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Time waited for no mom in 2020

In 2020, mothers of younger children were primary and primarily caregivers. In this piece, we document declines in labor force participation among mothers and provide evidence of how mothers spent their time in 2020. We find that overall, mothers of child

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By Lauren Bauer, Sara Estep, Winnie Yee

In 2020, mothers of younger children were primary and primarily caregivers. In this piece, we document declines in labor force participation among mothers and provide evidence of how mothers spent their time in 2020. We find that overall, mothers of children 12 and under spent an average of eight hours per day on direct and secondary child care activities. Restricting attention to employed mothers with children 12 and under also spent about eight hours (7.4 hours during the weekday) per day on direct and indirect child care, and worked about six hours per weekday.

Concerned with chronicling the economic security of families with children and how mothers of young children were spending their time during the COVID-19 pandemic, The Hamilton Project in partnership with the Future of the Middle Class Initiative fielded surveys of mothers with children 12 and under in April 2020 and Fall 2020 (The Survey of Mothers with Young Children [SMYC]).[i] Through this survey, we documented extraordinary levels of material hardship in families with young children and the stress and time pressures that mothers have had to manage. Today, the U.S. Census Bureau released the American Time Use Survey diaries for May-December 2020. These data allow for a more comprehensive picture of how Americans spent their time following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This much larger federal survey corroborates the findings of the SMYC: mothers with children 12 and under have spent much of the past year caregiving.

The COVID-19 pandemic has widened labor force participation gaps between mothers and fathers, and among mothers by marital status and the age of their youngest child. Figure 1 shows the extent to which labor force participation rates (LFPR; the share of a given group working or actively seeking work) have recovered to their level in January 2020. As of June 2021, the most recently available data, the LFPRs of prime-age mothers (those aged 25-54) remain well below the pre-COVID level. In recent months, LFPRs of single mothers and mothers of young children have started to rebound, while rates among mothers of elementary-school-age children and married mothers have stalled and mothers of teens have declined after an initial strong recovery. Single mothers, who typically have the highest rates of labor force participation among prime-age mothers, had the largest initial fall in LFPR and, as of June 2021, the rate remains five percentage points below its January 2020 rate of about 81 percent.

For The Hamilton Project, Lauren Bauer, Arin Dube, Wendy Edelberg, and Aaron Sojourner found that in states with relatively high levels of elementary school closures the declining employment among mothers with an elementary-school-aged child was more than fully accounted for by having elementary-school-age children instead of teenagers; in other words, declining LFPR among mothers over the past year was caused not only by the COVID-19 recession but also by elementary school closures.

The burden of school closures not only made working outside of the home more challenging for mothers, it added education, facilitation, and caregiving-related time pressures to every day. Before the pandemic, caregiving responsibilities fell disproportionately on women and on mothers. That has continued during the pandemic.

Figure 2 shows the average number of hours per day that mothers and fathers of children 12 and under spent providing child care (including education). We compare this to the amount of time that parents spend awake and alone (whether working alone or doing some other activity alone), sleeping, or working (whether working alone or with others).[ii] Note that working alone is included in both “alone-time” and “work.” The definition of direct child care involves activities like bathing and teaching while secondary child care involves other caregiving activities with children. Mothers spent twice as much time doing direct child care (two hours versus one hour) and 1.75 more hours per day than fathers doing secondary child care.

20210722_THP_MaternalTimeUseFigure2

In the May-December 2020 ATUS, as shown in figure 3, employed mothers spent 6.3 hours on average working during weekdays compared with 7.6 hours for fathers. During the weekday, working mothers did 7.4 hours of direct and secondary child care, less than mothers who were unemployed or not in the labor force (about 9 hours) but more than employed fathers (4.8 hours), unemployed fathers (7.1 hours), and fathers not in the labor force (3.5 hours).

20210722_THP_MaternalTimeUseFigure3

For those mothers with children 12 and under who held onto their jobs over the course of 2020, how they spent their time on weekdays changed dramatically. According to Caitlyn Collins, Liana Landivar, Leah Ruppanner, and William Scarborough, during the first two months of the COVID-19 pandemic, among parents with children age 12 and under, mothers reduced their time spent working by 4 to 4.5 times more than fathers did. In the SMYC, far fewer working mothers of young children reported working fulltime hours than from 2014-19. Compared with the May through December 2019, employed mothers (and fathers) are doing almost an hour more child care per day during week days.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated recession began, mothers of children 12 and under were less likely to be employed and working, more likely to be unemployed, less likely to be working full-time hours, more likely to have dropped out of the labor force, and more likely to be spending a substantial amount of time caring for children whether working or not.

The COVID-19 pandemic and recession has disrupted decades of progress for women in their labor market outcomes and potentially their career trajectories for years to come. The COVID-19 recession has intensified differences in the labor market experiences of mothers as well as differences in how mothers and fathers spend their time far beyond the employment and labor force participation margins that were tracked in real time over the past year. This piece highlights that only focusing on increasing LFPR among mothers misses a material part of the story of the past year: mothers who held onto their job struggled to balance competing demands on their time.

Mothers of elementary school age children have borne the brunt of school closures but are a small enough share of the labor force that, while a grave problem for this group, their drop in labor force participation is not holding back the recovery in a macroeconomic sense. Nevertheless, supporting mother’s reentry into the labor force and support for working mothers through actionable policy proposals is an urgent matter of public concern and threatens long-term productivity and potential GDP growth. Specifically, containing the COVID-19 pandemic, speeding a successful roll-out of vaccines to children, and ensuring that all schools, preschools, and child care facilities have the resources and guidance to open and reopen safely (with increased investment in child care and early education as proposed by Elizabeth E. Davis and Aaron Sojourner) are necessary for children and their parents.

[i] In prior work, we also provide estimates of other nonmarket labor activities, leisure/screen time, and civic engagement and will provide estimates for these set of activities for 2020 at a later date.

[ii] The Survey of Mothers with Young Children (SMYC), was administered by The Hamilton Project and the Future of the Middle Class Initiative at Brookings twice, between April 27 and April 28, 2020, and between October 7 and November 5, 2020. For additional details, please see the technical appendix to “10 Economic Facts about how Mothers Spend Their Time.”

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Mike Pompeo Doesn’t Rule Out Serving In 2nd Trump Administration

Mike Pompeo Doesn’t Rule Out Serving In 2nd Trump Administration

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Former Secretary…

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March 13, 2024

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Mike Pompeo Doesn't Rule Out Serving In 2nd Trump Administration

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a new interview that he’s not ruling out accepting a White House position if former President Donald Trump is reelected in November.

“If I get a chance to serve and think that I can make a difference ... I’m almost certainly going to say yes to that opportunity to try and deliver on behalf of the American people,” he told Fox News, when asked during a interview if he would work for President Trump again.

“I’m confident President Trump will be looking for people who will faithfully execute what it is he asked them to do,” Mr. Pompeo said during the interview, which aired on March 8. “I think as a president, you should always want that from everyone.”

Then-President Donald Trump (C), then- Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (L), and then-Vice President Mike Pence, take a question during the daily briefing on the novel coronavirus at the White House in Washington on April 8, 2020. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

He said that as a former secretary of state, “I certainly wanted my team to do what I was asking them to do and was enormously frustrated when I found that I couldn’t get them to do that.”

Mr. Pompeo, a former U.S. representative from Kansas, served as Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director in the Trump administration from 2017 to 2018 before he was secretary of state from 2018 to 2021. After he left office, there was speculation that he could mount a Republican presidential bid in 2024, but announced that he wouldn’t be running.

President Trump hasn’t publicly commented about Mr. Pompeo’s remarks.

In 2023, amid speculation that he would make a run for the White House, Mr. Pompeo took a swipe at his former boss, telling Fox News at the time that “the Trump administration spent $6 trillion more than it took in, adding to the deficit.”

“That’s never the right direction for the country,” he said.

In a public appearance last year, Mr. Pompeo also appeared to take a shot at the 45th president by criticizing “celebrity leaders” when urging GOP voters to choose ahead of the 2024 election.

2024 Race

Mr. Pompeo’s interview comes as the former president was named the “presumptive nominee” by the Republican National Committee (RNC) last week after his last major Republican challenger, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, dropped out of the 2024 race after failing to secure enough delegates. President Trump won 14 out of 15 states on Super Tuesday, with only Vermont—which notably has an open primary—going for Ms. Haley, who served as President Trump’s U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

On March 8, the RNC held a meeting in Houston during which committee members voted in favor of President Trump’s nomination.

“Congratulations to President Donald J. Trump on his huge primary victory!” the organization said in a statement last week. “I’d also like to congratulate Nikki Haley for running a hard-fought campaign and becoming the first woman to win a Republican presidential contest.”

Earlier this year, the former president criticized the idea of being named the presumptive nominee after reports suggested that the RNC would do so before the Super Tuesday contests and while Ms. Haley was still in the race.

Also on March 8, the RNC voted to name Trump-endorsed officials to head the organization. Michael Whatley, a North Carolina Republican, was elected the party’s new national chairman in a vote in Houston, and Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, was voted in as co-chair.

“The RNC is going to be the vanguard of a movement that will work tirelessly every single day to elect our nominee, Donald J. Trump, as the 47th President of the United States,” Mr. Whatley told RNC members in a speech after being elected, replacing former chair Ronna McDaniel. Ms. Trump is expected to focus largely on fundraising and media appearances.

President Trump hasn’t signaled whom he would appoint to various federal agencies if he’s reelected in November. He also hasn’t said who his pick for a running mate would be, but has offered several suggestions in recent interviews.

In various interviews, the former president has mentioned Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), Vivek Ramaswamy, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, among others.

Tyler Durden Wed, 03/13/2024 - 17:00

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International

Riley Gaines Explains How Women’s Sports Are Rigged To Promote The Trans Agenda

Riley Gaines Explains How Women’s Sports Are Rigged To Promote The Trans Agenda

Is there a light forming when it comes to the long, dark and…

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March 13, 2024

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Riley Gaines Explains How Women's Sports Are Rigged To Promote The Trans Agenda

Is there a light forming when it comes to the long, dark and bewildering tunnel of social justice cultism?  Global events have been so frenetic that many people might not remember, but only a couple years ago Big Tech companies and numerous governments were openly aligned in favor of mass censorship.  Not just to prevent the public from investigating the facts surrounding the pandemic farce, but to silence anyone questioning the validity of woke concepts like trans ideology. 

From 2020-2022 was the closest the west has come in a long time to a complete erasure of freedom of speech.  Even today there are still countries and Europe and places like Canada or Australia that are charging forward with draconian speech laws.  The phrase "radical speech" is starting to circulate within pro-censorship circles in reference to any platform where people are allowed to talk critically.  What is radical speech?  Basically, it's any discussion that runs contrary to the beliefs of the political left.

Open hatred of moderate or conservative ideals is perfectly acceptable, but don't ever shine a negative light on woke activism, or you might be a terrorist.

Riley Gaines has experienced this double standard first hand.  She was even assaulted and taken hostage at an event in 2023 at San Francisco State University when leftists protester tried to trap her in a room and demanded she "pay them to let her go."  Campus police allegedly witnessed the incident but charges were never filed and surveillance footage from the college was never released.  

It's probably the last thing a champion female swimmer ever expects, but her head-on collision with the trans movement and the institutional conspiracy to push it on the public forced her to become a counter-culture voice of reason rather than just an athlete.

For years the independent media argued that no matter how much we expose the insanity of men posing as women to compete and dominate women's sports, nothing will really change until the real female athletes speak up and fight back.  Riley Gaines and those like her represent that necessary rebellion and a desperately needed return to common sense and reason.

In a recent interview on the Joe Rogan Podcast, Gaines related some interesting information on the inner workings of the NCAA and the subversive schemes surrounding trans athletes.  Not only were women participants essentially strong-armed by colleges and officials into quietly going along with the program, there was also a concerted propaganda effort.  Competition ceremonies were rigged as vehicles for promoting trans athletes over everyone else. 

The bottom line?  The competitions didn't matter.  The real women and their achievements didn't matter.  The only thing that mattered to officials were the photo ops; dudes pretending to be chicks posing with awards for the gushing corporate media.  The agenda took precedence.

Lia Thomas, formerly known as William Thomas, was more than an activist invading female sports, he was also apparently a science project fostered and protected by the athletic establishment.  It's important to understand that the political left does not care about female athletes.  They do not care about women's sports.  They don't care about the integrity of the environments they co-opt.  Their only goal is to identify viable platforms with social impact and take control of them.  Women's sports are seen as a vehicle for public indoctrination, nothing more.

The reasons why they covet women's sports are varied, but a primary motive is the desire to assert the fallacy that men and women are "the same" psychologically as well as physically.  They want the deconstruction of biological sex and identity as nothing more than "social constructs" subject to personal preference.  If they can destroy what it means to be a man or a woman, they can destroy the very foundations of relationships, families and even procreation.  

For now it seems as though the trans agenda is hitting a wall with much of the public aware of it and less afraid to criticize it.  Social media companies might be able to silence some people, but they can't silence everyone.  However, there is still a significant threat as the movement continues to target children through the public education system and women's sports are not out of the woods yet.   

The ultimate solution is for women athletes around the world to organize and widely refuse to participate in any competitions in which biological men are allowed.  The only way to save women's sports is for women to be willing to end them, at least until institutions that put doctrine ahead of logic are made irrelevant.          

Tyler Durden Wed, 03/13/2024 - 17:20

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Part 1: Current State of the Housing Market; Overview for mid-March 2024

Today, in the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter: Part 1: Current State of the Housing Market; Overview for mid-March 2024
A brief excerpt: This 2-part overview for mid-March provides a snapshot of the current housing market.

I always like to star…

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March 13, 2024

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Today, in the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter: Part 1: Current State of the Housing Market; Overview for mid-March 2024

A brief excerpt:
This 2-part overview for mid-March provides a snapshot of the current housing market.

I always like to start with inventory, since inventory usually tells the tale!
...
Here is a graph of new listing from Realtor.com’s February 2024 Monthly Housing Market Trends Report showing new listings were up 11.3% year-over-year in February. This is still well below pre-pandemic levels. From Realtor.com:

However, providing a boost to overall inventory, sellers turned out in higher numbers this February as newly listed homes were 11.3% above last year’s levels. This marked the fourth month of increasing listing activity after a 17-month streak of decline.
Note the seasonality for new listings. December and January are seasonally the weakest months of the year for new listings, followed by February and November. New listings will be up year-over-year in 2024, but we will have to wait for the March and April data to see how close new listings are to normal levels.

There are always people that need to sell due to the so-called 3 D’s: Death, Divorce, and Disease. Also, in certain times, some homeowners will need to sell due to unemployment or excessive debt (neither is much of an issue right now).

And there are homeowners who want to sell for a number of reasons: upsizing (more babies), downsizing, moving for a new job, or moving to a nicer home or location (move-up buyers). It is some of the “want to sell” group that has been locked in with the golden handcuffs over the last couple of years, since it is financially difficult to move when your current mortgage rate is around 3%, and your new mortgage rate will be in the 6 1/2% to 7% range.

But time is a factor for this “want to sell” group, and eventually some of them will take the plunge. That is probably why we are seeing more new listings now.
There is much more in the article.

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