. In all, nearly 250,000 more mothers than fathers with children under 13 left the labor force between February and April. Unemployment, up across the board, increased the most among childless women (11.6 percentage points) and mothers of young school-agers (11.0 percentage points), resulting in an April unemployment rate of 13.6% and 13.1%, respectively.

In another new study in Gender, Work & Organization, we show that mothers scaled back on work hours four to five times more than fathers over the same time period. Married mothers’ work hours declined by nearly two hours per week. Declines in hours worked were slightly larger among mothers of children ages 1-5 where both parents worked in occupations that allowed for teleworking. Most fathers’ reductions in hours worked were statistically insignificant. As a result, the gender gap in hours worked increased by 25% among all married, heterosexual couples and up to 50% among couples in occupations that allow telecommuting. This is a staggering reduction in work hours for mothers, leading to a dramatic increase in the gender gap in work hours over a short period of time.

Policy Suggestions to Support Mothers’ Employment

The uncertainty of how long remote learning will continue and the lack of federal provisions to facilitate employment or help parents retain job attachment (e.g., though paid caregiving leave) may result in serious long-term effects for mothers’ employment who will be more likely to leave the labor force. Research shows that stepping out of the labor force for family reasons is stigmatized by many employers. As a result, mothers who leave work now may face barriers to re-entry later on. Reductions in employment as a result of the pandemic are likely to be steeper among Black and Latina mothers who are more likely to have to work onsite making simultaneous caregiving impossible in most instances, work in industries facing more significant disruptions, and are less likely to have flexible work options or paid leave.

The Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) provided limited caregiving leave of up to 12 weeks for families who experienced school or childcare closures. However, the FFCRA exemptions by employer size and sector left millions of working parents without coverage. Removing the exclusions and expanding the amount of caregiving leave offered, as parents must now cover a new school year at home, would help parents retain attachment to an employer while taking leave to provide care or remote learning assistance to their children. Shoring up the childcare infrastructure—already weak in the United States—will be critical as childcare centers operate on slim margins and capacity restrictions may push many out of business. We have shown that subsidized childcare was critical to states’ economic recovery following the previous recession. Given the extreme pressure on families, we believe these resources are even more critical during this recession. Prioritizing the reopening of elementary schools would help families as children of this age have more intense childcare needs and are least able to learn effectively remotely. Finally, employers will need to continue to provide maximum flexibility to avoid significant turnover and loss of workers with caregiving responsibilities. Without proper supports, mothers’ employment may continue to drop, with lasting harmful effects to families’ economic security, gender and racial inequality, and national economic prosperity.

Liana Christin Landivar is a sociologist and a faculty affiliate at the Maryland Population Research Center, and is the author of Mothers at Work: Who Opts Out?. Follow her on twitter at @lclandivar. Leah Ruppanner is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of The Policy Lab at the University of Melbourne and author of Motherlands: How U.S. States Push Mothers Out of Employment. Follow her on twitter @LeahRuppanner. William Scarborough is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Texas. Follow him on twitter @BuddyScarboro. Caitlyn Collins is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Washington University in St. Louis and author of Making Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving. Follow her on twitter @CaitlynMCollins

Although children appear to be less vulnerable than adults to serious COVID-19 medical complications, new data from the U.S. Census Bureau indicate that they are disproportionately endangered by the pandemic’s economic toll. Households with children have seen significant increases in housing insecurity and food insufficiency.  When experienced in childhood, these forms of economic adversity have cumulative negative consequences that endure throughout the life course. With experts predicting another “two long years” until recovery, this is a serious social problem.

Key provisions of the CARES Act, including expanded unemployment benefits and  protections against eviction and foreclosure, are set to expire on July 31, 2020, increasing Americans’ vulnerability to poverty, hunger, and homelessness. Without additional economic relief, millions of children face risks to health and well-being that may persist long after COVID-19 is under control.

Food insufficiency in households with children during COVID-19

In the first week of July, almost 15% of American households with children reported not having enough to eat over the past 7 days, compared to just 9% of households without children.  This represents a substantial increase since the pandemic: 35% of these households reported they did have sufficient food prior to March 13, 2020.

A vast body of research documents the association of food insufficiency (not having sufficient food) and food insecurity (limited or uncertain access to adequate food) with a range of negative outcomes for children. Children raised in food insecure households are at higher risk of depression, suicide ideation, behavioral problems, deficits in educational and social skills, and poor health as much as 10 years later. Schools play an important role in protecting children from the effects of household food insufficiency by providing free or reduced-price meals to those in need. But it is not clear that all schools will be back in session fulltime this fall. Furthermore, pre-school aged children, who do not normally get school meals, may be particularly vulnerable to the long-range impact of food insecurity, given the rapid cognitive development that occurs between age 0-5.

Housing insecurity in households with children during COVID-19

Housing insecurity—which includes lack of access to affordable housing, homelessness, crowding, and poor housing quality—has also increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, further threatening the health and well-being of American children.  As of early July, 15% of mortgaged households with children had a late or deferred mortgage payment the previous month, compared to 6% of mortgaged households without children. The numbers are even more striking for renters. Approximately 26% of households living with children in rental units reported a late or deferred payment in the past month. As the pandemic continues, these families are at risk of risk foreclosure or eviction.

The residential instability faced by those who can’t afford adequate housing undermines children’s school performance, limits access to preventive services including immunizations, and increases risk of a wide range of developmental and health problems, including drug use and teen pregnancy. One study found that children who experienced multiple residential moves prior to age 7 were almost three times more likely to be diagnosed with depression by age 14. In addition, children in households that lack affordable housing or who experience housing instability (evictions, frequent moves, homelessness) are at higher risk of parental maltreatment, neglect, and abuse.

Housing and food insecurity undermine child and adolescent well-being in part by increasing maternal depression, parenting stress, and harsh parenting. And even parents who have not yet experienced food or housing insufficiency but anticipate doing so as the crisis continues are now feeling the kind of stress that can erode smooth family functioning. In A May study by the American Psychological Association, 70% of parents reported that being able to provide basic needs such as access to food and housing during the pandemic was a significant source of stress. Two-thirds also reported being stressed by worry about access to health care services.

Increased isolation during the pandemic exacerbates the vulnerability of families with children to the negative effects of housing and food insecurity

Many low-income families rely on support from family and friends in order to make ends meet, but social isolation, uncertainty, and widespread economic strain have made these resources more difficult to access during COVID-19. At the same time, school closures and restrictions on contact have isolated many children from professionals who work with children and serve as mandated reporters for suspected abuse or neglect.

But duration of exposure matters, suggesting that it is not too late to head off many of the negative long-term consequences of the economic toll of the pandemic for American children if we strengthen and expand existing relief measures. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, which replaced the Food Stamp Program) provides funds directly to families to help pay for food but current benefits may be insufficient to meet growing needs.  Provisions of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act of 2020 that allowed states to provide free or reduced-price meals to eligible students affected by pandemic-related school closures may need to be extended beyond the 2019-2020 school year. And temporary expansions of employment benefits and eviction protections provided by the CAREs Act are set to expire at the end of July. Investing in America’s children by expanding and extending these important government programs can help to mitigate the long-term social, economic, and health toll of the pandemic on the next generation.

Kristi Williams, Ph.D., is Professor in the Department of Sociology at Ohio State University, and President of the Board of Directors of the Council on Contemporary Families. She can be reached at williams.2339@osu.edu

Reprinted from: https://contemporaryfamilies.org/children-economic-toll-covid-19-fact-sheet/

Reprinted with permission from Econofact

The Issue:

There are large disparities in COVID-related unemployment, with the largest proportional losses among Latinx and less-educated workers. The effects have been particularly felt among children.  In our original research based on very recent data, we find that one-in-five children in the United States experienced the job loss of an adult in their household between February and April of 2020 and one-in-twelve experienced the job loss of all adult earners in their household, including one-in-seven children living with single parents. Our analysis also points to striking disparities by race, ethnicity, and income, with higher shares of Latinx, Black, and lower-income children losing all adult earners in their households. While there was some job recovery between April and May, the pattern of job losses appears to be exacerbating inequality.

The Facts:

• There was pervasive experience among children with one or more adults in their households losing jobs following the March 2020 COVID-19 stay-at-home orders, but there are also significant differences across racial, ethnic and income groups. The statistic that 21 percent of children experienced the job loss of at least one adult in their household is calculated over all race and ethnic groups, household incomes, and family structures. (This statistic, and all others in this memo, are based on our analysis using the Current Population Survey (CPS) interviews of the same households in February and April of 2020, and following a subset interviewed in May 2020). Latinx and lower-income children were harder hit; 27 percent of Latinx children and 24 percent of children in households earning less than the country’s median income ($75,000) prior to the pandemic experienced at least one household member losing a job between February and April of 2020. About one-third of children living in households that included parents and other adults, like grown children, or extended family members, experienced one of the adults in that household losing a job.
• Disparities were particularly stark among children experiencing job loss of all working adults in their household. The share of children living in households in which no one earned an income doubled from 7 percent in February to 15 percent in April. The overall share of children in households that lost all adult earners between February and April, 8.3 percent, masks differences across groups (see the chart). The share of White children whose households lost all adult earners was 5.8 percent while these shares for Black children and Latinx children were 12.4 percent and 11.9 percent, respectively. There was a higher share of children in households with income below $75,000, where all adult earners lost their job (12.1 percent) as compared to the share of children in households that made between $75,000 and $150,000 (4.9 percent) or those that made more than $150,000 (2.5 percent). There were also marked differences across family structure; 14.2 percent of children living with single parents saw their parent lose their job while less than half that share of children living with two parents (6.4 percent) saw all earners in their households lose their jobs.
• Latinx children were more likely to be in households that experienced any job loss, but they were relatively protected from job losses among all adult earners because they more often lived in households with multiple adults. Latinx children are more likely to live households that include grandparents and extended kin. The average number of adults in a Latinx household with children was 2.3, as compared to 2.1 for Whites and 1.9 for Blacks. Twenty percent of Latinx children lived in two-parent households with other adults – the comparable statistics were 10.4 percent for White children and 8 percent for Black children. Among Latinx children, 11.1 percent lived in single-parent households with other adults, while 5.6 percent of White children and 17.2 percent of Black children lived in households of this type.
• There were mixed findings when we looked at the same group of children in May 2020. Children’s experience of job loss in their household between February and April captured the immediate impact of March stay-at-home orders. Following this group of children for an additional month using linked samples from the May CPS showed that all groups were doing marginally better, with fewer children in households with no earners. This appears to be especially true among children in higher-income households earning above $150,000. But other children, particularly Black and Latinx children, seem to be lagging behind. Data suggest that to the extent there has been a recovery, it has been unequal across groups, exacerbating disparities and indicating widening gaps in the longer-run. (Our estimates are based on a subset of children whose households responded to the May CPS; this subset tended to draw proportionally more observations from richer households, potentially understating disparities in recovery.) And, of course, the situation remains fluid, with forecasts warning that economic conditions may worsen.
• There were also large geographic differences in the share of children who experienced job loss in their household. Stay-at-home orders varied across states, although there is evidence that the labor market collapsed at the same time across the U.S. irrespective of where the virus first spread or, the timing of state-level lock-down policies. State-level safety net policies, including unemployment insurance, vary widely. These factors suggest inequality in children’s experiences across states. We found that, at the state level, the loss of all household earners from February to April ranged from less than 2 percent of children in Minnesota and Connecticut to over 15 percent in New York and Nevada. Differences in child vulnerability do not map neatly onto the generosity of state safety nets. For example, Minnesota’s per capita spending on social welfare is relatively high and Connecticut’s is relatively low. Similarly, New York’s spending is high and Nevada’s is low. Regional disparities in child vulnerability to household job loss likely reflect state-by-state differences in the occupational mix, including the share of essential workers and jobs that more easily transitioned to remote work. These differences will likely shift, and may very well widen, as the pandemic moves to new areas of the country.

Eighteen million people in the U.S. are cohabiting, and half are under age 35. Cohabiting couples are more egalitarian; but they are younger, poorer, and more vulnerable at work and at home. These families’ needs are neglected in many plans for how to help in a time of pandemic. 

 Newspapers and websites are full of advice for married couples who are working from home while trying to manage child care. But most of that advice is aimed at married couples, whose challenges are often very different than those facing the millions of cohabiting couples in America. In a briefing report, The Challenges Facing Cohabiting Couples in this Crisis, to the Council on Contemporary Families, Amanda Miller (University of Indianapolis) and Sharon Sassler (Cornell  University) show how crucial it is to understand cohabiting families and respond to their—until now—neglected needs and concerns. Consider:

• Cohabitors have less money. Fifty-three percent earn less than $30,000 per year.
• An estimated 5.8 million American children were living in cohabiting households in 2018. Almost twice as many cohabiting parents as married ones (46 percent vs. 26 percent) are low-income, earning 150 percent or less of the supplemental poverty measure.
• Cohabitors are concentrated in low-wage jobs, making them more likely to have been impacted by the 30 million job losses we experienced in the past month, but also more likely to be labeled essential workers, required to report to high-stress front-line jobs with inadequate protections in place.
• As some states relax shelter-in-place orders, cohabitors who have jobs to go back to are less likely to have paid sick leave, increasing the likelihood of exposure on the job.

Egalitarianism helps, but…. Heterosexual cohabitors have one advantage in this crisis compared to their married counterparts, Miller and Sassler report. On average, they are less locked in to traditional gender roles and less likely to assume that women should do more care work at home. Such equality is now one of the strongest predictors of relationship satisfaction, suggesting that heterosexual married couples have some things to learn from cohabitors, as well as from same-sex married couples. However, many cohabitors do not intend to marry, and the report outlines the different risks that can arise when relationships are intensified by shelter-in-place orders.

The bottom line: Shelter-in-place and the attendant global economic crisis compound the hardships and risks facing cohabitors. Miller and Sassler argue for specific social policies tailored to address their unique financial and demographic characteristics.

Virginia Rutter is a Framingham State University Professor of Sociology, Council on Contemporary Families Senior Scholar, and co-editor of Families as They Really Are. Follow her at @VirginiaRutter.

For many couples, family work at home has increased, but for most of those couples, even when women are still doing more than their partners, women’s relative share of the burden is less lopsided than before the pandemic. On the whole, men have increased the percentage of the housework and childcare that they do since the pandemic. Two big exceptions: Women are doing 70 percent of homeschooling. And among couples where the division of labor was most unequal before the pandemic, women’s absolute AND relative share of family work has increased.

No survey or snapshot captures the diversity of experiences families are having managing the pandemic at home. An unprecedented number of families in the U.S. and other rich countries around the world are at home right now. The rest are caring for family while working away from home, and many are serving on the frontlines as essential workers.

Still, sociologists have detected important patterns that tell us where we could be heading beyond the pandemic—and remind us of where we were before it started. In a briefing report prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families, “Men and Women Agree: During the COVID-19 Pandemic Men Are Doing More at Home,” Daniel Carlson (University of Utah), Richard Petts (Ball State University), and Joanna Pepin (University of Texas-Austin) share results from a survey of 1,060 parents in different-sex couples. In response to fears that the pandemic has dealt a major blow to hopes for gender equality, they conclude: “Our results suggest a more hopeful scenario than those implied by some of the headlines: According to both men and women, men are doing more housework and childcare during the pandemic than before it began, leading to more equal sharing of domestic labor.

Glass half full? Some results yielded a glass half-full perspective:

• While for many families the burdens have grown, about 60 percent of respondents reported that their “time in domestic labor has not changed since the beginning of the pandemic, even accounting for helping children with homework.” This may be due to reductions in things like chauffeuring children, scheduling their activities, and attending their events – a reminder of how much time parents normally spend on domestic labor outside the household.
• “Among most couples where the division of tasks did change, it did so in an egalitarian direction.”
• “A little more than a month after the start of the pandemic, 41 percent of parents reported sharing housework with their partners”—a 15-percentage-point rise over pre-pandemic levels.
• Shared childcare grew by 11 percentage points, from around 45 percent to around 56 percent, with small variations depending on the ages of the children.
• “In no situation — and in no type of family, whether dual-earner where both are working full-time, dual-earner where someone is working part-time, single earner, or both unemployed — did we find that the division of tasks became less likely to be shared.”

…or is the glass half empty? Men who already participated in housework and childcare before the pandemic tended to increase their share of these tasks after. But little progress occurred among couples where men started out less involved. And even the more egalitarian couples did not make the same progress when it came to dividing the novel tasks of homeschooling that the pandemic added to many families’ daily schedules.

• “We find that most women (70 percent) report being primarily responsible for homeschooling during the pandemic.”
• Most of the increased sharing of housework and childcare occurred among couples who had made strides towards dividing these tasks in a less traditional manner before the pandemic. Among couples who had not made such strides, both the absolute amount of women’s work and their relative share of family labor increased substantially. “Of the mothers who continued to be primarily responsible for domestic work during the COVID-19 pandemic, roughly one-third increased their time spent in housework and care of children during the pandemic.”

The bottom line: This new research gives us some hope for greater realization of the promise of shared parenting and housework, while it reminds us of the legacy of inequality that domestic work carries with it. CCF Research Director Stephanie Coontz sums it up: “The bad news is that dads still expect moms to figure out what the kids need, so when a new responsibility comes up, like having to take over home schooling, women end up doing the heavy lifting.” She continues, “The good news, when you combine these findings with other studies on the long-term effect of paternity leave, split shifts, and work from home, is that once men begin to see and participate in the invisible labor they used to be able to ignore, most of them step up their game.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:

Daniel L. Carlson / Associate Professor / Department of Family and Consumer Studies / University of Utah / daniel.carlson@fcs.utah.edu.

Richard J. Petts / Professor / Department of Sociology / Ball State University / rjpetts@bsu.edu.

Joanna Pepin / Postdoctoral Fellow / Population Research Center / University of Texas – Austin / jpepin@prc.utexas.edu.

Virginia Rutter is a Framingham State University Professor of Sociology, Council on Contemporary Families Senior Scholar, and co-editor of Families as They Really Are. Follow her at @VirginiaRutter.

Reposted with permission from Psychology Today 

What happens if the economy re-opens and schools do not? Is it possible that much of the feminist progress of the last fifty years could be washed away by COVID-19? If Rosie the Riveter and her sisters who “manned” the heavy industries during WWII could be sent home after the war, could the same happen to women after the pandemic? When America needed workers in mid Twentieth Century during war time, women were recruited and day-care centers funded. But when the war ended, and the veterans returned home, those women were pushed out of the labor force. They were sent home to become domestic wives, leaving the jobs for the men. The government-funded propaganda to promote woman’s place at home. Even more effective, they stopped funding the day care centers. The best way to ensure women cannot compete for jobs is to deprive them of child care.

Could this happen again? We can’t ask Rosie the Riveter, but we can learn from her experience. What will happen if the economy opens slowly but day care centers and schools do not? This scenario gives me nightmares because women’s gains may be stolen from us. When work opens but schools do not, we have a crisis on our hands.

Children have two parents so why is this just a crises for women? Why don’t all parents matter, and not just mothers? It is indeed clear that young father’s today, or at least some of the married ones, do actually contribute equally to the care of their children. But while it is great that marriages are more diverse and some are actually egalitarian, such couples are still in the minority. Most fathers today do more caregiving than their fathers but less than their wives. In addition, gender norms within heterosexual couples often remain strong. When meeting new challenges, people often fall back on habits and tradition. Some colleagues and I analyzed data collected by The New York Times and found that women during the COVID-19 pandemic, most parents did more child-care and housework, but women did far more, and more importantly, women were most likely to take on the new task of home schooling. More troubling,  very recent research by Collins, Landivar, Ruppanner and Scarborough  shows that women were far more likely to cut back their paid hours during the first few months of the pandemic. This research finds that among married couples where both parents worked in professions where telecommuting was common during the pandemic, women cut back their work for pay hours, at home, nearly 5 times more than did men. When parents go “home to work” it is women’s work that suffers. One of my colleagues, Dr. Smitha Radhakrishnan, a Professor at Wellesley College with two young children, told me it seems as if “everyone has forgotten about kids needing care.”

What would happen if mother and father have to go back to the office, unemployment insurance ends, and schools and day-care centers remain closed? Which parent do you think will decide that the kids are simply more important than anything else? In some households, it will simply be about following the money, if the husband earns more. But in other families, it may simply be that fathers see their primary contribution to the family as economic even if they don’t earn more, and so feel driven to succeed in their jobs, leaving mothers with little choice but to prioritize their kids. Sociologists have a terrible track record for predictions, but I will make a safe one here: if the economy opens and day care centers stay shut, women will be pushed out of the labor force. Women married to men whose paycheck can cover the bills will become economic dependents of their husbands and their families will have to forego their monetary contributions. The longer those women remain outside the labor force, the further behind they fall, and the less likely they can regain their footing and protect their life time earning capacity. Single mothers will fall into poverty, and if lucky, find a temporary safety net in some government services.

Families will scramble to survive. The gap between those who can afford private nannies and tutors and the rest will grow into a chasm. Black, Indigenous, and other women of color who are economically under-privileged will suffer the most.

Gender equality in America will also suffer. A world where women depend on the men with whom they are currently sleeping for food and clothing is a world where women (and often their children) are one argument away from economic insecurity. A world where women without husbands have to decide between leaving children alone or earning a living, is a world dangerous to children. It maybe that a world without schools is also a danger to children, especially children from under-privileged areas. The equality of men and women depends on having an infrastructure of care. We cannot drive cars without roads. We cannot have economic activity without people who care for the children. The infra-structure of care was inadequate pre-COVID. The United States have never funded public child-care as do European countries. But we have always had public schools that left parents free to work for pay during most of the day.

If the economy opens and schools do not, parents will have face dire circumstances and many women will be pushed out of the labor force. How is it that politicians in this country think that bars, gyms and restaurants are essential to open but not schools? Are children, and their mothers, of so little value? Where are our family values? If the economy opens and schools do not, children will be left alone, or their mothers will be forced out of their jobs. Once again, American women will follow in the footsteps of Rosie the Riveter, pushed out of the labor force because they have nowhere safe to leave their children. Child-care centers and schools are a prerequisite for a functional economy, or at least one that includes women. If women are considered full citizens with the right to work for pay, then days and schools must open before workplaces. Are women really equal citizens or not? Unfortunately, in this political moment, I am terrified to learn the answer.

CCF’s Online Symposium, Defining Consent, takes an unflinching look at the thorny question, what should count as consent to sexual activity – and what should not? In the process, scholars document how to hard it is to define consent or even sexual activity in a college setting. Symposium editors, historian Stephanie Coontz and sociologist Paula England, counter cartoonish media portrayals of both victims and offenders with a wake-up call: We have to deal with the complicated realities of sex on campus. There are no easy answers. But new research explores new strategies for reducing harm on college campuses, including options such as restorative justice, bystander interventions, and public health campaigns.

Scholars focus on campus sexual assault in Defining Consent, an online symposium released from the Council on Contemporary Families.

The “college experience,” glorified by homecoming and other campus celebrations, is revered for its promise to improve people’s lives. This series centers on ways that the college experience is at risk of harming people’s lives—both men’s and women’s. Rape, sexual assault, unwanted sex, and even sexual misunderstandings are addressed in seven related papers in Defining Consent, edited by historian and CCF research director Stephanie Coontz and New York University sociologist Paula England.

Range of scenarios. A symposium paper from University of Michigan sociologist Elizabeth Armstrong and her colleagues examines policies from 381 American universities that relate to sexual conduct and consent, finding that at best the definitions are vague, and at worst, consent is not even mentioned. Another study from Columbia University researcher Jessie Ford coins the  term “consensualish” to describe the surprisingly common circumstance of women (and sometimes men) “going along” with sex they do not want for fear of offending or being accused of being a tease. Another issue is that students often drink to reduce their inhibitions about having sex, not anticipating that this may sometimes make them incapable of saying – or perhaps even understanding – no. The wide range of perspectives and clashing motivations for sex is part of what worries Stanford University law professor Deborah Rhode, who discusses the problem of constructing fair ways to respond such a wide range of consensual—and non-consensual practices.

Symposium co-editor Coontz notes that, “All contributors agree there are sexual predators, on and off campus, who should be punished. But this series reminds us that are so many different situations that we can’t solve the problem just by sending everyone who causes harm to jail or expelling them from campus. We need to develop a better toolkit to reduce the different kinds of sexual harm on campus”

Uncertainty about baseline rates. You may ask, how often are students raped or assaulted on campuses? Estimates range from one in five to one in three women, and one in six men. (A detailed survey of sexual assault and misconduct on 33 campuses was released last week from the American Association of Universities.) You may wonder, how often are these cases prosecuted by university panels or other systems? One study cited in the series shows this happens two percent of the time. Along with those cases, Defining Consent centers on the matter of unwanted sex.

Another way to help. “We wanted to focus on what is really going on with sex on campuses–not on cartoons about nervous parents talking about ‘kids today’,” explains symposium co-editor England, whose Online College Social Life Survey has been used in many studies of the college “hookup” scene. She continues: “Defining consent has been central to debates of how to help, so we asked experts to tell us how students think about consent, and how universities have defined it in their policies.”

More highlights. Rape isn’t a new problem, it is an old one. Coontz and England caution against using the term epidemic, which “implies an intensifying and growing problem. Sexual coercion may be endemic in America, but most evidence suggests it was far more common — and generally far more tolerated — in the past than it is today.” In What’s New About Consent, historian Rebecca Davis (University of Delaware) points out that in the mid-20th century, men were encouraged NOT to take no for an answer – and women were often blamed for provoking sex attacks. Yet more recent cultural norms, Davis suggests, may be less progressive than is sometimes claimed:

“From horror films that portray the brutal murders of unmarried young women who had enthusiastic sex a few scenes before, to dating guides like The Rules that implore women to see sexual refusal as seductive, to popular songs about ‘blurred lines’ of consent, American youth continue to receive mixed messages about the differences between desire, consent, and predation,” she writes.

But, due process…. Stanford University law professor Deborah Rhode reviews the past two decades of sexual assault activism on campuses, noting the special complications associated with the drinking and party culture, and suggesting that there is no one-size-fits all solution. She concludes, “If we have learned anything from the last two decades of campus assault initiatives, it is this: When it comes to sex, talk is cheap but cultural change is not.” She sees promise, though, in bystander intervention programs.

Restorative justice (RJ) is one of the latest tactics for making the cultural change Rhode calls for. Explains University of San Diego Leadership Professor David Karp, “As an alternative to punishment in some cases, many survivors are now asking for a process that provides accountability through acknowledgment of harm and pathways to prevention.” The restorative justice stance is a response to some hard questions: “Is it possible to create conditions where a student who has caused sexual harm can admit fault and take responsibility for it?” How “can someone be held accountable for crossing an unacceptable line without paying a permanent price in social exclusion?” Karp discusses how a voluntary pilot program of RJ intervention works.

A public health approach focuses less on predators or procedures after the problem occurred, and more one the environmental changes we need to make to produce responsible Sexual Citizens, as profiled in research and forthcoming book from Columbia’s Jennifer Hirsch (Public Health) and Shamus Khan (Sociology). “A phenomenon that happens as frequently as campus sexual assault cannot just be the product of individual bad actors or poor choices,” they observe. With this frame, they conducted an 18-month multi-method study, the Sexual Health Initiative to Foster Transformation (SHIFT), to discover “what makes assaults a predictable regularity of campus life.” Among other things, they discovered a huge gap between the formal requirements of consent rules and the way that students actually go about engaging in sex. They also recommended changing some of the physical spaces in campus to provide more places where students can socialize without being thrust into ambiguous setting such as a small dorm room with only a bed to sit on. They also note that even before students arrive on campus, they must have access to comprehensive, age-appropriate sex education. Such education, they say, “must be grounded in respect for young people’s right to sexual self-determination. Part of teaching young people to listen when someone else says no, or to feel confident about saying no, or even to know internally whether they want to have sex at all, is acknowledging their right to say yes.”

LINKS:

CCF Defining Consent Online Symposium in a single .pdf:  https://contemporaryfamilies.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/defining-consent-symposium-2019.pdf

Individual articles:

Executive Summary: https://contemporaryfamilies.org/defining-consent-symposium-2019-rutter-executive-summary/

Coontz and England: https://contemporaryfamilies.org/defining-consent-symposium-2019-keynote-coontz-and-england-no-easy-answers/

Davis: https://contemporaryfamilies.org/defining-consent-symposium-2019-davis-whats-new-about-consent/

Rhode: https://contemporaryfamilies.org/defining-consent-symposium-2019-rhode-sex-and-consent-on-campus/

Armstrong et al.: https://contemporaryfamilies.org/defining-consent-symposium-2019-armstrong-et-al-defining-sexual-consent-on-campus/

Ford: https://contemporaryfamilies.org/defining-consent-symposium-2019-ford-consensualish/

Karp: https://contemporaryfamilies.org/defining-consent-symposium-2019-karp-a-restorative-justice-approach-to-campus-sexual-misconduct/

Hirsch and Khan: https://contemporaryfamilies.org/defining-consent-symposium-2019-hirsch-and-khan-the-social-production-of-campus-sexual-assault/