After the quarantine, parents are starting to rethink their life choices. It is now a choice between their career and children's welfare.
During the quarantine, most employers allowed their staff to work from home. This move meant that parents are staying home with their children while juggling work and other household chores.
Parents had to do so because, along with the closure of most establishments, schools and child care centers were closed. No one expected that it would take months before child care centers will reopen.
However, some parents still hesitate to send their children to centers. Now that companies are also starting to reopen, thus signifying there is no longer a need to work from home, parents are facing a tough decision.
Will it be their career or children?
In an interview with CBC News, child-care advocate Gillian Pearson said parents are diving into different choices to make ends meet.
The grandparents come first in mind to parents who choose not to send their kids to child care-the same for those on the waitlist in child care centers.
According to Pearson, parents are spending on so much to fly the grandparents in to look after the kids.
She added that even during the pandemic quarantines, employers had implemented productivity monitoring, causing parents to have difficulties in maintaining their homes and working at the same time.
Some parents are afraid to speak out, while others have chosen to take a leave. However, this also brought the follow-up questions like, "Will I still be rehired once I want to come back?" or "Will this impact my career?"
Parent security when choosing between career and children
Lawyers say that there are job protections for parents who find it challenging to work from home. They say there is no need to choose between their career and children's welfare.
According to Ruth Trask, a law firm partner from Stewart McKelvey, the new amendments of the Labour Standards Act provide these protections. This Act applies to all provincially regulated employers in Canada.
The Act states that there is an infectious disease emergency leave. This leave allows parents to take care of their children when there are schools or child care services closure. This kind of leave applies to the recent pandemic.
Trask added that employers give this leave without a need for a medical certificate. She also mentioned that if parents dismissal is not an option for taking this kind of leave.
On the other hand, federally regulated employers in Canada should allow up to 16 weeks of parental leave.
Effect on the economy when parents choose their children
According to an article from the New York Times, mothers who are part of the workforce are carrying a burden on the possible effects of the pandemic. Because working mothers are more likely to choose to opt-out of the labor force, an impact could last a lifetime. That is because choosing the welfare of their children today may reduce mothers' earning potentials. There could also be an effect on the number of work opportunities that parents or working mothers will miss.
It is indeed a tough decision between a parent's career or the welfare of their kids.
According to a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan, Betsey Stevenson, "We could have an entire generation of women who are hurt."
