A tired refrain and scary proposition of this pandemic has become: “You can have a kid or you can have a job. You can’t have both.” That’s not technically true — as many working parents can attest — but despite all the talk from elected officials and education leaders about the importance of parental involvement in children’s success, our city, state and federal government have refused to finance or facilitate it like the public good that it is.
Making it easier for working parents is critical to the education of our children, the success of remote learning, the advancement of gender equity in the workforce, and the opportunity for women to achieve upward economic mobility.
At the Democratic Convention, Sen. Elizabeth Warren said, “We build infrastructure like roads, bridges, and communications systems so that people can work. That infrastructure helps us all because it keeps our economy going. It’s time to recognize that childcare is part of the basic infrastructure of this nation — it’s infrastructure for families.”
It’s time we invest in families and build the infrastructure for remote learning to work and help reduce the structural inequities that severely impact children’s success and achievement.
As a single working mother of three teenagers who also supports my intergenerational family, I understand firsthand the challenges working mothers face. These challenges were here before the pandemic hit and have been made harder as we prepare for remote learning. Like most moms, I agonize over how to keep my children safe and help them learn, while still paying the bills and keeping moving forward.
As the chief of staff for State Sen. Robert Jackson, I have developed legislation that would address this issue by improving the lives of working parents across New York State during this pandemic. It can all be done with a few simple tweaks to our existing Paid Family Leave policy. While this doesn’t pretend to solve all problems or replace the need for significant federal dollars to be earmarked for economic and childcare support for excluded workers, it would be significant in keeping women in the workforce.
Paid Family Leave already provides for us to take time to care for family members with serious health conditions or bond with newly born or adopted children. Why can’t it also help us bridge the gaps in care caused by shuttering schools?
With the addition of a few clauses to the existing law, Paid Family Leave can make it possible for working parents to take time off from work to support their children who are engaged in remote learning.
There are several advantages to this approach. First, the law already exists and the structures to support it are already working smoothly, so we won’t need to create any new bureaucratic structures; we can simply adapt the existing program to this new use. Second, because we already pay into this program as employees, the funding for family leave insurance policies also already exists, so we won’t need action from the unresponsive federal government or support from our dwindling state coffers.
Providing balance for working parents by giving them the option to take Paid Family Leave to support remote learning will ease so many other pressure points in our systems right now. Schools will be able to stay remote until it’s truly safe to reopen physically without forcing parents to make impossible choices in the meantime. The stress of childcare that ripples out from our nuclear to our extended families and our wider communities will be relieved when parents can take a few weeks off at a time to support their little ones. And we will create more economic security for families.
Garcia is a former president of Community Education Council District 6 and a candidate for City Council in Manhattan’s 10th District.
