Our families are in trouble

Dear Leading Ladies,

One of us has a son who lives in Brooklyn with his wife and their three-year-old daughter who was diagnosed with Covid last week, along with the rest of her class. Say goodbye to day care for another few days as Mom and Dad struggle to work from home, barred from even using the elevator to go outside from their sixth floor co-op with their active toddler. Day care teachers kindly provided online circle time and projects for the little ones. Try leaving a three-year-old alone to make binoculars out of paper towel tubes. Papa to the rescue!

credit: Unsplash.com

Yet, this family is one of the lucky ones. Good jobs, nice digs, lots of family support, terrific health care coverage, an otherwise healthy kid – the works. But it is still hard. Husband and wife worry about the world they are raising their daughter in. They haven’t had a night out together in months. Their daughter has never had a friend over to play inside their home. She hates having swabs stuck up her nose every few days. Her parents wonder if it’s safe to take her on the subway, once she’s recovered, when a deeply disturbed man seemed to dart out of nowhere to push an innocent woman onto the tracks to her death last week?

The challenges of this young family are real and deserve our empathy and understanding. And no, they shouldn’t feel guilty for feeling stressed and sometimes overwhelmed. Yet, if they are the more fortunate ones, what of the others, those with jobs that put them in constant danger on the front lines, jobs that don’t pay enough to cover day care, or even the costs of healthy food? What about those with no family to help, financially or emotionally, or those with no cushion if their jobs disappear or they are too ill to work? What about those who struggle with emotional and psychological stress but have no access to mental health providers?

Families in trouble

Their plights do not mitigate or obviate the difficulties faced by the more privileged, but they do demand public attention and intervention.

At the University of Pennsylvania, several researchers are investigating the unequal effects of the pandemic on different groups in our population. Not surprisingly, Julia Lynch, professor of political science, concluded that “those with higher rates of social inequality [before the pandemic] and less generous social security systems had a more unequal pandemic.” In other words, the already disadvantaged became more disadvantaged by the pandemic. Although Lynch acknowledges the positive results of the US emergency interventions, those programs were temporary and not a panacea.

As for what is referred to as “The Great Resignation,” she prefers to call it the “Great Push Out.” Many of those who left their jobs felt they had no options. “Women with children were pushed out of the labor force and are continuing to be pushed out of the labor force because schools and day care centers were not able to stay open. This has simply not happened in any other country,” according to Lynch. She sees the problem as rooted in issues of race and socioeconomic status.

“School districts with higher concentrations of minorities and lower income children were more likely to move to remote schooling than those in wealthier and whiter areas,” explains Julia Klein in The Pennsylvania Gazette, writing about Lynch’s work. “That obliged the affected parents, many of them unable to work remotely, to make what Lynch calls ‘terrible choices,’ weighing their need for a paycheck against their fear of infection and the demands of childcare and home-based schooling.”

Millions hungry, millions behind on rent

“While employment is rising and strains on household budgets have eased in recent months, the employment rate remains below pre-pandemic levels, and millions still report that their households did not get enough to eat or are not caught up on rent payments,” according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Although the American Rescue Plan and the Child Tax Credit lowered hardship rates (as measured by struggling to put food on the table, make rent, or cover basic expenses) in 2021, the report continues, nearly 20 million adults still “live in households that did not get enough to eat, and 12 million adult renters are behind on rent,” some of that progress from the now curtailed emergency measures “appears to have stalled.”

Furthermore, the hardship rates hit Black, Latino, and other people of color most. “These disproportionate impacts reflect harsh, long-standing inequities often stemming from structural racism – in education, employment, housing, and health care that the current crisis has exacerbated.”

Although the rate of adult renters behind in rent dropped from 1 in 5 to 1 in 7, the Center reports that more than 1 in 5 children are in households where the rent is not up to date. Put another way, “23 percent of renters who are parents or otherwise live with children reported that they were not caught up on rent, compared to 12 percent among adults not living with anyone under age 18.” We found it shocking to learn that 11 percent of adults in rental housing in Massachusetts were not caught up on their rent, the same percentage as in Missouri and Virginia.

Given the Supreme Court’s ruling that ended the CDC’s eviction moratorium, those behind in their rent are at risk of losing their homes, causing many more children to become homeless.

Add to that the fact that more than 1 in 4 adults still report trouble covering household expenses (such as food, rent or mortgage, car payments, medical expenses, or student loans) – 44 percent of Blacks, 38 percent of Latinos, compared to 23 percent of whites and 21 percent of Asians. Again, in Massachusetts, 25 percent of adults have trouble covering household expenses, a higher percentage than in Washington, DC, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.

And while the unemployment rate saw some improvement last fall, the majority of lost jobs have been in “industries that pay low average wages, with the lowest-paying industries accounting for 30 percent of all jobs.” Understandably, then, “Black and Latino workers have experienced a far slower jobs recovery than white workers – reflecting historical patterns rooted in structural racism,” again, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The toll on mental health

All of these developments affect mental and physical well-being. “In addition to an increase in anxiety and depression, job loss may lead to other adverse mental health outcomes, such as substance use disorder,” a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) states. “Compared to households with no lost income or employment, a higher share of households experiencing income or job loss reported that pandemic-related worry or stress cause them to experience at least one adverse effect on their mental health and well-being, such as difficulty sleeping or eating, increases in alcohol consumption or substance use, and worsening chronic conditions.”

Furthermore, KFF reports, “Black and Hispanic adults have been more likely than white adults to report symptoms of anxiety and/or depressive disorder during the pandemic,” probably related to the disproportionately high rates of infection in their communities, but also their perceived “negative impacts of the pandemic on their children’s education, their ability to care for their children, and their relationships with family members.”

Can it get better?

The end of the pandemic is not in sight, though we may be entering a new stage. It will continue to upend lives in everyone’s homes. There will be lessons learned and lessons forgotten. Most clearly, we can see that when a crisis occurs, it hits those with the least the hardest. We saw it with Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and now globally with Covid-19. It should not take another crisis for our country’s leadership to make sure that no one goes to bed hungry; no child goes to sleep without a roof over her head; and no one needs to work at a job that doesn’t pay enough to live on. The emergency measures last year provided relief to an extent and for a while. They showed us that our social ills are not insurmountable problems. Enough people just need to want to solve them.

Let’s hope they will. And we will be right there to support them.

Therese
Judy
Mary
Beth
Leading Ladies Executive Team
Leadingladiesvote.org
ladies@leadingladiesvote.org