Why the New Jobs Report About Women and Work Matters for How We Raise Our Kids
I was standing in the school pickup line when another mom looked up from her phone and said, “Did you see this? Ninety-four percent of the new jobs since March went to women. What are they going to do about it?” She wasn’t angry, exactly. She just sounded confused, like the economy had become a math problem she couldn’t solve.
I had seen the headline. Over those four months, the economy added about 350,000 jobs, and roughly 329,000 of them went to women. The numbers get thrown around as a battle cry, but standing there, watching our kids swing upside down from the monkey bars, it didn’t feel like a war. It felt like a Tuesday.
Still, the question stayed with me. Not because I think American civilization is ending. But because our children are watching how we talk about these things. They hear us mutter about “men’s jobs” and “women’s jobs” even when we think we’re being quiet. They see who makes dinner, who picks them up, who comes home tired from work. And they are quietly forming their own ideas about what their futures are supposed to look like.
That night, my son told me he wanted to be a preschool teacher when he grows up. My first reaction was to smile. My second reaction was a flash of worry that I didn’t want to admit. He said, “Most teachers at my school are ladies.” I said, “That’s true. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be one.”
It was a small moment, but it made me realize how much the bigger picture matters. The jobs report isn’t just an economic indicator. It’s a mirror held up to our families, our classrooms, and our assumptions.
Let me be honest about the numbers, because they need context. The pandemic hit women in the workforce especially hard. Childcare centers closed, schools went remote, and someone had to stay home. It was usually mothers. So when families slowly began to recover economically, women were also the ones re-entering the workforce fastest. The sectors adding the most jobs after the shutdowns—healthcare, education, hospitality—are also sectors where women make up a large share of workers. That doesn’t mean men are losing some kind of fight. It means the economy is healing unevenly, and the field is tilted by old choices and new pressures.
But just explaining that to my son wouldn’t have been enough. He needed to see it.
So we started doing something small. When we read books or watch shows together, I point out people doing jobs that surprise their gender. We watched a show about a female firefighter who also owns a catering company. We talked about a neighbor who is a male nurse. My daughter said, “I thought nurses were girls.” I said, “Nurses are people who like to help, and he’s very good at it.” She thought about that for a second and then asked if he had helped her when she broke her arm two summers ago. Yes, he had. She nodded like she was adding new information to a file.
That’s what we actually need as parents and teachers: ways to add new information to our kids’ files before the old stereotypes harden.
The kitchen, it turns out, is a good place to start. I’m not talking about anything dramatic. Just noticing the patterns in our own home. For a long time, my husband handled the trash and the yard work, and I handled the cooking and the laundry. Not because we planned it that way, but because it’s how we fell into the rhythm of our lives. Then we noticed our son asking to help with the trash and our daughter hovering near the stove. They didn’t say anything. They just mirrored us.
We switched things up. Now my husband packs lunches more often, and I mow the lawn when the weekend isn’t too hot. It sounds silly, but our kids started to see that the division of labor was a choice, not a natural law. When my daughter asked why her friend’s dad always does the grill at their family cookout, I said, “Because he likes it. Some things are just about what you enjoy, not whether you’re a boy or a girl.”
The same applies at school. Teachers are in a unique position to reset expectations. Simple things make a difference: rotating classroom jobs so every kid takes a turn at the same tasks, from moving chairs to cleaning tables. Reading books that feature boys dancing and girls building robots. Being careful with language—saying “science person” instead of “scientist guy,” or “nurse” without automatically adding “lady.”
I know that sounds small, but small is how bias spreads.
What about the politicians? My friend at pickup wasn’t wrong to ask. There are genuine policy questions that deserve answers. Paid family leave should probably not depend on which state you live in. Childcare is so expensive that many families can’t afford for both parents to work, even when both want to. Apprenticeship programs for young men in fields that have traditionally been rebuilt by women—like education and care work—could help close the gap. Expanding access to job training for adults transitioning out of one industry into another would help everyone.
But waiting for politicians to solve this is like waiting for perfect weather. It’s not coming. In the meantime, our kids need adults who normalize change.
The other day, my daughter came home and announced she was going to be a veterinarian who also fixes motorcycles. “That’s a weird combination,” her brother said. She shrugged. “Why not?” And he didn’t have an answer. For a few minutes, we just sat there in the living room, the light getting low, no one in a hurry. I thought about the 329,000 women who found new jobs this spring, the preschool teacher dreams of my son, and my daughter’s imaginary dual career. They’re not competing. They’re all just trying to build a life.
What the jobs report actually tells us isn’t that men are falling behind or women are taking over. It tells us that the ground is shifting under all of us. The old scripts don’t fit every family anymore. Some dads stay home. Some moms are the primary earners. Some kids grow up to do jobs that didn’t exist when they were born.
The question isn’t “who gets the jobs.” The question is whether we’re raising kids who see work as a set of possibilities rather than a set of predetermined lanes.
I don’t have an easy answer. My husband and I are still figuring it out as we go. We still fall into old habits, and sometimes the stereotypes win a day. But we’re trying. That morning at school pickup, my friend put her phone away and watched her son climb a tree. “I just want him to be happy,” she said. That’s the truth for most of us.
Maybe that’s the whole lesson. The jobs will keep changing. The percentages will keep shifting. Our job as the adults is to make sure our children aren’t afraid of change—and that we don’t teach them to fear each other over it. That’s not a policy platform. It’s an everyday practice. One pickup line conversation, one chore rotation, one sideways glance at a boy who wants to teach preschool at a time.
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