Stress, fiscal problems take heavy toll on moms
The perfect Mother’s Day greeting for 2021 might be: “Thanks Mom for putting up with all the torture the economy has put you through.”
And you thought raising children was tough? Try bringing home even a few paychecks when the restaurant, hair salon or clothing store where you work closed or cut hours as part of a shutdown or social distancing measures during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Or try juggling a job and adding a second unpaid one that requires overseeing a third-grader and a sixth-grader who are both stuck learning remotely via a laptop at the dining room table or back bedroom.
All that, of course, is on top of all those extra meals you’re preparing because everyone is at home. Losing financial ground
For many mothers, the year has been stress-filled unlike any other. And for a large group of women, it’s a true financial crisis.
“We’ve lost 30 years of gains in just this short period of time,” said Lisa Cook, professor of economics and international relations at Michigan State University.
She points to the labor force participation rate for women, which tumbled from 57.8 percent in February 2020 to 54.6 percent in April 2020 as widespread layoffs took place to stem the spread of COVID-19, according Federal Reserve economic data.
Roughly a year later, the rate inched up to 56.1 percent in March, she said, but the participation rate still had not been that low since September 1987. The peak had been around 60 percent roughly 20 years ago.
“I did not expect the drop in labor force participation to be so stark,” Cook said.
Much of the economic disruption hit places where women work: home health care, restaurants, schools, bricks-and-mortar retail stores.
The situation is much worse for women of color. Black and Hispanic women disproportionately hold jobs in fields, such as the care and hospitality industries, that faced massive job cuts and layoffs during the COVID-19 crisis.
Much family wealth for African Americans and Hispanics was wiped out in the wake of the Great Recession. That recession officially ran from December 2007 through June 2009, but Cook noted that unemployment and financial hardships extended beyond the recession. Predatory lending practices targeted Black and Hispanic families, contributing to foreclosures.
Many people gradually began recovering from that financial crisis in recent years, and then they lost more money in the economic collapse in 2020.
“The virus is the economy,” Cook said.
The availability of COVID-19 vaccines can help the economy recovery, she said, but much work remains to be done to reach people who haven’t yet been vaccinated.
Periodic shutdowns could continue to take place, she said, if COVID-19 cases spread even without government mandated action.
Cook shared one small but significant example.
Though many state government restrictions have been lifted, Cook had to drive out of state to Toledo, Ohio, when she needed a fix for an Apple product recently. She typically would have driven to the store in Briarwood Mall in Ann Arbor, Mich.
But Apple voluntarily shut down its six Michigan stores indefinitely April 16 “out of an abundance of caution,” the company said, as COVID-19 cases spiked in Michigan.
Apple said it will “closely monitor the situation, and we look forward to having our teams and customers back as soon as possible.”
As of May 5, Apple had not yet announced any timing for a reopening.
“A lot of this uncertainty can’t be resolved until the virus is under control and it’s clearly not here, which is unfortunate,” Cook said.
Mom of many jobs
Many women — like plenty of their mothers before them — do their best to put a positive spin on the year that no one ever imagined.
“I don’t know when I would have ever spent this much time with my children at this age,” said Patricia Adams, 35, who has three kids, ages 6 and younger.
Adams, who is able to work from home, even got a promotion and a raise during the pandemic.
The down side? “I’m never alone ever,” the working mother said.
“Ever,” she added for emphasis.
“The flip side is everybody is home,” she said.
Adams, who works for the federal government, and her husband, Mark, an architect, are doing their jobs from their home in Southfield, Mich.
Their 6-year-old son Mark III is in the first grade and had gone to school remotely earlier. Now he attends school in person from 8 a.m. to 11:15 a.m., and the rest of the day is virtual learning.
Their 3-year-old daughter Paloma is going to preschool two days a week now, but her mother is her best friend when at home.
Their 18-month-old son Makari started day care in early 2020 but ended up being there just a few weeks before the coronavirus crisis hit.
And he’s home now because he lost his spot at day care, and his mother isn’t really comfortable sending him there because he can’t keep a mask on.
Adams says she’s blessed to have a husband who wants to be with his children and makes dinner a few times a week, parents who help some with the children, some flexibility with her job and the opportunity to just keep working during the pandemic.
“I don’t have the financial stresses of ‘Oh my God, I lost a job,’” she said.
But she’s dealing with the ongoing pressure of constantly juggling her job as a manager and her job as a mother.
“I’m always Mommy and I’m always working,” she said. “It’s a lot. You’re just on all day long.”
If she needs to focus on work, it means she may need to tell a child to leave her alone right now. If she’s done working but too tired to play a game, such as Jenga, it means she’s picking up a little guilt along the way.
“When you’re going, going, going, you don’t even have time to feel what you’re feeling,” she said.
Adams is hopeful that the vaccine will bring the school schedule and other parts of life back to some sort of normal. She received her first round of the vaccine last week at a drive-thru at her church, the Mayflower Congregational United Church of Christ in Detroit. Her husband received his first dose, too.
She and her husband have taken the virus seriously.
“I don’t want COVID,” she said. “Thankfully, I haven’t experienced loss from it.”
On Mother’s Day, the family plans to go to Fogo de Cho Brazilian Steakhouse to celebrate a mom who never quits.
Hope on a T-shirt
Some are optimistic that the economy is kicking back into gear and employers could offer more flexibility in the future to attract and keep women in the workforce.
“Fortunately, job openings are very high right now, providing opportunities for mothers who want to get back into the workforce,” said Robert Dye, chief economist at Comerica Bank.
“Businesses have learned to be flexible in terms of hours worked and in terms of location of work for many occupations,” he said.
“They will need to maintain this flexibility in order to fully staff up and bring many women back into the workforce.”
Dye said the reemployment of women who left the workforce voluntarily or involuntarily during the past year will be essential for achieving a healthy economy.
“The last year has been especially tough on working mothers,” Dye said.
“I think it is fair to say that the events of the last year have been traumatic for women and families even if they and their families managed to escape serious illness.”
But others caution that millions of workers remain on the sidelines after the pandemic. Employers in some industries may be flooded with applicants, as business resumes.
“Employers have the ability to set the terms of the contract,” said Elise Gould, senior economist for the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.
“They’re really holding all the cards. They have all the leverage,” Gould said.
Gould noted that the country was still down 8.4 million jobs in March from its pre-pandemic level in February 2020. The economy had been steadily adding jobs before the virus left millions out of work, she said, so theoretically, the jobs shortfall is even higher, perhaps as high as 11 million.
She is hopeful that some game changers are ahead as part of President Joe Biden’s American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan.
The jobs plan includes addressing ways to create jobs and raise wages for home care workers, the majority of whom are women of color, and the lack of access to affordable child care.
The plan also calls for an expanded tax credit to encourage businesses to build child care facilities where parents work. Employers would receive 50 percent of the first $1 million of construction costs for each on-site child care facility, according to the plan.
The American Families Plan, among other things, would ensure a $15-an-hour minimum wage for early childhood educators.
What will matter to women on the ground is to have better options, Gould said, and more true choices.
“What the pandemic did was reveal cracks in the system,” Gould said.
Ultimately, she expects the labor participation rate for women in the workforce ultimately will see a significant bounce back if needs are addressed.
As more women find ways to juggle work, child care and virtual schooling, the nation is seeing some uptick in employment for women in 2021.
If one goes back to the spring of 2020, some 3.5 million mothers living with school-age children left active work between March and April, either shifting into paid or unpaid leave, losing their job or exiting the labor market altogether, according to a Census Bureau blog.
“By January 2021, more than 18.5 million mothers living with their own school-age children were actively working — still 1.6 million fewer than in January 2020,” according to the census blog on “Moms, Work and the Pandemic” published in early March.
“Mothers were clearly disproportionately impacted by the pandemic,” said Misty Heggeness, principal economist and senior adviser at the Census Bureau.
‘Making a comeback’
Some might be skeptical that moms have been hit harder than fathers. But Heggeness said Census Bureau data backs up that theory.
Mothers are more likely to work in service and other jobs heavily affected by pandemic closures. And mothers carry a heavier load, on average, when it comes to taking care of the home, preparing food and caring for children.
All the extra duties during the pandemic disrupted the parents’ ability to actively work for pay.
Longer term, women face financial setbacks as they drop out of the workforce, even for a year or two.
They could end up saving less money in a 401(k) or other retirement plan, miss out on key job promotions and be more likely to be let go in the next economic downturn.
A 30-year-old woman making $50,000 a year who quits her job for three years to raise children would lose not only $150,000 in income, but an additional $140,000 in lost wage growth over a career and $125,000 in retirement assets and benefits that would have been gained over a lifetime, according to a 2016 report from the Center for American Progress.
An interactive calculator by the center measures the hidden cost of taking time off for caring for children.
While the COVID-19 crisis may have made the child care and domestic challenges for women more obvious, it also became even more evident that Mom is one incredibly hard worker at home and outside of the home.
“I’m in continual awe of the awesomeness of mothers and their ability to withstand huge obstacles and adversity and come out on the other end,” said Heggeness, who has two school-age children.
“Moms are resilient,” she said. “We are making a comeback.”