You Can’t Reopen The Economy Without Child Care
As coronavirus lockdowns ease up, parents must choose between child care and work. Policymakers don’t get it.
Catherine Carberry would love to go back to work. The staffing agency she works for in Easton, Pennsylvania, regularly offers her temporary gigs at nearby factories and warehouses. The jobs even pay a few dollars more an hour than she’s used to making.
But Carberry, 40, can’t work. It’s not because she’s at high risk of contracting COVID-19 or flush with unemployment benefits, as some conservatives would have you believe.
Carberry can’t work because there’s no one to watch her 4-year-old son, Robbie. Robbie’s child care center is closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, and Carberry’s family lives far away. Carberry is a single mother with less than a dollar in the bank.
“I get the emails to see if I’m available. I told them, if I had child care, I’d be there,” Carberry told HuffPost. Before COVID-19, in a pinch, Carberry could find someone in the neighborhood to watch Robbie. Now, with social distancing, that’s just not possible. “It’s not like I can reach out to the church and find some ladies to fill in,” she said. “Nobody wants to get their family infected.”
I get the emails to see if I’m available. I told them, if I had child care, I’d be thereCatherine Carberry, a Pennsylvania mom who is ready to go back to work
More than half the states in the U.S. are tentatively opening back up, easing restrictions on retail stores and other businesses shuttered to stop the spread of coronavirus. Most day cares and schools, however, are not reopening, and millions of Americans can’t get back to business as usual. They have children at home.
No one is arguing that it’s actually safe to open the schools back up. In most states getting ready to relax restrictions, schools are closed for the rest of the academic year. It’s not clear CONTINUE READING: You Can't Reopen The Economy Without Child Care | HuffPost