Timm Bönke has often emailed in the middle of the night in the past few months. Sometimes you got a message from the Berlin professor of economics at 0.30 a.m., sometimes at 2.20 a.m. The father calls it the shift system: looking after the children during the day because the daycare center only has emergency operations. Work in the evenings and at night. That not only sounds stressful, it is – and yet it has been a reality for many parents in the past year and a half for many parents.
The corona pandemic forced parents to change their work. Daycare centers closed for months, as did schools. Or they hardly offered any lessons – so that parents would sit next to the younger children so that these pages with tasks copied by the teacher could really tackle. The Berlin economist Bönke is an example of what that means for the job. After the pandemic began in April 2020, every third father at least partially shifted his paid work to the evening or the weekend. In the case of mothers with children under the age of 14, it was even every second. This is now shown by a study of the Institute for Employment Research (IAB).
“Mothers in particular worked more often on weekends or in the evening, among other things to be able to look after their children when school and daycare were closed or during distance lessons,” explains IAB researcher Corinna Frodermann. Your survey also shows that the multiple corona exposure was not over soon. In October 2020, every fourth mother and every fifth father with younger children postponed their working hours.
All of this affects many people in Germany. According to the Federal Statistical Office, there are 3.2 million families with children under the age of eleven in which mother and father are employed. 600,000 single parents with children of this age also go to work. Almost every second person works full-time.
In some professions, you cannot even postpone working hours to the weekend
Researchers report that this shows only part of the challenges posed by the pandemic. Earlier studies by the Hans Böckler Foundation suggest that mothers in particular often reduced their working hours for the company in order to look after the children – and accordingly earned less. While office work is more likely to be done in the evening or at the weekend, this is often not the case for jobs in hospitals, shops or crafts.
In addition, the parents not only posed problems for closed daycare centers and schools. Playgrounds, zoos and other leisure facilities were also tight. “In addition to the challenges of everyday life, parents have concerns about the education, health and future of their children and, in quite a few families, also about the economic situation,” says C. Katharina Spieß, Head of Education and Family at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW).
Spieß demands more efforts from politics. The agreed catch-up program of two billion euros to relieve families and compensate for learning delays is just a start. “That will not be enough to support those families in particular who were and still are particularly affected by the pandemic.”
After the pandemic, many would like more flexible working hours than before
When it comes to shifting working hours, working people do not see this only as negative. Obviously it is tough to do children and work one after the other. In general, however, parents and other professionals appreciate being able to make their working hours more flexible. The study by IAB researcher Frodermann provides indications that working hours were shifted not only because of the children during the pandemic. Working at home also plays a role. In the pandemic, workers who have no children also postponed their jobs.
According to various studies, many employees would like more flexible working hours than before after the pandemic. They hope that companies will respond to this more frequently than before – because it has turned out that workers in the home office are just as productive or even more productive than in the company.
Such flexibility, just like working at home, also raises questions. For example, whether employees are exploiting themselves, have additional costs for equipment and furniture, or whether occupational safety is reduced. The trade unions are therefore calling for these questions to be regulated in the company or by law so that employees are not disadvantaged in the brave new world of flexibility.