“Family holds an uncertain place in a world formed after the image of the marketplace.” – Rodney Clapp[1]

When Charo Garay, a friend from Zaragoza, Spain, messaged me at the start of her region’s lockdown, I knew she was in for a rough ride. The city had confined residents to their homes, allowing them to step outside only for emergencies or weekly trips to the market. Her three children would not set foot outside of their small, urban apartment for the next six weeks. And so began our daily check-ins on Whatsapp, intended to keep her spirits up, while offering me a glimpse of the challenges parents faced as they juggled work and childcare responsibilities at home.

Disruptions like a global pandemic fracture the fragile systems that allow us to maintain the status quo. They force us to examine ways our current systems have stopped working and invite us to re-envision work in ways that help us fully steward our callings.

In this short paper, my hope is to shed light on structures and policies that make it difficult for working families to thrive, to remind us of a biblical view of work and calling, and to invite business leaders to examine the culture of their own organizations, with the goal of supporting employees at work and at home.

The “She-cession”

While the COVID 19 pandemic affected workers across industries, it had a catastrophic effect on women’s employment. In the U.S., 2020 saw the lowest women’s employment rates since after WWII, and women regained lost jobs at a slower rate than men. School closures across the globe forced parents across the socio-economic spectrum to juggle work and caretaking responsibilities, a shift that weighed more heavily on female employees.

Coronavirus quarantines set many parents’ callings on a collision course in the confined space of the family home. Moms and dads who escaped job cuts faced the “COVID Trifecta,” the impossible task of maintaining their professional lives, supervising their children’s online education, and managing a household. For these workers, there did not seem to be enough time or energy to accomplish all three in a 24-hour day.

It’s no surprise that McKinsey’s annual survey of women in corporate America revealed 1 in 4 considered leaving the sector or downsizing their careers during the pandemic.[2] Some employers acknowledged the intensity of the season, like Microsoft, whose Mother’s Day ad affirmed women’s ability to lead Zoom calls with their children sword-fighting in the background. Yet others expected female employees to maintain focused work and pre pandemic production levels. One woman interviewed for the study confessed, “I feel like I am failing at everything. I’m failing at work. I’m failing at my duties as a mom. I’m failing in every single way, because I think what we’re being asked to do is nearly impossible.”

Workers on the other end of the economy faced different challenges, as school closures eliminated the free, reliable childcare lower-wage earners rely on to be able to work. One in three women’s jobs was deemed essential, yet “essential” does not mean work was well compensated or able to withstand the pressures of the pandemic. For example, of the 5.8 million people working healthcare jobs paying less than $30k/year—employees that held the nation together during the pandemic—83% are women. With schools closed and other daycare options prohibitively expensive, parents were forced to choose between going to work and staying home to care for children.

These realities reveal weaknesses in our current ways of working. While strategies to support workers’ caretaking responsibilities must address both men and women’s needs, we can’t ignore how structural inequity in the American workplace and the lack of family-friendly public policy weigh heavily on working women.

What Isn’t Working about Work

America’s workplaces were not designed to support employees who have caretaking

responsibilities. As Brigid Schulte explained in a recent New York Times article, past

expectations to log “face time” through physical presence at work greatly hindered women in white collar roles: “Social scientists have a term to describe this phenomenon: ‘The Ideal Worker norm.’ In American workplaces, the Ideal Worker comes in early. Stays late. Never has to rush out to tend to a sick child, to take an aging parent to the doctor, or just aches to see more of their kids before they go to bed. Women are more likely to have care responsibilities, so the belief that the best work is done in the office hurts us most.”[3]

In spite of the crushing weight of the “COVID Trifecta,” it may produce long-term benefits for corporate women. Employers, who previously questioned a woman’s commitment if she asked to work part-time from home, have seen that employees can maintain productivity and focus outside traditional office settings. As men play an ever-greater role in family care, they will benefit from these flexible arrangements, too.

Employees working in lower-paying jobs, such as healthcare, hospitality, or retail—all

industries deemed essential during the pandemic—face tougher challenges as the lack of affordable childcare options and paid family leave force families to choose between work and family. A Pew Research study found that only 37 percent of Americans with incomes under $30,000 receive any type of pay if they leave work to care for a new child or ailing family member. Nearly half of those who lacked paid family leave said they went on public assistance to cover lost wages.[4] For employees who lack paid maternity leave, lost wages drive many back to work, often within two weeks of giving birth. Jane, a call center worker in Phoenix explains, “My work doesn’t pay for maternity leave, but they told me they would hold my job if I returned within the month. [But] if I don’t go back to work in two weeks, we will not have enough money to pay our electric bill.”[5] Imagine how uncomfortable and exhausting it would be to take calls from angry customers two weeks after giving birth.

Theological Foundation: An Integrated View of Calling

As we consider a response to these challenges, it is essential to frame our actions within a biblical vision of work and calling. In Scripture, we see men and women co-laboring for the care and economic welfare of their families and communities. This integration of work and home doesn’t solve the complexity of managing these roles, but it positions an individual’s economic contribution as a vital expression of his/her call, in addition to the work of caring for family.

Post-pandemic life presents opportunities to redefine work in ways that support employees as whole people, with diverse callings. The model of a two-parent family in which one parent works outside the home while one focuses on caregiving will remain an option for some, but it is less affordable for workers in low-wage jobs or for those living in urban areas like Denver, where the median home price has doubled in the last decade.

Work has become an economic imperative, but it is also essential to what God has made us to be and do. “Families can form themselves along a divine vision of work and family as holistic complements,” explains the Center for Public Justice’s Families Valued Initiative. “As citizens and culture-shapers, Christians should advocate for and develop policies and practices that protect, rather than fragment, family time.”[6]

Current working conditions push employees across the economic spectrum toward

disintegrated living, a reality today’s Christian business leaders must reckon with. In their paper “Time to Flourish: Protecting Families’ Time to Work and Care,” Rachel Anderson and Katelyn Beaty offer a sharper critique, “The demands of the modern workforce, largely absent of protections for family time and flourishing, are…a dehumanizing force that undermine some of our most cherished values.”[7] For those who identify as pro-life and pro-family, we can operationalize these values through supportive work culture and policies.

Opportunities for Action

What if workers were not forced to compartmentalize their lives by the demands of their jobs? What if employees could bring their whole selves to work through policies that supported their professional endeavors and caretaking responsibilities? Now is the time to build systems that fully support workers’ callings. As Pope John Paul II observed in Encyclical Laborem, the “whole labour process must be organized and adapted in such a way as to respect the requirements of the person in his or her forms of life….”[8] But how?

Changing workplace culture will be a gradual, evolving process. I offer three ways to get started:

Dig deep: How well do you know your employees’ lives outside of work? How many are single parents or caring for aging relatives? What’s the cost of quality childcare in your area? Consider expanding the demographic data you collect about your workforce to better reveal the challenges they face. Connect with employees in informal, small groups to learn about their caretaking responsibilities.
Explore, experiment, iterate: Recently, the owner of a small tech company approached me with concerns about supporting the first member of their staff to become pregnant. He wanted to provide the same amount of leave that his competitors offered but knew it was financially impossible. What could he do? While laws that affect companies based on size and best practices vary by industry, even the smallest start-up can find creative solutions to care for its staff. If two months of paid leave is impossible, offer a shorter length of time combined with flex time that can be spread across the first year of a child’s life and the opportunity to work part-time from home. Rachel Carlson, CEO of Guild Education, an 850-person tech company in Denver, Colorado, shocked her peers by opening a million-dollar on-site childcare center—a move which allowed Guild to maintain a 96% employee retention rate amongst parents during the pandemic. Wouldn’t it be amazing if Christian-owned businesses became known for innovative approaches to employee care such as these?
Join the public policy conversation: In this divisive political moment, it’s tempting to avoid the policy-making process, but it is critical to remember God did not intend families to thrive alone. He calls multiple institutions to establish conditions in which families flourish. The Center for Public Justice, a non-partisan Christian thinktank devoted to public policy research from a theological perspective, advocates for family-friendly policies through its Families Valued Initiative. You can join other business leaders in adding your voice to this important conversation.

The Christian tradition elevates family life and work as two God-given areas of human responsibility, yet for many employees, fulfilling both callings is a source of on-going conflict. What if faithful business leaders became models to their industries, of God’s love expressed through supportive workplace culture and policies?

Article originally hosted and shared with permission by The Christian Economic Forum, a global network of leaders who join together to collaborate and introduce strategic ideas for the spread of God’s economic principles and the goodness of Jesus Christ. This article was from a collection of White Papers compiled for attendees of the CEF’s Global Event.

Envisioning Workplaces that Fully Support Workers' Callings

The “She-cession”

What Isn’t Working about Work

Theological Foundation: An Integrated View of Calling

Opportunities for Action

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