The United States is an outlier among developed nations when it comes to supporting working families. Unlike other advanced economies, we offer no national public paid family leave, no publicly supported universal childcare, no requirements that employers offer flexible work and schedule control. Researchers and advocates have long lamented we don’t have these policies because the constituents who need them most – parents – are too stressed and busy to organize and demand them. Has COVID-19 changed that?

Host: Brigid Schulte, Director, Better Life Lab at New America

Guests:

Dasja Reed, Single parent and member of Strolling Thunder 

Alissa Quart, Executive Director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and author most recently of Daycare slots for babies are vanishing. Now their parents can’t work

Justin Ruben, Parent and co-founder of ParentsTogether

Tamara Mose, Sociology professor at Brooklyn College, director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the American Sociological Association and author of Raising Brooklyn: Nannies, Childcare and Caribbeans Creating Community

 Jennifer Beall Saxton, Parent, Founder and CEO of Tot Squad