On this Mother’s Day, the crisis for working moms is hard to miss

Women suffered major job losses this year — partly because majority-female industries were the hardest hit by the pandemic, but also because no human can sustain the dual full-time duties of caring for minor children and performing a full-time job. Even in dual-earner families where both parents were able to work from home, it was primarily moms who took the hit in paid hours to focus on children’s schooling and care. Plenty of articles covered this phenomenon, but nothing captured it for me quite like the New York Times photo of a mother on a work call helping her child go potty while, on the other side of the bathroom wall, the child’s father took his work call in a clean, quiet home office.