Can reopened cities work for working parents?
This is Shutdown Corners, a newsletter about how coronavirus is reshaping urbanism
One of my new favorite things to do with my son is our morning scooter trips, or more accurately, me running after him as he glides across the pavement. He’ll occasionally stop to point at trucks, or find dandelions that have turned white, which he’ll pluck and hold close to his lips, furtively blowing to try and disperse a cloud of seeds. I’ll end up pulling my mask down and assisting, as we marvel at the seeds momentarily floating in the air. It’s my moment of calm in a day that, during this most uncertain year, is filled with a precarious balancing act between work, stress, safety, and like many parents, childcare.
The rush to reopen our cities—and make no doubt about it, it’s a rush, a reckless one at that, ignoring increasing case loads in many states—is often grounded in an economic argument, and the need to get people back to work. There’s so many interlocking policy issues at play, especially the lack of protection given to so many workers and the lack of health care support for those who can’t work from home. What I can’t wrap my head around is, what’s going to happen with all the kids?
An excellent article on the future of remote work by Clive Thompson perfectly captures this scenario, or more accurately, how society is dealing with it. He does briefly mention the challenges of childcare, but how this fits into a future of more remote work or pandemic-mandated isolation is mostly covered in this aside:
Nearly every parent I spoke to had their fingers crossed that schools and day care would reopen in the fall — at which point remote work might become an option they could choose, as opposed to one they were forced to endure.
You’d think months of staying home, with millions of parents struggling nobly to juggle work, childcare, and education, without letting any ball drop, would provide our society with some modicum of understanding about the price we pay by not guaranteeing equitable and affordable childcare to all. You’d think, right?
But like so many aspects of the COVID-19 crisis, we’re walking, slow-motion, into a crisis, one that accelerates and widens existing inequalities. Childcare was already an issue of systemic injustice: the Center for American progress found that 51% of Americans live in childcare deserts—defined as a ratio of more than three young children for every licensed child care slot—with 60 percent of Hispanic/Latino families living in areas with an undersupply of licensed child care. Lack of affordable childcare keeps women out of the workforce. It’s a vital service that often tends to be concentrated in wealthier areas of a city, where parents already have more resources and their children have a head start. How do caregivers return to work if childcare options are limited, or closed, in their neighborhood? And, don’t forget about the essential workers at these childcare centers, as Cinnamon Janzer writes for Next City, 94 percent of whom are women, mostly women of color, and typically paid a low wage. Elliot Haspel, author of Crawling Behind: America’s Child Care Crisis and How to Fix It, told Time that before the pandemic, the system was “so fragile that a stiff wind could have blown it over. Now we’ve got this hurricane that has completely shattered it.”
“The average cost of full-time care for infants outpaces college tuition in 33 states, according to the left-leaning think tank New America.” (Time)
Since March 2020, when nearly all the world’s schools were closed, millions of kids have lacked access to formal education (the digital gap between those with and without home internet access has also been brazenly exposed). As education expert Emiliana Vegas noted, “the learning gap between rich and poor will likely grow during the pandemic—not just between high- and low-income countries, but also between high- and low-income regions and communities within countries.” This is a national and international crisis, but like so many issues, local and city leaders play a vital role in solving or ignoring the problem.
The looming question marks over school in the fall—will buildings open, will learning be just online or mixed, will it be safe, how do you keep young kids socially distanced and in masks all day?—have consumed parents, who feel concerned about their own children and stressed after a spring and summer of at-home learning and canceled summer camps. Even if school returns, it’ll be different. Just look at the guidelines released by Los Angeles education officials, which were introduced by Superintendent Debra Duardo as follows: “Unfortunately some of the things that children could enjoy in the past, they’re not going to be able to do that.”
There’s strong international disagreement over what to do. As a recent Brookings report noted:
Some countries (such as France, Israel, and Slovenia) are starting to send little kids back to school, whereas others (like Germany, Greece, Portugal, Senegal, South Korea, and Vietnam) are focusing on older ones. Sweden kept young kids in school the entire time, while neighboring Denmark, Finland, and Norway are only now allowing them to resume their studies
But our patchwork system in the U.S. has left schools and childcare centers questioning how to prepare, and in the later case especially, how to deal with new supply and staffing challenges and survive financially. In a Time first-person story, a childcare provider spoke of the challenges of setting up kids in private play areas and sanitizing each toy after its used.
There are so many ripples that resonate out. How will parents who depend on public transit now navigate school pick-up and drop-off as transit agencies suffer budget cuts and low ridership? Auto traffic is coming back, and will return this fall with a vengeance. You thought school pick-up was bad before, imagine doing it when even fewer commuters turn to car-free alternatives. How can working parents afford and endure this lack of support?
There are some policy solutions being promoted at the local, state, and even federal level. Introduced in Congress in late May, the Childcare is Essential Act would inject $50 billion to help a childcare system burdened by lost income and social distancing rules (the CARES Act already invested $3.5 billion in the sector). Boston-area Rep. Katherine Clark just introduced the Child Care is Infrastructure Act, which would invest $10 billion over five years to help child care centers make renovations and other needed changes to safely reopen during the pandemic. She presented it as long-overdue support for a system at the breaking point:
“The pandemic shook an already fragile system and now, as our nation looks to reopen our economy, parents and providers face a nearly impossible situation.”
Politicians who desperately want the economy to get back to normal need to recognize how abnormal it is to force parents to jump through so many hoops just to care for their kids, especially in such challenging times, and how that impacts their home and work lives. They’d do well to remember the fate of Dominic Cummings, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s advisor, who was roundly criticized for flouting lockdown rules and driving 260 miles to his parents’ home. Why take the drive? He was looking for childcare assistance.
Reading list:
“Regular readers” (haha) of this newsletter may have noticed that I’ve been quiet for a few weeks. Frankly, I wasn’t really sure what this newsletter, in the moment, could add to the vital dialogues, debates, and demonstrations taking place across the United States. I’m confident the actions taken by protestors are more eloquent, meaningful, and consequential than anything I could say.
There have been so many excellent stories published in these last few weeks, but one that stood out to me was “How Do We Change America” by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. It’s a powerhouse of an essay, tightly constructed, unsparing, and written with a clear-eyed view of history that’s so often clouded or misrepresented. After I first read it, I tweeted that I wish somebody could have erased it from my memory, so I’d have the joy of reading it again.
Thanks for checking out Shutdown Corners, a newsletter written by Patrick Sisson, a freelance writer in Los Angeles covering the trends, tech, and policy shaping our cities. Please consider referring to a friend, and if you were sent this, please subscribe yourself. Send any tips, feedback, suggestions, or questions to patsisson@gmail.com. Lead image by No Roman.