Bail Out Parents
A child allowance is the Easy button for pandemic solutions.
If parenting were an industry, America’s moms and dads would all be filing for bankruptcy. First came the closures of schools and child-care programs in the spring, followed by many summer camps and pools never opening, and now a fall during which huge swaths of the country will have all-virtual schooling. Many parents are completely depleted—mentally and financially. Typically, politicians of both parties revel in rhetoric about families being the bedrock of society. Well, if businesses get a Paycheck Protection Program, families deserve a Parent Protection Program. That starts with the United States adopting a long-overdue child allowance.
Bailouts are a recognition that certain sectors are so vital to the American economy that the government has a compelling interest in keeping them afloat. This is why, in the CARES Act, airlines got $50 billion and hospitals $150 billion. The centerpiece of that bill, of course, was the $660 billion Paycheck Protection Program, which offered largely forgivable loans to businesses. This had the effect of keeping many workers—including parents—on payroll, although the nation still suffers from brutal unemployment and the economic recovery appears to be flagging.
Parents, taken collectively, are an underrecognized yet vital economic interest. According to the Brookings Institution, 41.2 million workers, a third of the entire workforce, have a child under age 18. Nearly 34 million have a child under age 14 who is likely to require some kind of supervision during virtual schooling, a task that disproportionately falls on mothers’ shoulders. COVID-19, unsurprisingly and infuriatingly, is already driving women out of the workforce. According to a recent Census Bureau report, “Around one in five (18.2%) of working-age adults said the reason they were not working was because COVID-19 disrupted their childcare arrangements,” with women three times as likely as men to report this barrier.
Of course, parents’ benefits to society go far beyond their external labor, and stay-at-home parents are also vital. Families with children are the elemental unit of a society, the reproductive cell; without healthy families, the entire enterprise unravels. And that is happening now, on a mass scale: Parents are suffering, and no relief is in sight. Researchers at the University of Oregon have warned that with the expiration of enhanced unemployment benefits, “vast numbers” of families with young children—who bear the highest child-rearing costs—may “end up having power and water turned off, running out of funds to purchase food, diapers, and other necessities, and struggling to pay for childcare or health care.”
On top of this, many parents of older children are now being forced to pay for care and learning support. According to the Urban Institute, parents who cannot work remotely CONTINUE READING: Where Is the Bailout for Parents? - The Atlantic