January Recap: A $290 Billion Care Crisis, 88% of Parents Say It's Harder Than They Expected, and Men Still Don't Read Books By Women
"For the top 10 bestselling female authors (who include Jane Austen and Margaret Atwood), only 19% of their readers are men and 81%, women."
Welcome to the January Recap! Below are links from the best things that I’ve been reading this month about parenting, caretaking, and building a business* (that is, building a business when you have kids). Plus, links to things that made me absolutely double over laughing. Because with the downers you need uppers, and when caretaking news is consistently a downer and everyone’s predicting a recession, sometimes a little comedy is exactly what we need to let it out.
The state of childcare sucks, according to all reports
A $6 trillion care economy and a $290 billion care crisis. "In a May 2022 report, we estimated the size of the care economy, including both unpaid and paid caregiving, at up to $6 trillion, approaching a quarter of total US GDP."
"We forecast that the US will lose about $290 billion a year in GDP in 2030 and beyond if we fail to fix two critical care-economy dynamics: (1) the lack of available workers to fill a dramatically increasing number of these hands-on jobs, and (2) the departure of productive employees from the paid labor force to take on unpaid-care duties, whether they want to or not. That economic loss is equivalent to losing half of the annual GDP growth projected from 2022–2023. Or, put another way, it is more than the annual revenue of Alphabet, the second-biggest US technology company."
Caregiving is expensive, says everyone. “The cost of child care is untenable for families across all care types, age groups, and county population sizes,” says a new report by the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Women’s Bureau.
Child care costs, adjusted for inflation in 2022, range from 8.0% to 19.3% of family income. In 49 states that report data, the price of child care for two children exceeds the average rent. For single parents, it’s way worse: child care prices from 2021 ranged from 24.6% to 75.1% of family income for single-parent households. SEVENTY FIVE PERCENT OF YOUR INCOME. Plus, for every 10% increase in median childcare prices, maternal employment rates decrease by 1 percent. Sarah Rittling, executive director of First Five Years Fund, comments:
“The high cost and limited supply of child care is holding back working families – especially working mothers – and preventing too many people from achieving economic stability. This report underscores what we already knew: there must be more federal support to address the needs of working families and the child care sector.”
Parenting is really, really hard, say nearly all parents.
Parenting is way harder than expected. The latest from Pew Research on attitudes toward parenting today: "most parents (62%) say being a parent has been at least somewhat harder than they expected, with about a quarter (26%) saying it’s been a lot harder. This is especially true of mothers, 30% of whom say being a parent has been a lot harder than they expected (compared with 20% of fathers)."
"Most parents (62%) say being a parent has been at least somewhat harder than they expected, with about a quarter (26%) saying it’s been a lot harder.”
Young, high-earning men want to be more involved dads, so they’re cutting back on work hours.
High-earning men are cutting back on their work hours. Dads want to do more than provide for their families. "American workers have cut the number of hours they spend in their jobs since 2019, but no group has dialed back its time on the clock more than young, high-earning men whose jobs typically demand long hours." From the piece in the Wall Street Journal:
"Before the pandemic, Eli Albrecht, a lawyer in the Washington, D.C., area, says he worked between 80 to 90 hours a week. Now, he says he puts in 60 to 70 hours each week. That’s still more than most men in America, who averaged 40.5 hours a week in 2021, according to federal data.
Mr. Albrecht’s schedule changed when he shared Zoom school duties for two of his young children with his wife. He’s maintained the reduced hours because it’s making his relationship more equitable, he says, and gives him family time.
“I used to feel—and a lot of dads used to feel—that just by providing for the family financially, that was sufficient. And it’s just not,” Mr. Albrecht says."
Working remotely supports gender equality.
Is working remotely helping women advance their careers? One study says yes. In a survey of 1,000 employee caregivers and 500 C-suite executives and benefits decision makers, Care.com and Mother Honestly assessed how remote work has affected working caregivers, and in turn, their employers. Overall? Both employers and caregivers say that remote work has:
Improved the quality of life for employee caregivers,
Reduced gender inequality in the home, and
Helped to level the playing field for career advancement.
"We found that both employees and managers have a surprisingly optimistic view of how the workplace has evolved into one that’s fairer, more understanding, more flexible and more productive." — Mother Honestly’s coverage of The Modern Workplace Report.
Will you read more books by women?
Why do so few men read books by women? Ahh, sexism. You sneaky f*er. "For the top 10 bestselling female authors (who include Jane Austen and Margaret Atwood, as well as Danielle Steel and Jojo Moyes), only 19% of their readers are men and 81%, women"
“No matter if it is Austen or Atwood, the Brontës or Booker winners, data shows men are reluctant to read women – and this has real world implications,” writes MA Sieghart.
Female authors have been disguising their identity for centuries (like George Eliot and JK Rowling), writes Mary Ann Sieghart in a preview of her book The Authority Gap. Sieghart commissioned Nielsen Book Research to “find out exactly who was reading what.” Unfortunately, “men were disproportionately unlikely to even open a book by a woman.” (Emphasis mine.)
“Why does this matter? For a start, it narrows men’s experiences of the world,” Siegart writes. “If men don’t read books by and about women, they will fail to understand our psyches and our lived experience. They will continue to see the world through an almost entirely male lens, with the male experience as the default.”
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Plus, a dose of laughter is always the right medicine.
With all that news about parenting and caregiving (TL/DR: it’s hard and expensive, but on the upside, dads want to be more involved and remote work supports gender equality) → we’re going to need some funnies. Below, a roundup of threads that made me cackle in laughter, a few threads that made me teary because humans are so kind, the hilarious things a two-year old would say if it left a user review, and a dad joke. All of the links below are for paid subscribers. Thanks for being a supporter.
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