Kerry Donovan, a trial lawyer, had such a demanding career that she wasn’t sure about having children. The pandemic changed her calculus. Her hours remained long and unpredictable. She was the breadwinner. She moved across the country to help care for her parents after her father had a stroke.
Yet despite all this, having children suddenly seemed possible — because of the way pandemic-era work untethered office workers from the office. She now has two children, ages 4 and 2. She still goes to the office several days a week.
But the ability to work from home has made it possible to have both a career and a family, she said. Equally important has been a cultural change at work.
“What the pandemic did was people all of a sudden were talking more about their families — ‘I have small kids’ or ‘I have a parent who’s sick’ — and it made everything easier,” she said. “The pandemic is the main thing that has enabled me to remain in this job.
” For people whose jobs can be done at different places and times — mostly college-educated office workers — a lasting effect of the pandemic has been a newfound flexibility, which had been hard to find in the increasingly demanding American workplace.
Today, 26 percent of parents still work remotely some days of the week. And like Ms. Donovan, workers describe a new attitude at the office about family, as something to be accommodated, not hidden.
But after six years of this natural experiment, American workplace culture seems to be at a crossroads. Some employers are cutting back on benefits that have supported working parents, including remote work. A movement on the right is pushing for more mothers to stay home entirely.
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