As U.S. workers look ahead to fall, the realities of remote education and precarious child care are hitting single parents harder than most segments of the workforce.
Lacking a co-parent with whom to share the additional workload at home and unable to rely on support systems such as grandparents and babysitters, many single parents are struggling to care for kids while earning a living. They are often the sole breadwinner in their homes, so cutting back hours or taking a leave of absence isn’t feasible. Some say they are simply out of options.
“I’ve been looking for a job, but there’s nothing that I can do from home right now to earn enough,” says Michelle Deer, a single mother of four in Graniteville, S.C. Working outside the home isn’t realistic either, because of monthly child-care costs that average $600 to $1,000 a child in her state. “I wouldn’t make enough to pay for day care, let alone the other bills.”
Michelle Deer with Summerlin, 2, and Braxton, 7, operates an Etsy store selling customized party supplies. Sales have plummeted during the pandemic.
Photo: Michelle DeerMs. Deer, 36, worked for the state’s Department of Corrections until 2018, when she was let go after using up all of her unpaid leave because of her daughter’s medical needs. Since then, she has been self-employed, operating an Etsy store that sells personalized party supplies. Her business took in $33,000 in 2019 and was on track to grow another 50% this year. When Covid-19 arrived, scuttling parties and other gatherings, her sales plummeted. She applied for unemployment benefits and sold her house in Columbia, S.C., to move closer to family.
More than 11 million families in the United States with children under 18 were headed by single parents in 2019, according to the Census Bureau. Mothers headed around 8.9 million of those households. The Pew Research Center estimated in 2019 that 23% of American kids, or 17 million, live with a solo parent, the highest share in the world.
Single mothers, in particular, are in danger of falling behind economically. Researchers who examined the effects of the pandemic on gender equality found that, despite short-term economic pain for all workers, married women stand to reap some long-term benefits if household work is distributed more evenly between men and women and if employers begin providing more telecommuting and flexible work options to all employees.
But many single mothers won’t experience these gains, says Titan Alon, an economist at the University of California, San Diego who co-wrote the research. “There’s no spouse, so there’s no benefit from the changing social norms,” he says. Plus, single mothers are overrepresented in jobs that don’t allow for remote work.
Administrators and teachers are weighing the health risks of opening school and proposing multiple models, including all-remote instruction. Projections show that, among parents, married women and single parents will benefit most dramatically from in-person school reopenings.
“What happens if schools open in the fall?” Mr. Alon says. “That potentially cuts the long-term losses single parents experience by about half. If we don’t open in the fall, and we keep schools closed for six months to a year, then the long-term consequences start looking extremely dire.”
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Parents with job security and essential skills will fare better, but few systems are in place to accommodate their child-care needs. As the chief physician assistant for primary care at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Michele Elms oversees 45 physician assistants at 14 medical sites. When Covid-19 hit, “the amount of work quadrupled overnight,” says the mother of a 7-year-old daughter and 5-year-old twins. She was helping to set up and staff testing sites and Covid clinics.
Getting through the first two months required late-night Zoom calls, sleepless nights, early mornings and “lots of multitasking,” says Ms. Elms, 45. Babysitters wouldn’t come to the house, and, as a single mother by choice, Ms. Elms had no co-parent to share the child care. She worked remotely most of the time. Eventually, day-care centers for essential workers opened, which were “a godsend,” she says.
The plans for fall remain in flux. She had planned to send all three kids to school full-time as well as aftercare, but it now looks like school will be remote at least half the month. Hiring a babysitter to help on those weeks “is not a viable option financially,” she says. “I’m hoping that employers will help, that government will open child-care or day-care centers, that there will be something for those of us that need to work.”
While single fathers are in some ways better-positioned than their female counterparts to weather a disruption like Covid-19—data show they tend to live with older children—they are facing many of the same challenges.
Mr. Boyd used to work nights to support his children. When schools shut down, he stopped working so he could oversee their remote learning.
Photo: Dee Dwyer for The Wall Street Journal
During a typical summer, Serenity and William would be going to camp and spending time with Mr. Boyd’s parents. This summer, neither option is available.
Photo: Dee Dwyer for The Wall Street JournalAnthony Boyd received full custody of his daughter and son, now 10 and 8, in 2018. For years, he has worked nights as a music producer, cabdriver and delivery driver to see his kids off to school and be home when they return. He either slept or worked shifts doing Amazon deliveries while they were at school.
Mr. Boyd lives with his ex-mother-in-law in Hampton, Va., so that someone can be with the children at night while he works.
Soon after schools shut down, Mr. Boyd, 45, applied for unemployment benefits so he could be with his kids during the day and oversee their distance learning.
During a regular summer, they would attend a YMCA camp and spend time with his parents in Virginia Beach. But camps are closed and he doesn’t want to expose his elderly parents to health risks. “With Covid, you have no options, not even family,” he says.
Write to Lauren Weber at lauren.weber@wsj.com
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