What we’re learning about Work, Home and Kids that we can take into a post-pandemic society

1. When working parents are given control of their time, they have greater flexibility to care for their children in the way that they want and need.
2. How do working parents gain control of their time? By working jobs that pay by the deliverable. Salaried employees have the least control of their time since there is no limit to the amount of work they can be asked to do.
3. That said, employers can make accommodations. Paid leave. Flex time. Part time options. Job sharing. Bosses that don’t frame home and work as a trade-off but as a mutually beneficial dance are more likely to respect home demands, especially those related to children. [1]
4. Universal Based Income (UBI), once a side issue, has come front and center during this pandemic. [2] Should UBI become a reality, parents may have more wiggle room to choose how they want to care for their infants, babies and toddlers.
5. Viewing children as units in a cost benefit analysis threatens to give us all the wrong answers. Don’t make this an economics problem. Make it a human problem. Parents need their children. Children need their parents. That’s all we really need to know.
6. It is during the early years that childcare is most necessary. [3][4] Perhaps the quarantine is reminding parents of the value of being there during these early years, giving them the impetus to fight for extended paid leave and other accommodations that employers can make.
7. The greater participation of men in childcare is a game changer. Do the math.
8. Lets come to terms with the logic, ethics and feasibility of universal childcare. The idea that quality can be maintained in a universal childcare model is magical thinking. [1]

[1] https://medium.com/@ebasilion/bad-dreams-at-home-no-lights-in-the-village-4e71816403a4

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/01/opinion/universal-basic-income-coronavirus.html

[3] Arlie Hoschild’s book “Time Bind” showed that given the choice, a great percentage of mothers preferred to go to work rather than stay at home with their children.

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/27/upshot/coronavirus-exposes-workplace-truths.html

WRITTEN BY

Eva Basilion