Work from home and parenting: Examining the role of work‐family conflict and gender during the COVID‐19 pandemic

We investigated experiences of mothers of school‐age children in Central New York during a time of remote education due to COVID‐19. We extend the concept of intensive mothering, characterized by the expectation that mothers are constantly available to meet their children's needs, and examine mothers’ intersectional identities related to their experience of remote education. Mothers working from home often went back and forth between work and school in what we refer to as a simultaneous shift. Essential workers were engaged in a sequential shift, engaging with children's schoolwork after work and trading off with partners. Mothers took on multiple roles during the pandemic which led to role strain. In extreme cases, multiple roles could be impossible to fill, leading to a situation of role conflict where the demands of one role made it impossible to meet the needs of another role. Mothers of children of color experienced more negative interactions with schools than White mothers. Mothers of children with disabilities spent extended time on remote schooling. A limitation of our study is that we only interviewed people in Central New York and cannot generalize the results of our research to a larger population. Another limitation to our approach was that we have little information on how fathers experienced work and overseeing children's schoolwork. Future research should examine how mothering may have changed after children returned to school.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intensive mothering in the time of coronavirus

Lutz

Lee

Bokayev

2022

“…Semi-structured interviews with mothers illustrated how the pandemic impacted essential workers that mothers who worked outside of the home during the global health crisis were forced to work sequential shifts, returning from their jobs to fulfill the role of helping children with their schoolwork that was now being done within their homes (Lutz et al, 2023). As mentioned by Bernhardt et al (2022), women who worked within the home did see some benefit from not having to work sequential shifts; however, both of these investigations illustrated the intense strain of mothers working simultaneous shifts, juggling working and childcare in the same time period and space. The qualitative nature of Lutz et al's (2023) work provided a platform for mothers of color to express the intense pressures of protecting children from racial discrimination during the pandemic and how that related to decisions they were making about school options.…”

Section: School Changes Impact Mothersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Caring for children and household chores are also often enacted by women, and healthy older family members were no longer able to support women in these responsibilities. Increased eldercare demands and decreased childcare support set the stage for empirical findings in this Special Issue that women experienced increased work versus family role conflict and burdens of household and childcare responsibilities (e.g., Bernhardt et al., 2022; Coyle et al., 2023; Dinella et al., 2023; Lee et al., 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding women's work, children and families during the COVID‐19 global pandemic: Using science to support women around the globe

Dinella

Fulcher²,

Weisgram

2023

Times of disaster disproportionately impact women, children, and vulnerable populations. Thus, concern about women's welfare became paramount as the intensity of the COVID‐19 global pandemic increased. Due to these concerns and the need to examine them from a scientific perspective, we announced a call for empirical and theoretical investigations into how women around the world were experiencing this time of disaster. We were especially interested in investigations that provided information that afforded intersectionality analyses; that is, those that recognized overlapping socially‐constructed systems of oppression such as patriarchy, white supremacy, and classism and how they impact the structures, institutions, agencies, and policies that change women's lives. We received an overwhelming response to our call from scholars around the world whose empirical and theoretical works focused on women's lives during the height of the global COVID‐19 pandemic, resulting in a two‐installment Special Issue on how the COVID‐19 pandemic magnified existing gender inequities. This installment aims to understand how the global pandemic has impacted women's work, children, and families around the world. Throughout both installments, scholars emphasize how empirical findings can and should drive social policies that ameliorate inequities and support women and their families.

“…Mothers’ increased stress during COVID lockdown has been associated with more harsh parenting and less parent‐child closeness (Chung et al., 2022), along with greater parent anxiety, and lower parenting and co‐parenting quality (Feinberg et al., 2022). Although working from home during COVID was found to be a buffer against increasing harsh parenting (Bernhardt et al., 2022). Mothers who reported higher levels of childcare burden also reported more depression and anxiety, which predicted increased conflict with children (Russell et al., 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Families in quarantine: COVID‐19 pandemic effects on the work and home lives of women and their daughters

Coyle,

Fulcher,

Baker

et al. 2023

The onset of the COVID‐19 pandemic in March 2020 disrupted the lives of millions of US families, with rising unemployment and initial lockdowns forcing nationwide school and daycare closures. These abrupt changes impacted women in particular, shifting how families navigated roles. Even pre‐pandemic, US women were responsible for the majority of household labor and childcare, and daughters bore greater chore responsibility than sons. We surveyed 280 families early in the pandemic (Spring 2020) and another 199 families more than a year later (Summer 2021) about pre‐pandemic versus current work‐family conflict (WFC), division of labor and schooling, and children's daily activities. Early on, mothers reported increased WFC (especially family impacting work), mothers assumed primary responsibility for children's education at home, and daughters spent more time doing chores and educating siblings. One year in, WFC remained high but mother's stress was lower, parents reported working less from home, and children largely returned to face‐to‐face schooling. Yet, children, especially daughters, actually spent more time caring for siblings than early in the pandemic, though less time on chores overall. We conclude that policies that support families such as paid family leave and subsidized childcare are needed to right the gender inequalities exacerbated by the pandemic.