Part 3 – A Year Without Sleep: The Unfortunate Truth About Gender Equity and Working Mothers In A Pandemic

This article is the final piece in a 3-part series on motherhood in the pandemic. The first part is available here.

What Policymakers Owe to Working Mothers

In the second part of this article series, we dug into the uneven distribution of unpaid domestic labor between mothers and fathers. Now, let’s talk about what we can do to move forward.

If we want to make sure that the vast responsibilities of childcare, elder care, and unpaid domestic work don’t automatically fall to women, America needs a stronger social safety net. Meager federal and local work policies that offer no guaranteed paid family or medical leave create a significant disadvantage for working mothers, who most often assume the caregiving burden in addition to their own professional work responsibilities.