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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, we open up the phones for the question, how has helping your kids through remote learning affected your job or your career? Anyone out there listening right now who was had to maybe shorten your hours at work to support your kids? Anyone listening right now who's even had to quit your job or forgo a possible promotion? How is helping your kids through remote learning affecting your job or affecting your career? Give us a call 646-435-7286, 646-435-7286.

Now, this call then was inspired by a tweet from @KenyaBradshaw, who wrote, "In the last two weeks, I have talked to five women who are pausing or leaving their careers to support their children, virtually. The weight of this pandemic on the shoulders of women is something we should monitor." There was that tweet, and according to Census Bureau data from this month, of those not working, women ages 25 to 44 are almost three times as likely as men to not be working due to childcare demands, about one in three of these women are not working because of childcare compared to just 12% of men in the same age group. That's from the Census Bureau.

Parents, has remote learning fallen on one parent or another in your household, and why? If you're in a heterosexual marriage, what is the gender balance in your household? Has it changed as a result of remote learning demands? 646-435-7280. Help us report this story, and maybe it will help lead to either policy changes or just personal behavior changes, maybe conversations that might be a little difficult in your own home to make things better, 646-435-7286, 646-435-7280.

Census Bureau data also reports that, "In the United States, around one in five of working age adults, 19% said the reason they were not working was because COVID-19 disrupted their childcare arrangements. Does that sound like you and your family? Which childcare arrangements were disrupted, and how is your family compensating? 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. The overarching question, how has helping your kids through remote learning affected your job or your career? 646-435-7280.

According to a recent CBS news article, researchers estimate that 81% of children will be educated remotely this fall. That's a national stat based on the 100 largest school districts reopening plans, which could mean something close to 4.3 million workers might be weighing their options on whether to continue their careers or supervise their children's education. Are you in the middle of weighing those options now? Is the start of the school year or ready heading towards a critical point where you have to decide? 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. Dan in Ossining, you're on WNYC. Dan, thanks so much for calling in.

Dan: Hey, great to be here.

Brian: Is remote learning of your child affecting your job or your career?

Dan: Yes, especially early on in the spring. I think the first three to four months, we were all trying to figure this out, and being at home-- My son he's 10 years old so he was able to do what was available to him via school and the virtual learning environment pretty much on his own, but they weren't able to keep them engaged throughout the day. He would easily fall to other habits and stuff he had around the house, whether it was playing video games, et cetera, et cetera. It just felt like, being at home, it was important for me to be a role model about how to spend his time more useful in a way that could also encourage learning.

As a result of that, I think I was not paying as much attention to my work as I would have usually, for sure. There were restructurings and changes in my organization in the fall, and it just felt like maybe because I wasn't paying as much attention to my work as I could have at that time that I got passed up for opportunities for a promotion or advancement in my career. I would say, since then, I've been able to readjust, and we're definitely seeing a big improvement with the schooling so far in the fall.

Brian: That's good. Do you think that anything could have gone differently? Could the school system or just your child's school had done something differently, could your workplace have been more responsive? Could you have communicated it in a different kind of way? I realize we all got thrust into this emergency in 50 different directions in the spring, but you say things are getting better now. Are there any lessons from it structurally that people could take away?

Dan: I mean, if the schools were more well-prepared like they were in the fall, that would've been a big help. I know that's a lot to ask, but that definitely would have helped. For me too, there's been a change of mindset in terms of how I'm engaging with work versus engaging at home. That took a while for me to figure out as well. I feel a lot more comfortable with how I'm managing that now. It would've been great to have somehow figured that out sooner.

Brian: Dan, thank you so much. Good luck with everything. Anita in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Anita.

Anita: Hi, how are you?

Brian: Good. Is your child's remote learning impacting your job or career?

Anita: Yes. I'm actually an online teacher well prior to the onset of remote learning and virtual learning, and even that, I had to put on hold since-

Brian: That's ironic.

Anita: - the type of online-- Yes. The online teaching that I do involves children who are overseas, whose the time differences, it's 12 hours ahead. It's other countries such as China, Beijing, parts of India, and what have you.

Brian: You mean having to help your own child meant you had to be on a different schedule?

Anita: Yes, my schedule was very much altered, and what happened was my child turns eight, tomorrow is his birthday actually, and he was in a wonderful public school. There were some gaps in his learning, which actually escalated with the onset of the pandemic. I didn't feel the resources that were available were sufficient enough to deal with, whether it be remote or hybrid learning, so I have decided to fully invest because he is very cognitively intelligent.

I just made the choice to move him to a new school as well from the public school to a charter public school called Success Academy Hudson Yards. I know that there's a lot of feedback out there about these particular charter schools, but however, I have to say I am very impressed with how organized they are. I have seen my child-- They are 100% remote through end of December.

Brian: What would you say they're doing well with at remote learning if you're comparing them favorably to the previous school your child was in that other schools could learn from? Anything you can easily put into words?

Anita: Yes, I'm trying to be diplomatic. [laughs] Well, I have to say that the lessons are very efficient. Mind you, I'm very particular since I am already an online teacher. They're just very organized. They have a way of bringing the kids, the scholars together in a manner that allows them to collaborate with each other. They all had their technology in place. The technology is also well-utilized, meaning, it's integrated where the teachers are able to see what the students are doing as they're working independently. They have access to each and every of their student's platforms. They're able to see in a live basis, if that makes any sense.

Brian: Yes, very interesting. All right, thank you, Anita. Happy birthday to your son. This happens to be my son's birthday week too, so it's a good week for cake.

Anita: Yes.

Brian: I hope everything works out for you and your family.

Anita: To you as well. Happy birthday to your son.

Brian: Anita, thank you. Claudia in Montclair, you're on w NYC. Hello, Claudia.

Claudia: Hi, Brian, thank you so much for taking my call. When the lockdown happened and our kids were sent home for homeschooling on March 17th, I didn't know it, but I had about a month left of work in a freelance gig I was doing for a big Korean tech company through a temp agency. I was doing PR after having lost my journalism job to layoffs about four years ago. I have not gone for any other temp jobs. There's not been any work coming from the tech company during the pandemic. Their needs have shifted considerably.

I found that my older child, who has ADHD, essentially fell through the cracks in the springtime remote learning or distance learning setup that our school system had at his middle school. It was a disaster and eroded his confidence academically so severely. He needed me, and quite frankly, even though there've been incredible improvements in the remote learning set up in Montclair in the fall, his needs have just increased in a way that probably wouldn't have in in-person, pre-pandemic world. I feel that I can't resume my search for a job in my chosen field, journalism, until my child goes back to in-person learning. Thankfully, I have a setup whereby my partner is the main breadwinner and we are fortunate enough that I can make that choice.

Brian: Is this just the unluck of the draw, as far as you're concerned, like COVID hit and these are the cards you've been dealt, or could something be going better if something structurally were different?

Claudia: Well, there are supports we can put in place outside of the school hours. Again, that has to do with our being fortunate enough, financially, to be able to afford that. We're going to have to get him specialized tutors because I'm not a teacher and I'm not a special needs teacher. This is not my expertise, and he deserves so much more. It's a learning process for our school district. For our middle school, in particular, it's been extremely slow and extremely halting, and it's very frustrating for parents, but obviously, this is such a dramatic sea change in education that it's going to take a lot of adjustment for a long time.

Brian: Claudia, thank you so much for your call. Good luck with everything. We'll take a short break, and come and finish up with a few more of your calls on how remote learning for your child is affecting your job or career. Stay with us.

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Brian: Brian Lehrer WNYC, as we're taking your calls on how helping your kids through remote learning has affected your job or affected your career and whether there are any gender imbalances getting exacerbated by that as well. Jonathan in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jonathan, thank you for calling.

Jonathan: Hey, Brian, pleasure to be on with you.

Brian: Has it affected your job or your career?

Jonathan: Yes. I have kids age four and eight, and my wife is an essential worker. We decided at the beginning of the pandemic that we were going to have me be the primary caregiver and homeschooler. I mean, my kids were obviously in remote learning all through the fall and they have been so far this school year. They're supposed to go in two days a week starting next week.

I'm a college professor, and what I have sacrificed, really, or the harm that has been done has been to my students. I have talked to my university about this at length repeatedly. I started sounding the alarm about this in April or so about what was going on with faculty who have children at home all day who need homeschooling and the university has been pretty unresponsive, I have to say, with the gesture here and there about things they were planning to do or hoping to do.

I really feel for my students, but I've had to severely reduce the amount of time that I devote to them. I am fortunately tenured, and when I was sounding the alarm, part of what I was saying was, "Hey, the untenured faculty, especially--" As we know, this does harm women more than men, the whole caregiver responsibility. "The untenured women faculty are going to be the ones really suffering here and something has to be done for them. Something has to be done. They need a course release. They need support. They need financial aid to pay our caregivers if they're in a situation where that can be done safely." None of these things I said have borne any fruit. I'm privileged enough to be able to say these things out loud because I am tenured.

Brian: Did they do anything?

Jonathan: The university has-- Like I said, I started talking about this in April. The university is, right now, setting up a committee to study the issue.

Brian: Jonathan, thank you very much for your call. Interesting about the power dynamics, the security dynamics between tenured and untenured, anything, and who can speak up, and who is bearing the brunt of things, and that they're more unlikely to be tenured part of that analysis. Sarah in Irvington, New York, Irvington-on-the-Hudson, Sarah, you're on WNYC. Hello to you. Hello, Irvington.

Sarah: Hi, Brian, thanks for taking my call. I was actually poised to go back to work as a high school English teacher to start interviewing. My first interview was the week of around March 15th. When everything went down, that was canceled. That interview was subsequently canceled. I made the decision not to pursue looking for a job this fall because I have three kids, and we were in the midst of distance learning. I've put those plans on hold for now as I am home with my three kids, teaching them.

Brian: That's a long time to put this off, March 15th, you said, right?

Sarah: March 15th, and really, eight years, I had been out of it for eight years since my middle child was born. It was a big decision for me to decide to get back into the game and to get everything organized and all of that-- [crosstalk]

Brian: Without prying, are there gender issues here?

Sarah: There aren't specifically gender issues in the sense that my partner, he's the main breadwinner. I had already been out of it. It was a decision we made to be home with the kids. I have 10, 8, and 4, but I know that I do want to go back, so it's hard when you've made that decision to jump back in and get everything organized and mentally make decisions about childcare, which was going to be the next step, and then, to have to put it off.

Brian: Sarah, thank you so much, and good luck to your whole family. We are out of time. Thank you for all your calls. You hear how many stories there are out there and how many different situations with respect to how remote learning is affecting people's jobs and people's careers. Well, The Brian Lehrer Show is produced by Lisa Allison, Mary Croke, Zoe Azulay, Amina Srna, and Carl Boisrond with help on our Daily Politics Podcast from Zach Gottehrer-Cohen, and that's Juliana Fonda today at the audio controls, in-person, at the WNYC Studios. Have a great weekend, everyone. Thank you for listening. I'm Brian Lehrer.

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