The Hidden Cost of Caregiving During the Pandemic

It has been a little over a year since the COVID-19 pandemic began. We all seemed so certain that life would go back to normal soon after a temporary shutdown. Everything transitioned online – work, education, social connection, exercise, and various every day in-person activities. However, some activities could not be handled online, such as childcare or care for homebound older adults. It soon became clear that this pandemic was not temporary at all. While the world was in a public health crisis, so were caregivers of children and older adults, as their overlapping responsibilities during the typical workday grew exponentially. The impact of caregiving, most often taken on by women, has led to what some are referring to as one of the biggest crises in the labor force with a record number of women leaving the workforce during the pandemic and in higher percentages than men (Heggeness et al., 2020). It has also impacted many working students who had to take on juggling school, online work, and childcare or other caregiving. While there is emerging hope for a new normal as vaccines continue to be disseminated, we have yet to learn the full impact of this pandemic on faculty and student caregivers.

We have witnessed students balancing childcare and online learning and the challenges involved: a student attending class while walking outside the home to ensure a quieter place to concentrate; an online synchronous presentation where a student was unable to mute out the screaming in the background of family and children. There are many other such stories of students navigating the unexpected loss of childcare or other formal caregiving with their social work classes. There are likely many other stories where students have had to drop out of school or had their grades slip because of competing demands with caregiving. Faculty have found ways to extend grace and support to these students or to help them over the finish line of courses. However, this pandemic has highlighted multiple structural inequities – including, within social work education. For single or low-income families seeking social work careers, the requirement to assume unpaid social work internships along with work and other adult responsibilities (such as parenting) is antiquated. This requirement creates systemic barriers that limit opportunities to enroll and complete a social work program, and if not impacting completion, it surely impacts the time required for high quality learning. For students that do not work and do not have the resources, these requirements can lead to high levels of student debt (Salsberg et al., 2020). Recent trends suggest that this debt impacts students of color more heavily than white students (Salsberg et al., 2020).

Faculty, adjuncts, and doctoral students who were also teaching also pivoted online nearly a year ago, working from home in varied contexts. Some instructors were able to use this time to be more productive in their writing and research or spend an inordinate amount of time training to become a high-tech online instructor. Others struggled to find hours in the day due to physical illness, loss, anxiety and mental health issues, and the balancing of caregiving responsibilities. Some instructors were sandwich caregivers, caring for both children and their aging, homebound parents in a time of high concern with the threat of COVID-19 for older adults. Some lived in multigenerational households, where a quiet workspace was impossible to find. The pandemic was undoubtedly hard for all of us in different ways; however, the impact of caregiving responsibilities on faculty productivity and publishing has been well-documented for mothers of young children (Bell & Fong, 2021; Flaherty, 2020; Kibbe, 2020). There are numerous stories from academic parents of young children experiencing disruptions in their teaching as they balanced their children’s needs and requests during online class sessions and meetings. These needs have encompassed helping feed, toilet or soothe young children during live classes, having older children practice trombone during their band class or fight with siblings in the background, among many other challenges. In addition, caregivers of children with a disability or a special health care need experienced additional stress and concern for their child’s health and were left with little to no educational supports that are typically provided in person through the school system. During this time of crisis when we were all concerned with our own safety and political turmoil, it is likely that we just did not have the mental space or time to imagine what may be happening behind the screens of our colleagues and peers. Now that there is a glimmer of hope for a new normal, how we pick up the pieces and move forward is critical. This is a key moment where social work has something unique and important to offer given our commitment to social justice, human rights, anti-oppressive practice, intersectionality and unique understanding of families and systems.

While recent academic and position papers have been written on the impact of the pandemic on academic caregivers and mothers (Gewin, 2020, for example), there is a need to bring this conversation into social work. The struggle of our peers must be documented, honored and accounted for, especially when it comes to tenure and promotion policies. If we want to ensure equity and retention for our highly esteemed faculty, policies must be examined to ensure that future moments of crisis are responsive to the variety of needs families have. As a field and social work academy, we also have an opportunity to build structural policies that can not only help facilitate a culture of support and care but also redefine what is considered to be excellence in teaching and research in an effort to create an academic environment that is more sustainable and humane.

To address this need, Drs. Mogro-Wilson and Negi will be writing an invited paper on the reflections and perspectives of social work academic mothers of young children during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper will draw on a diverse and inclusive sample of social work faculty caregivers to better understand the experience of the pandemic and related needs for support moving forward to achieve necessary structural change in the academy. This paper will help us better understand the ways in which we can make academic settings more equitable and sustainable for mothers of young children. It will also help us to better understand and honor the important work they were able to do during the pandemic, as well as understand the work that they were unable to do.

Asian American hate crimes in the U.S.

Finally, I would like to be unequivocal about condemning the recent and historical racism and crimes against Asian Americans, and all BIPOC. At JSWE we recognize the critical importance of disseminating research that is critical of structures of white supremacy within our own profession and academia. Recently, the existing published literature in JSWE was examined for articles on teaching about the experiences of Asian Americans in the U.S. context. This search yielded few, if any, manuscripts. As Editor-in-Chief, I am committed to changing this and invite submissions from authors with expertise, experience and guidance in Asian American issues to help inform social work education and practice. If you have a specific idea or proposal, please contact the Editor-in-Chief.

Call for JSWE reviewers

Our call for JSWE reviewers is open and ongoing. The JSWE Editorial Advisory Board is interested in scholars with at least a beginning level of publication and a solid background in critical race theory and antiracism, qualitative or quantitative methodology, systematic reviews, advanced statistical analysis and conceptual/theoretical papers. Our new policy, beginning September 2020, is that reviewers do not have to be members of the Council on Social Work Education. We follow the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPES), so all current and prospective reviewers should be familiar with these guidelines. If you would like to apply to be a reviewer for JSWE for our next round of reviews by the JSWE Editorial Advisory Board, please submit your CV and a cover letter to [email protected].

Introduction to the issue

This issue of JSWE begins with an article by Lewis and Wu, titled, “Depression and Disability Among Combat Veterans’ Transition to an Historically Black University,” which reports on a study of 45 veterans enrolled in a HBCU and the impact of prior experiences in the military on their transition.

The next six articles report on the findings from research that elicited views from social work faculty, practitioners, and program directors in surveys and qualitative studies. In “Understanding and Assessing Critical Thinking: A National Survey of Social Work Educators’ Perceptions,” Hall, Miller, and Tice describe the responses of 184 social work educators’ understanding and assessment of student critical thinking. Harold, Prock, and Groden then report on the results of a quality study of faculty members’ personal versus academic identities in “Academic and Personal Identity: Connection vs. Separation.” Next, Hageman, Sherraden, Birkenmaier, and Loke describe the results of a qualitative study with faculty on the current coverage and barriers to the integration of financial and economic content (FEC) in social work education in “Economic and Financial Well-Being in the Social Work Curriculum: Faculty Perspectives.” In “Social Work Practitioners’ Educational Needs in Developing Spiritual Competency in End-of-Life Care and Grief,” Pomeroy, Hai, and Cole report on a survey of social work practitioners’ educational needs for developing spiritual/religious competencies with end-of-life care and grief. The findings of this study dovetail nicely with findings from Moffatt, Oxhandler, and Ellor in “Religion and Spirituality in Graduate Social Work Education: A National Survey.” This article describes the results of a survey of program directors concerning the inclusion of religion and spirituality (RS) content in their curricula. Minnick also conducted a survey of MSW program leaders to assess substance use education in existing curricula in “Examining Substance Use Education in Social Work: A Survey of MSW Program Leaders.”

The next two articles focus on social work education and the criminal justice system. Power and Sistare introduce a teaching approach that prepares and then supports student engagement in a writing correspondence program with individuals who are incarcerated in “Writing in Jail: A Community-Engaged, Social Work Course Model.” Next, in “Forensic Social Work: Why Social Work Education Should Change,” Kheibari, Walker, Clark, Victor, and Monahan describe the role of social workers in capital defense cases and offer recommendations for social work curricula to better prepare students to work on capital mitigation practice.

Wagaman, Alessi, Goffnett, Watts, Iacono, Thomas, Paceley, and Craig report on a qualitative study of LGBTQ+ social work students who engaged in efforts to increase LGBTQ+ student and curricular inclusion and reduce programmatic inadequacies within their schools in “Interrupting Hetero- and Cisnormativity in Social Work Programs: LGBTQ+ Student Strategies for Increasing Inclusion.” In “Water Into Wine: Using Social Policy Courses to Make MSW Students Interested in Politics,” Meehan reports on the results of a survey from the Michigan Law & Social Work Study to elucidate the ways in which to increase student motivation to run for political office.

The next two articles focus on technology in social work education. Jewell, Anthony, and Murphy report on the results of a validation study of a new scale to assess technology effectiveness and social connectedness in “Utilizing Technology in Social Work Education: Development of the Technology Effectiveness and Social Connectedness Scale.” Next, Wilkerson, Wolfe-Taylor, and Kinney describe the outcomes of their mixed methods study assessing an introductory e-Social Work (e-SW) practice course in, “Adopting e-Social Work Practice: Pedagogical Strategies for Student Decision Making to Address Technology Uncertainty.” This issue wraps up with two notes. In a teaching note titled, “Understanding the Impact of Childhood Aversity on Social Work Students,” Copeland, Howard, and Razuri offer classroom activities that enable students to increase awareness of their prior experiences on social work practice. Ashford and Lateef, in a field note, describe an initiative for better addressing the needs of serious and violent juvenile offenders in “Serving Miller Youth: An Interprofessional Initiative for Educating Law and Social Work Students.”