For most of recorded history, economic activity centered in the home or in nearby shops. The industrial revolution changed that. Men left wives and children to work in factories.
Then came the office age, increasingly in city centers. Homes moved to the suburbs, taking women and children away from economic activity, as well as further from male breadwinners.
Schools began preparing children for a more complex world. Over time they added to basic education many tasks once the exclusive duty of parents: social skills, citizenship, and so on.
Now, with the Covid-19 pandemic, those parents fortunate enough to have higher skilled jobs are working increasingly from home. They may add the oversight of their children’s education, lessons now taught over the internet.
Stories abound of frustration as the new order continues (or perhaps a return to the old?)
Parents find it difficult to work and raise children all day and evening. Single parents are increasingly challenged. Grandparents, once part of chores and child raising, now may live in distant places, unable to visit or help out because of their vulnerability to the virus.
A few people, particularly introverts and/or those who want more time with their families, find some aspects of their new work life pleasant.
Nevertheless, no sane individual wishes the situation to continue, forced by a deadly sickness. But perhaps from all the horror, we may learn to better balance our lives and our society.
The times call for the more fortunate to examine attitudes toward career. Too many have seen work’s main purpose as an accumulation of wealth.
Thus, we lost our recent years of plenty as a chance to build up our society and prepare if for the years of famine. We could have increased healthcare and modest housing and a surplus for unemployment programs. We ended up with a society divided between haves and have nots, the have nots strained to the breaking point. Now many are falling into an abyss of desperation.
Well, if nothing else, we can use the lessons learned to change.