This lockdown artificially created a fusion between the work and family life of men and women, who had to come to terms with their relative contribution to childcare and household chores. 58/59 1 Introductionįrantically trying to limit the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments worldwide imposed severe lockdown policies that suddenly changed the daily lives and routines of millions of people. This is the moment for me to go into action.’’ Italo Calvino, ‘‘La Poubelle Agree’’ in The Road to San Giovanni, pp. Now the plates are all caged up in their little carriage, round faces astonished to find themselves standing upright, curved backs waiting for the storm about to break over them down there at the bottom of the tunnel where they will be sent off in exile until the cycle of cloudbursts, waterspouts and steam jet is over. But I hang back on the sidelines, waiting for an opportunity to make myself useful, to redeem myself.
They’ve been conspiring together to demoralize me, I know they think that if they go on telling me I’m hopeless they’ll convince me there’s an element of truth to the story. At least that’s what I’ve been told my life long by parents, friends -male and female- superiors, underlings and even my daughter these days. ‘‘Kitchen life is based on a musical rhythm, on a concatenation of movements, like dance steps, and when I speak of rapid gestures, it’s a female hand I think of, not my own clumsy sluggish movements, that’s for sure, always getting in the way of everybody else’s work. While the long-run consequences of the COVID-19 lockdown on family life cannot be assessed at this stage, we point toward the likely opportunities and challenges. Our results highlight tightened constraints budging up against stable and gendered patterns of intra-household cooperation norms. Though men have taken an increased share of childcare and grocery shopping duties, reallocations are not nearly as stark as disruptions to work patterns might suggest, and families having to reallocate duties report greater tensions. A high percentage report disruptions in the patterns of family life, manifesting in new work patterns, chore allocations, and household tensions. We analyze how such changes contributed to patterns of activity within the household using a novel survey of Italian, British, and American families in lockdown. The lockdown imposed following the COVID-19 pandemic of spring 2020 dramatically changed the daily lives and routines of millions of people worldwide. 4Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics, University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom.
2Department of Economics, University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom.1Department of Economics, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.Pietro Biroli 1 Steven Bosworth 2* Marina Della Giusta 2 Amalia Di Girolamo 3 Sylvia Jaworska 4 Jeremy Vollen 1
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