Mothers Are 3 Times More Likely Than Fathers to Have Lost Jobs in Pandemic
STATELINE ARTICLE — By: Tim Henderson — September 28, 2020
Mothers of small children have lost work at three times the rate of fathers in the pandemic, a situation that threatens not only progress toward gender equity but middle-class income gains that have become increasingly dependent on working women.
Mothers of children 12 years old and younger lost nearly 2.2 million jobs between February and August, a 12% drop, a Stateline analysis found. Fathers of small children saw a 4% drop of about 870,000 jobs.
The loss was even worse for single mothers of young children, who lost 16% of jobs they held in February, compared with a 6% drop for single fathers, according to the analysis of Current Population Survey data provided by the University of Minnesota at ipums.org.
Those losses are likely to have worsened in September as more schools opened and online learning puts more and more pressure on women to help young children with schoolwork.