Forty-seven. That’s how many days of child care Kathryn Anne Edwards’ 3-year-old son has missed in the past year. RSV, COVID-19 and two bouts of the dreaded preschool scourge of hand, foot and mouth disease struck one after another. The illnesses were so disruptive that the labor economist quit her full-time job at the Rand Corp., a think tank. She switched last month to independent contract work to give her more flexibility to care for her son and 4-month-old daughter. In the first and even second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, multi-week quarantines and isolations were common for many Americans, especially children. But nine weeks of missed child care, nearly three years in? “The rest of the world has moved on from the crisis that I’m still in,” said Edwards, who studies women’s issues. “That’s sometimes how it feels like to me.” This fall and winter have upended life for working parents of little children, who thought the worst of the pandemic was behind them. The arrival of vaccines for younger children and the end of quarantines for COVID exposure were supposed to bring relief. Instead, families were treated to what some called a “tripledemic.” Flu, COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus cases collided, stressing children’s hospitals and threatening the already imperiled child care system. Even parents of babies with less serious cases of COVID-19 have run into 10-day isolation rules that have taxed the patience of employers. A record-high 104,000 people missed work in October because of child care problems, surpassing even early pandemic levels, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows. Child care-related absences fell to 59,000 in November, but numbers still surpass typical pre-pandemic levels. The instability has hurt many working parents’ finances. Most of those who missed work in October because of child care problems didn’t get paid, according to an analysis from the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank. Now, doctors are bracing for the number of sick children to rise after families gathered for the holidays. “I think we’re going to have to be ready to do it all over again,” said Dr. Eric Biondi, director of pediatric hospital medicine at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Maryland. Illnesses among teachers and children have strained a child care system that’s already short-staffed. “This is the worst year I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” said Shaunna Baillargeon, owner of Muddy Puddles Early Learning Program in Uxbridge, Massachusetts. She faces “a constant battle of staff and children being sick with a different virus every day,” with no backups if a teacher calls in sick. At the Washington, D.C., day care where Jana Williams teaches, illness has caused classroom shutdowns almost weekly since October. Her 19-month-old daughter is also enrolled there, coming down with the same viruses. “It’s stressful,” she said before Christmas, when she was home with her sick toddler. “You want to stay home and care for your child. But then it’s like, you have to get to work.” During the early months of the pandemic, women in the prime of their careers left the labor market at a rate far exceeding men. They were more likely to work in the service-oriented fields that were decimated, and they often were caring for children, Edwards said. Women have since returned to the workforce, particularly women […]

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