America celebrated as mothers returned to the workforce in the aftermath of the pandemic. But just because mothers are back in the workforce at pre-pandemic numbers, we shouldn’t be so quick to call it a win. Why? Because, in our current economy, having a job doesn’t protect mothers or their children from precarity, and it doesn’t guarantee that they’ll ever get ahead.
Take a mom I’ll call Akari, who is biracial Japanese and white. Before the pandemic, she was a stay-at-home mom of two young kids. She left the workforce when her oldest was born, because, at the time, she didn’t have access to paid family leave, and she and her fiancé together earned too much to qualify for childcare subsidies but not enough to pay market rates for infant care. Money was tight since they had to get by on the $30,000 her fiancé brought home from his small business. But things were stable until the summer of 2020 when Akari’s fiancé died suddenly. Without life insurance or much in savings, Akari couldn’t afford to keep paying rent. So, still reeling from grief, she moved herself and the kids into a shelter, got on a waitlist for subsidized housing, and signed up for food stamps and welfare.
