When parents lose their jobs, their children also suffer. But sometimes there’s a consolation

In six months without steady work, Gregory Pike, a single father in Las Vegas, has fallen behind on his rent and utilities, borrowed money he cannot repay, turned to food stamps and charity, and fretted that his setbacks may cloud his daughter’s future.

Research dating to the Depression warns that parental unemployment places children at risk: When finances fall and adult tensions rise, young people tend to do worse in school and suffer psychological strains, reducing their prospects for adult success.

But despite the problems he has experienced since March, when the coronavirus eliminated his job, Pike has found an unexpected consolation: time with his 6-year-old daughter, Makayla, whom he has raised alone for three years.

“As much as this pandemic has brought me some hardship and uncertainty, it’s kind of a blessing — it’s let me focus more on parenting,” Pike said. “It’s bad but it’s also been good. It’s really brought us a lot closer.”

With parental unemployment having recently hit a record peak, the risks to children are formidable. Nearly 22% of children had an unemployed parent in April, the highest rate on record, according to Zachary Parolin, a researcher at Columbia University who analysed data at the request of The New York Times. By August, the rate had fallen nearly in half, but still approached the peak of the Great Recession and was much higher among Black and Latino children.

No place has felt the impact more deeply than Las Vegas, where in recent months the share of children with an unemployed parent has averaged nearly 36%. Accompanied by school closures and fear of contagion, the scars left by parental joblessness now may run uniquely deep.

“These levels of unemployment are huge,” said Jennie E Brand, a sociologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “There’s a lot going on in these families that’s going to be hard to recover from.”

In recent interviews, Las Vegas parents echoed the experts’ view that their joblessness posed risks to their children. But like Pike, many also said they had found rewards in the extra family time, as if newly realising how little of it had been available in their earlier, overscheduled lives.

“Work-life conflict” is often discussed as a problem of the privileged classes, but low-wage workers may suffer it most, with unpredictable hours, less help with chores like cooking and cleaning and little economic choice. The sudden increase of time with their children has reminded some low-income parents of what they have been missing.

“You know, I’ve gotten to know my kids a lot more,” said Aileen Kelly, a single mother of five who lost her job as a casino housekeeper at the pandemic’s start. “When you’re working, you don’t get the real feeling of raising your kids. You’re providing for them but you’re not teaching them.”

Such rewards do not reduce the risks that unemployment brings — Kelly has doubled up with a friend, in an apartment with 10 children — but they do offer a window into an overlooked strain on the lives of poor families.

“Even when the parents get reemployed quickly, you still see negative effects,” Brand said.

Lost income offers one explanation, making it harder for families to afford everything from food to Little League. Elevated stress offers another, increasing the risk of parental depression or harsh parenting.

Generally, men are more susceptible than women to the lost self-esteem that unemployment can bring, making jobless fathers the greater threat to family harmony, Brand found in a review of unemployment research. Poor workers face greater economic risks, she found, but affluent workers are more likely to feel unemployment as a blow to their identity.

The risks unemployment poses to children may depend in part on the safety net, which was significantly expanded at the start of the pandemic but is now contracting.

When Maria Guerrero, a single mother in Las Vegas, lost her job at an airline caterer in March, her unemployment benefits were delayed for two months. Worried about losing her house, she found herself sniping at her 14-year-old daughter.

“You get anxiety, you get depression, you don’t sleep at night, thinking what if they kick me out?” she said. “I was so frustrated I would take it out on my daughter. She goes, ‘You’re always in a mood, you’re always mad.’”

When the benefits arrived, they fully replaced her salary through July, and the household conflict ended. “The relationship got better when I started making my payments again,” Guerrero said. “We eat together, we’re bonded. This pandemic — it made us closer.”

Three researchers at the University of Chicago — Ariel Kalil, Susan Mayer and Rohen Shah — recently found that government aid had reduced the harm of unemployment during the pandemic. They surveyed nearly 600 low-income single mothers before and after the crisis began.

Parents who lost jobs reported greater depression and stress and more negative interactions with their children — but only if their income declined. Jobless parents who replaced their income, through government aid or second earners, experienced no negative effects. If anything, those parents reported that their interactions with their children had improved.

The April rate of parental unemployment — 21.7% of children had unemployed parents — shattered the previous monthly record of 16% from January 1983. At this year’s peak, that was about 16 million children.

“That’s really an alarming number,” said Parolin, the Columbia researcher. “Even if parents quickly return to work, I wouldn’t underestimate the psychological toll unemployment takes, particularly in the context of the pandemic.”

Parental unemployment varies greatly by race, with the August levels among Black children (16.2%) and Latino children (14.3%) nearly twice that of white children (8.3%). Likewise, unemployment is much higher among less-educated workers than college graduates, and higher among mothers than fathers, reversing a trend toward gender equity in work rates.

“With schools out, it’s more often mothers who stay home from work,” Parolin said.

Parental unemployment exceeded a five-month average of 20% in a dozen major metropolitan areas, including New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Boston, San Francisco, Detroit, and Orlando, Florida. Recent Census Bureau surveys showed that households with a jobless parent were about twice as likely as others to miss rent payments or lack sufficient access to food.

A recent questionnaire from The Times, distributed by Fresh EBT, a smartphone app that helps people manage their food stamp benefits, asked parents how the pandemic had affected their relationships with their children. Many simultaneously lamented the lost income but praised the increased family time.

“We are struggling financially, but we have grown closer,” a North Carolina mother wrote.

“We love time together but I am a single parent and need work,” a Washington parent wrote.

“We have benefited having more time together but not having money is not good,” a single mother in Michigan wrote. “I’m being evicted.”

© 2020 The New York Times Company