Move on from COVID? Child care disruptions continue
For working parents of young children, it seems the rest of the world has moved on from the pandemic
Forty-seven. That’s how many days of child care Kathryn Anne Edwards’ 3-year-old son has missed in the past year.
RSV, COVID-19 and two bouts of the dreaded preschool scourge of hand, foot and mouth disease struck one after another. The illnesses were so disruptive that the labor economist quit her full-time job at the Rand Corp., a think tank. She switched last month to independent contract work to give her more flexibility to care for her son and 4-month-old daughter.
In the first and even second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, multi-week quarantines and isolations were common for many Americans, especially children. But nine weeks of missed child care, nearly three years in?
“The rest of the world has moved on from the crisis that I’m still in,” said Edwards, who studies women’s issues. “That’s sometimes how it feels like to me.”
