Almost A Year Into The Pandemic, Working Moms Feel ‘Forgotten,’ Journalist Says

Terry Gross | 18 February 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic has left many American families without child care and in-person schooling. Those new household burdens have largely landed on the shoulders of women, says Journalist Claire Cain Miller.

Miller has been working from home, reporting on how the pandemic has affected the lives of mothers, in a New York Times series called “The Primal Scream.” It’s a subject she’s familiar with: Her children, ages 4 and 8,have been been attending school virtually since the pandemic began.

“I hear … from people I interview — and I feel that myself — that women stepped up, mothers stepped up,” Miller says. “And at this point, a year in, there’s just this deep feeling that we’ve been forgotten about.”

Miller says increased household responsibilities have forced many working mothers — and especially Black and Latinx mothers — to scale back on their hours or leave the workforce entirely during the pandemic, further widening economic and racial disparities.

“It took a very, very slow moving process from the 1970s until today to get women where they are professionally,” Miller says. “I do worry that this has erased so much of it so quickly that it could be a massive setback for decades.”