Across Women's Lives

In early July, Deb Perelman, the food blogger behind Smitten Kitchen and a mom of two kids, penned an op-ed for The New York Times with a provocative title about life during COVID-19: “You Can Have a Kid or a Job. You Can’t Have Both.” Perelman described the struggle of caring for children while still trying to keep up with her work, a problem ultimately “solved” when her husband was furloughed and then laid off from his job. But research shows that in the majority of American households, women have shouldered more child care during the pandemic. And for working mothers, that has meant some hard choices.According to research from Syracuse University, more than 80% of adults in the country who were not working because they were caring for children — who would be in school or daycare if not for COVID-19 — were women. A paper published in the academic journal Gender, Work & Organization found that mothers of young children reduced their working hours four to five times more than fathers, widening the gender gap