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Childrearing In The Age Of Coronavirus

Lori Walsh: Anyone raising children during the age of coronavirus is now parenting in the open, even as we shelter in place. Parents join online work meetings with toddlers on their laps, kids rollerskating through their living rooms, siblings fighting over... What is it that they're fighting over this time? Emily Oster is Professor of Economics at Brown University and author of the books Expecting Better and Cribsheet and she's joining us now via phone. Emily, welcome back to In The Moment. Thanks for being here.

Emily Oster: Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here again.

Lori: And we appreciate you adjusting your time for us. Everything seems to be an adjustment right now, doesn't it?

Emily: Everything is an adjustment, exactly. You may hear my children in the background.

Lori: That will be perfect and they are welcome on the radio because this phrase "parenting in the open" is something that you wrote about online and you joined us here in South Dakota on the phone when Cribsheet came out and that book has been so useful for us. We pass it around the studio and use it as a reference point for lots of journalistic work that we do as well so thank you for that. And now you're talking about what is this like as so many parents just almost immediately have had to make some pretty major adjustments to their life. Tell us a little bit, as a professor at Brown, and as a parent and as an author, what's happened in your personal life that's changed? Or maybe I should ask you what hasn't changed.

Emily: Yeah, no, what hasn't changed? I think I am having the same experience a lot of us have, which is I'm trying to literally do these two things at the same time. And I think I want my kids to, as much as possible, experience this not as a terrible and anxiety provoking experience, but as a fun thing that happened. My kids are not that old and so even though I'm pretty anxious, I'm trying not to project that. But that partly means I'm trying to run a fun homeschool while also trying to prepare to online teach my classes. And so everything has just overlapped in a way that it hasn't been in the past. I have very little focused time for work and in some ways little focused time for parenting. So it's been an adjustment. Not all terrible, but it's definitely really different.

Lori: There's such a feeling of anxiety and fear too because parents with small children are also afraid of not only their kids getting sick but of themselves getting sick and who is going to take care of my kids if I get this... So let's talk about that anxiety and how do you manage it and stay on top of it and yet somehow keep it developmentally appropriate for kids?

Emily: Yeah. I think one thing is, we have spent a lot of time emphasizing to the kids that there are things we can do to protect ourselves, but not trying to bring the fear that I think as adults we're feeling, trying not to bring that in. My kid's school actually did a really good job before they stopped having it of telling them, "Here are some precautions you should take, wash your hands and so on. But coronavirus is mostly not very serious in children." So I think we're trying to dial down their fear about themselves and then just really not project us while at the same time trying to be careful. And I will say I'm not always successful. Maybe 10 days ago we went to a playground before there was no more playgrounds and once we got there I realized this is a terrible idea. And I was sort of just like, "Okay, we can't be here anymore." And I think I really scared the kids, which was not my intention.

Lori: Yeah. And I just love admitting that stuff. Some of the things that we just do and sometimes we just break... We're parents. And that's something that you talk about in your book is some things have to work for... What's the data tell us? What is our responsibility to do? And then what works in your family? And in this case, in some ways it doesn't matter what works in your family because everybody's being asked to do this really hard thing for the greater good. You're out of options.

Emily: Yeah. I think also being... A lot of what I write about in the book is about this performative parenting and the idea that you have to be doing it right and so on and I think we've all now been brought into a place where it was great to worry about it should we give our kid a half an hour of screen time. But now it's like, "Where's the TV?" I am really not that focused on this question anymore and I think probably that piece of it's probably a bit healthy.

Lori: Yeah. Wasn't that quaint? When we wondered about that. There are things that we think now that we're like-

Emily: "Wasn't that quaint?"

Lori: Wasn't that quaint? That we thought that was important, and in some day I hope that it will be top of mind again. Let's talk about working because so many people... People who have jobs for starters and who are privileged enough to still be working because the unemployment records are, I think, 3.3 million nationwide right now, people filing for employment. So if you have a job though, you're also sort of desperate to keep it right now and you're trying to figure out how to work at home. And tell me a little bit about this piece that you wrote about parenting in the open and just parents being on a Zoom call with their kids around them in a way that you would not have seen a month ago.

Emily: Yeah. So I wrote about this months and months ago, not in the context of the virus, about the idea that we should be more open about the things that we're doing in parenting. And then it sort of came up again because this has been forced upon us. Like now I'm on the zoom call and my son is running in totally naked and being like, "I'm done pooping, come wipe me." And you're like, "Oh my gosh, okay. Yes, just a moment, I'll be right there."

And I think that has challenges and I think trying to focus while you're doing this is hard. But I think there are maybe some good things, which is it's not so terrible for the people that I work with to understand the things that I'm doing, that I'm trying to also manage it at home. And I think simultaneously for the other side, people like me understanding, "Okay, what are my colleagues dealing with?" I think that that has some value and maybe when this is all over, we will kind of be a little bit more thoughtful about the ways that we structure our work around these other obligations that we all have, whether it's kids or older parents or other people in the household.

Lori: You mentioned just this idea of... I'm thinking back to that video and I'm going to forget who it was, but there was a male professor, I think he was from England and he was on the news. This is long before, and his little toddler...

Emily: Are you talking about Korea and the kid...

Lori: Yeah, right? His little kid comes wheeling in. And his wife or the mother of the child just comes crawling in the room just trying to steal the... And it was such an example for... It was so funny and lots of people shared it online, but it was also an example of how we expect our children to be invisible in the world, that we immediately react like, "No, don't be seen. You're a child and I'm a professional." When did we ever get the idea that that was the standard in the first place for men or women?

Emily: I'm not sure. I think that even when I listen to these conversations about maternity leave that we've been having a lot, which are great and I think we should have more maternity leave for when you have a baby, but I think almost all those conversations then end, it's like, "Okay, and then when the baby's four months, they'll just go back to work and it'll just be like it was before." It's like, "Well the baby's not going anywhere." And somehow we have sort of gotten into this idea that you're going to have this kid but you're not going to talk about it. And even actually my job sent some telecommuting instructions and one of the things that they said was if you have other dependents in your house, explain to them that you'll need to be focused when you're on a work call. And my husband was thinking, he was like, "Oh, I'll just explain to our four year old, "I'm sorry this is a work call. I'm going to need to be focused."" And so it feels like that's not realistic.

Lori: We had a work meeting the other day and the best part of the meeting was when somebody's kid... And it wasn't a bad meeting, but somebody's kid interrupted and you could hear them and then my teenage daughter came in and played her accordion and it was just one of those things where like, here we are, we're real people and we're still doing our jobs but we're real people as well. I think that performative parenting, you're not... But I want to ask this question because for so many people, one of the challenges about being a parent and leaving work when your kid is sick, for example, at regular times, is that there are other people who are not parents who are like, "Well I matter too. How come mom over there gets to go home early or whatever?" It can cause a competitive nature or a special treatment kind of feeling that everybody is worried about. How can we approach that a little more humanely?

Emily: I think that that is hard because of course there are these inherent fairnesses, and I think part of it is recognizing that kids are one kind of constraint but almost everybody has other things in their life other than their job and some of it is your parents or your spouse or even like a hobby. And I think part of making this, sort of recognizing that people are whole people beyond just their role at work, I think that part of what we can do there is try to make the workplace recognize all of the pieces of people, whether there are kids or something else.

But I think the truth is that kids are very constraining and that there is a time that kids are around at the end of the day, it's like five to eight and I think we need to be open about that idea that, "Okay, I'm happy to work just as much as you, but there are some times when I am not really able to be there because those are the only times I can see my kid and I am willing to put in time at other times," and I think that we could try to introduce that kind of flexibility which would maintain some fairness.

Lori: Let's talk a little bit about just life inside the house because in some ways the kids do need to understand that things have changed. How can you set up a structure of some kind that that makes sense for kids and for parents so that something can get done, even if it's not everything that we would like to get done?

Emily: I think everyone has approached this a bit differently. I was on a call the other night and we had sort of a range of different levels of schedule. My sense is of what has worked for some people is having some scheduled activities for the kids so they know what is expected for them and some of that obviously depends on how old your kids are.

I do sort of see this in part as an opportunity, and maybe this is reflecting how old my kids are, but partly as an opportunity to encourage some independence in them and have them recognize, yeah, I am parenting in the open at work but I'm also working in the open in parenting and my kids to understand if I say, "This is an important work call," I actually may not be able to help them right then. They may need to pitch in a little bit more to get themselves ready in the morning and get themselves ready in the evening. And so I think that we can, again, in silver lining land, think about using that as a way to encourage independence, which I think we're all looking for in our kids, but it's actually hard to enforce in normal times.

Lori: I talked to a friend last night who said, "I'm sorry about your education, but right now it's going to have to wait." And she's sort of joking a little bit, but what she was saying is this idea that I am supposed to keep my full time job, which I, again, feel very grateful to have during this time of unemployment. She's working in a somewhat new position at work. She's like, "I have to show up right now." Her kids are a little older, so they're a little more independent. But the idea that she should now also be tasked with homeschooling, which is these kids had wonderful teachers that they loved and she's like, "Your education is going to take a dip and that's just the reality of this thing." How much can a parent shift to being a homeschooler quickly in a way that, I guess, we're all balancing these really, really divergent priorities right now. It just seems and feels kind of impossible.

Emily: Yeah, I agree. I talked to somebody the other day who was explaining, "I know people who do homeschooling and these people are all in on it." One of the two parents is engaged and thinking up a curriculum and organizing the homeschool and they think about it in advance and they get materials and somehow to say that I will be able to achieve that kind of experience with one week notice and also while trying to do a different job, I think that's just not realistic, and of course we can rely on our kids' schools a bit for this kind of distance learning, although I think that that's really hard.

And so I think what your friend said is kind of the way I would put it too. You're going to have to let it go a little bit. And the image that we all had two weeks ago, which is like, "This is an opportunity for my kids. Really, I'm going to teach them so much, we're going to have..." It's like, "Okay, here's the iPad. I hope that you do some educational apps some of the time." And I think that's okay. We're going to have to get through this and everybody is going to make some choices and that is okay.

Lori: I talked to a business ethicist who was walking business owners through this idea of when do you let people go? When do you keep them? What's your responsibility to your customers, to your employers? And we have a low unemployment rate in South Dakota. It's hard to find people to fill some of those positions. And his recommendation was, "Think back to just a month ago, a few days ago even, when it was so hard to find qualified people. Maybe you should think about keeping some of those people right now through these hard times." What are your thoughts for employers who are looking at these employees, and again, it can be an opportunity, don't you think? For people to really see, "This is what somebody's home life is actually like, they come to work and they are super dedicated, I value them even more." Can we all value each other even more a little bit now?

Emily: Yeah. I hope we can all value each other even more and recognize that we're all making some sacrifices for ourselves but also for other people. And as you say, yeah, I think that for employers who can, the possibility of continuing to pay your workers or keeping people on I think is really valuable and to the extent that those of us who still have resources can try to spend them a little bit to keep some of these local businesses afloat. I know a lot of businesses, small businesses, are trying, in Rhode Island at least, they're trying hard to keep the lights on by being creative. The bookstore now delivers activity books to my house if I want. And so I think trying to keep supporting those while maintaining this social distance, [inaudible 00:16:07] I think that that's hard, but something we need to try.

Lori: As an economics professor and as an author of these books, it really crunched into the data of this. Part of you at least has to be popping with ideas for when this is all over. What is going to need to be unpacked? What do you think are some of the most interesting things that are happening now that are worth exploring later that are really going to have meaning in the days to come?

Emily: So I think that one of the things we'll see a lot of people trying to study in the wake of this is the impact on education and in particular thinking about inequality. I think one very unfortunate aspect of this is that the same way that when kids leave school for the summer, we need more what we call summer melt in low income populations. That's going to be true here too, that the resources available to people who have highly educated and wealthy parents are going to be very different during this period than other groups. And so I think we will see some people trying to understand the inequality of the education system a bit through that. So I think my guess is, at least in the space that I am most in, that is the thing that we will see the most papers on. Also fertility. So I think there's a question of, are people going to have a lot of babies? Because they're sitting at home with nothing to do.

Lori: Or maybe they're not going to have any more ever again because they're sitting at home with their first two children. They're like, "We're done." Have you talked-

Emily: Some people noted that there would be a baby boom, but only in firstborns.

Lori: Right. Have you talked to families, women especially, who are also in that sandwich moment where they're taking care of their kids, working, being asked to homeschool and taking care of their parents, their elderly parents? Do you have friends that that's sort of what they're suffering through right now?

Emily: Yeah, and I think actually a big thing a lot of people are struggling with, particularly because we're actually not very far from New York and I have a lot of friends and people I know who have elderly parents in New York and there's a question of, "Should I bring my parents to live with me? And then not only be trying to homeschool and also do work at my full time job but also monitor my parents?" And yet it seems like leaving your elderly somewhat unhealthy parents in New York also seems not good. So I've seen a lot of people struggle with that and with the question of exposing your kids to your parents and what do you do in that situation? I think that's, it's just... And even for us, my kids haven't seen their grandparents in a little while, they're used to seeing them a lot and I think it's been really hard for them and really hard for our parents as well.

Lori: Emily Oster is a Professor of Economics at Brown University. She's been a guest here on In The Moment before. The book is called Cribsheet and she's also written a book called Expecting Better. And Emily, thank you so much for making time for us today. We really appreciate it.

Emily: Thank you so much for having me, I really appreciate it.