76 Time March 15/March 22, 2021
FFCRA wAsn’t in eFFeCt for a particu-
larly long time, so experts are hesitant
to speculate about how these suits will
play out or what the verdicts will mean
for future family- leave disputes. But at-
torneys say their clients may not see any
restitution for two to three years because
of the COVID-19 backlog in the courts.
Help may be on the way. In January,
President Joe Biden released a plan to
get parents back to work that involved
extending emergency paid leave to
Sept. 30 and eliminating the exemp-
tions for companies with more than
500 or fewer than 50 employees. The
proposal included over 14 weeks of
leave to caregivers while schools and
day cares are closed, as well as $1,400
per person for working families on top
of the $600 Congress passed in Decem-
ber. Biden also called for $25 billion for
the childcare industry.
On Feb. 27, the House passed a
$1.9 trillion corona virus relief bill, which
included provisions to help working
parents but varied from the Biden plan in
meaningful ways—notably, it mandates
that federal employees have access
to paid leave if they need to care for a
child, but uses tax credits to incentivize
most businesses to provide this benefit
for private-sector workers rather than
requiring them to do so. The bill still
needs to pass the Senate, but even if
Congress does take action, a change in
law won’t be sufficient. Mothers will not
be able to escape the burden of gendered
expectations around childcare without
a larger societal shift. “We have this
durable stereotype in the U.S.,” says
Murray, the NYU professor, “that if
women work, they manage to somehow
reconcile their work life with their ‘real
work,’ which is within the family. If they
can’t, it’s a personal failure.”
Only two of the 23 employment
attorneys contacted by TIME said they
had received a single call from a man
about the way he was treated as a care-
giver during the pandemic. Horine is
suing with a father named Nathan Leppo
who was fired during the family leave
he took to watch his sons while his wife
worked as a pharmacist. “Other employ-
ees would be like, ‘You’re taking FMLA
for your kid?’ ” he says. “There’s this
stigma toward fathers that we shouldn’t
be as loving or sing to our children or get
them to bed or give them baths. It’s an issue a lot of men are
afraid to talk about.”
Studies show that men don’t take parental leave even in the
rare cases when they have the option, despite research that sug-
gests fathers who do are less likely to get divorced and more
likely to feel close to their kids long-term. “Until men see unpaid
caregiving as much their responsibility as women do, you’re
going to see women more likely pushed out of the labor force,”
says Boteach. Women overall still make 82¢ for every dollar men
make, with Black, Latina and Native American women earning
far less, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In heterosexual
couples, it often makes financial sense for the woman to be the
one to leave her job or risk losing it by taking on childcare duties.
Rachel Tarantul, a nutrition and breastfeeding counselor in
New York, had always prided herself on being a working mom,
offering advice to new mothers who came into her hospital for
help caring for newborns. So after her children’s school closed
last spring, she asked if she could work from home. “I was ig-
nored for a long time,” she says. “And then finally, they denied
it. I felt depressed and defeated. I thought that I held some
value within the company, but it seems I didn’t.” In a lawsuit
filed in February, Tarantul claims that in refusing to grant her
an accommodation, her former employer violated a New York
City law that prohibits discrimination against caregivers. (The
employer contends in court documents that it was not required
to grant an accommodation in this case.)
Now as the family’s expenses swell—their grocery bill has tri-
pled with their three children no longer getting breakfast, lunch
and snacks at school— Tarantul is grateful for her husband’s sal-
ary but spends much of her time preparing those meals. “They
are starting to resent me because I guess they’re not used to me
being their teacher, their mother, basically their everything,”
she says. Her situation has started to feel claustrophobic, par-
ticularly since the family had to sell her car. “Your car is your
independence,” she says. “Now I have to wait for when some-
one comes home so I can leave.” Still, there was never a ques-
tion about which spouse would step back from work. “Well,
he’s the breadwinner,” she says.
Martinez, too, says it was a given that she’d be the one to
ask for an accommodation, even though she and her husband
worked for the same company. “I would always be the person,
you know, because I’m the woman,” she says. “I don’t think they
would have been too happy if he had said he needed to work
from home. I think they would have looked at it, like, ‘No, Lau-
ren can stay home. You have to come to work.’”
Martinez, who is pregnant and due in May, is working on
getting her real estate license; her husband has found some
work; and her daughter and stepson, who lives with them
part time, are back in in-person school. But Martinez still
worries about putting her youngest kids in day care before they
can wear masks. “It’s really scary, but I know I’m just gonna have
to do something because we have to pay our bills. I still feel like
I don’t have many options,” she says. She’s trying to enjoy the
time with her family even under difficult circumstances, and
she says she’s been open with her daughter about the lawsuit.
“We talk a lot about everything,” she says. “First and foremost, I
think she’s proud of me.” —With reporting by LesLie DicksTein
and simmone shah □SPECIAL REPORT
WOMEN and the PANDEMIC
Proportion
of childcare
programs that could
shutter without
government helpAmount President
Biden proposed to
help stabilize the
childcare industryRate of women’s
labor-force
participation in
January 2020,
a 33-year low