‘They Go to Mommy First’ - The New York Times

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Maggie Levine was on maternity leave from her job as a children’s librarian in Boston for the first few months of the pandemic, but she started working again in the middle of May. She and her husband, James Maher, an engineer, had no outside child care between mid-May and early July, while she was working from home and he was working part time from home and part time from the office. They were both caring for their baby, who is now 9 months old.

“I’m usually expected to do 35 hours a week, and I have been hitting, I would say, 10,” Levine said, “which would be a really generous way of thinking about the time I’m able to put in.”

When I asked Maher how many hours a week he worked in pre-pandemic times, compared to how many hours he works now: “My usual is around 40, and I’m probably hitting around 40,” he said.

Levine and Maher are representative of a nationwide trend. A pre-print of a study soon to be published in the academic journal Gender, Work & Organization showed that in heterosexual couples where both the mother and father were continuously employed and have children under 13, mothers “have reduced their work hours four to five times more than fathers.” This has exacerbated the gender gap in work hours by 20 to 50 percent, the study found.

William Scarborough, Ph.D., an assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Texas and a co-author of the study, said that he and his colleagues analyzed data from the Current Population Survey, because that data set followed the same group of families from February to April.

Latest Updates: Global Coronavirus Outbreak

Updated 2020-07-15T15:47:31.676Z

• 65,000 new cases were reported on Tuesday in the United States.
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“It created this good empirical opportunity to see what mothers’ and fathers’ work hours were prior to the pandemic, and how they changed at the peak when schools and day cares across the country closed down,” Dr. Scarborough said.

While the parents examined in this study were not a nationally representative group — they are dual earning, straight married couples who tended to be middle or upper class, and many had jobs that could be done from home — the study’s findings were consistent with other research about who handles the majority of child care during the pandemic.

A Syracuse University research brief examined data from the Census Household Pulse survey, conducted in late April and early May, and found that over 80 percent of U.S. adults who weren’t working because they had to care for their children who were not in school or day care were women.

Dr. Scarborough said that their study did not examine why women whose work circumstances were the same as their husbands were doing more of the child care. However, he said that his co-author, Caitlyn Collins, an assistant professor of sociology at Washington University, speculated that part of the issue may be that “when a child needs help, they go to mommy first,” and over days and weeks, that has a cumulative, undermining effect.

Nick Kahl, the dad of a 2-year-old in Portland, Ore., and a lawyer in private practice, said his son doesn’t interrupt him as much as he interrupts his wife, Jenny Smith, who is the communications director of a state agency.

Terri E. Givens, a mom of two boys in Menlo Park, Calif and the chief executive and founder of a company that provides career development for academic leaders, had another explanation for the gender disparity: Moms are the emotional barometers for the household, and they’re managing an unseen amount of extra work, thinking about child care, dentist appointments and the happiness of their children, even when men are making an effort. “My husband is one of the best you’ll find,” she said of her spouse, who is an engineer. “But it’s that emotional labor that’s really hard to quantify.”

The Coronavirus Outbreak

• Frequently Asked Questions

  Updated July 15, 2020

  • Is the coronavirus airborne?

    The coronavirus can stay aloft for hours in tiny droplets in stagnant air, infecting people as they inhale, mounting scientific evidence suggests. This risk is highest in crowded indoor spaces with poor ventilation, and may help explain super-spreading events reported in meatpacking plants, churches and restaurants. It’s unclear how often the virus is spread via these tiny droplets, or aerosols, compared with larger droplets that are expelled when a sick person coughs or sneezes, or transmitted through contact with contaminated surfaces, said Linsey Marr, an aerosol expert at Virginia Tech. Aerosols are released even when a person without symptoms exhales, talks or sings, according to Dr. Marr and more than 200 other experts, who have outlined the evidence in an open letter to the World Health Organization.

  • What are the symptoms of coronavirus?

    Common symptoms include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has also added chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or smell as symptoms to look out for. Most people fall ill five to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as many as 14 days.

  • What’s the best material for a mask?

    Scientists around the country have tried to identify everyday materials that do a good job of filtering microscopic particles. In recent tests, HEPA furnace filters scored high, as did vacuum cleaner bags, fabric similar to flannel pajamas and those of 600-count pillowcases. Other materials tested included layered coffee filters and scarves and bandannas. These scored lower, but still captured a small percentage of particles.

  • Is it harder to exercise while wearing a mask?

    A commentary published this month on the website of the British Journal of Sports Medicine points out that covering your face during exercise “comes with issues of potential breathing restriction and discomfort” and requires “balancing benefits versus possible adverse events.” Masks do alter exercise, says Cedric X. Bryant, the president and chief science officer of the American Council on Exercise, a nonprofit organization that funds exercise research and certifies fitness professionals. “In my personal experience,” he says, “heart rates are higher at the same relative intensity when you wear a mask.” Some people also could experience lightheadedness during familiar workouts while masked, says Len Kravitz, a professor of exercise science at the University of New Mexico.

  • I’ve heard about a treatment called dexamethasone. Does it work?

    The steroid, dexamethasone, is the first treatment shown to reduce mortality in severely ill patients, according to scientists in Britain. The drug appears to reduce inflammation caused by the immune system, protecting the tissues. In the study, dexamethasone reduced deaths of patients on ventilators by one-third, and deaths of patients on oxygen by one-fifth.

  • What is pandemic paid leave?

    The coronavirus emergency relief package gives many American workers paid leave if they need to take time off because of the virus. It gives qualified workers two weeks of paid sick leave if they are ill, quarantined or seeking diagnosis or preventive care for coronavirus, or if they are caring for sick family members. It gives 12 weeks of paid leave to people caring for children whose schools are closed or whose child care provider is unavailable because of the coronavirus. It is the first time the United States has had widespread federally mandated paid leave, and includes people who don’t typically get such benefits, like part-time and gig economy workers. But the measure excludes at least half of private-sector workers, including those at the country’s largest employers, and gives small employers significant leeway to deny leave.

  • Does asymptomatic transmission of Covid-19 happen?

    So far, the evidence seems to show it does. A widely cited paper published in April suggests that people are most infectious about two days before the onset of coronavirus symptoms and estimated that 44 percent of new infections were a result of transmission from people who were not yet showing symptoms. Recently, a top expert at the World Health Organization stated that transmission of the coronavirus by people who did not have symptoms was “very rare,” but she later walked back that statement.

  • What’s the risk of catching coronavirus from a surface?

    Touching contaminated objects and then infecting ourselves with the germs is not typically how the virus spreads. But it can happen. A number of studies of flu, rhinovirus, coronavirus and other microbes have shown that respiratory illnesses, including the new coronavirus, can spread by touching contaminated surfaces, particularly in places like day care centers, offices and hospitals. But a long chain of events has to happen for the disease to spread that way. The best way to protect yourself from coronavirus — whether it’s surface transmission or close human contact — is still social distancing, washing your hands, not touching your face and wearing masks.

  • How does blood type influence coronavirus?

    A study by European scientists is the first to document a strong statistical link between genetic variations and Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Having Type A blood was linked to a 50 percent increase in the likelihood that a patient would need to get oxygen or to go on a ventilator, according to the new study.

  • How can I protect myself while flying?

    If air travel is unavoidable, there are some steps you can take to protect yourself. Most important: Wash your hands often, and stop touching your face. If possible, choose a window seat. A study from Emory University found that during flu season, the safest place to sit on a plane is by a window, as people sitting in window seats had less contact with potentially sick people. Disinfect hard surfaces. When you get to your seat and your hands are clean, use disinfecting wipes to clean the hard surfaces at your seat like the head and arm rest, the seatbelt buckle, the remote, screen, seat back pocket and the tray table. If the seat is hard and nonporous or leather or pleather, you can wipe that down, too. (Using wipes on upholstered seats could lead to a wet seat and spreading of germs rather than killing them.)

  • What should I do if I feel sick?

    If you’ve been exposed to the coronavirus or think you have, and have a fever or symptoms like a cough or difficulty breathing, call a doctor. They should give you advice on whether you should be tested, how to get tested, and how to seek medical treatment without potentially infecting or exposing others.

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Sandi Villarreal, the executive editor of Sojourners, a Christian social justice magazine, said that her husband, Michael Middaugh, a pastor of a Lutheran church in Silver Spring, Md., is doing the same amount, if not more, of the caretaking for their three children, ages 6, 4, and almost 1, because his schedule is more flexible than hers — for now.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen when church starts to reopen in August,” Villarreal said. Her husband will no longer be able to solely telecommute and he will have to go in for services. They have a nanny coming one day a week right now, but the situation is not sustainable.

“I think at some point it’s going to give,” Villareal said of their tenuous arrangement. “I think the hard part is there’s no end in sight.”

How do you handle household responsibilities when you’re working from home with kids? Share your story in the comments. Jessica Grose, the reporter, will respond to some.

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Want More on the Gender Gap in Child Care and Working from Home?

• A headline that says it all, “Pandemic Could Scar a Generation of Working Mothers.”

• And another scathing claim: “Nearly Half of Men Say They Do Most of the Home Schooling. 3 Percent of Women Agree.”

• When we finally exit our locked-down world, “an increase in remote workers won’t automatically usher in a gender-equal utopia,” Bryce Covert argued in an Op-Ed in June. In pre-pandemic times, female-dominated jobs were “less likely to be flexible, despite the potentially greater need among women, who are still the default caretakers, to wedge caring for children and other family members into the confines of the typical workday,” she wrote.

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