How COVID-19 has changed the domestic paradigm

The feminist quest has always been for more paternal involvement. Ironically, a global catastrophe has provided it.

For many, the benefits of working from home far outweigh any increase in the hours of work. Picture: Istock

How fortunate are we Australians? And don’t we know it.

Instead of the doom and gloom we expected from the time of COVID, a recent survey has shown that the pandemic caused a positive evaluation of our priorities. More than 80 per cent have a positive outlook.

The time of pandemic has pointed to the future, especially the future of the way we will work. It has allowed many families to recalibrate the work-life balance that until now has eluded us.

Previously, it was seen solely through the narrow prism of full-time work and institutional child care. But the push for the dual-income family with full-time working mother eluded the ideological script writers; instead, Australian women preferred working part-time — more than any other country in the OECD. This suits women with children, and childcare is expensive. But among feminist groups and professional associations, still focused on the work side of the balance, the pandemic was an opportunity to push for even more childcare and, indeed, a continuation of free institutional care, good for single parents and poorer families.

However, the main reason it won’t be universal is not just the budget-breaking expense but the recalibration of family life in intact families caused by the work-from-home phenomenon.

Take the example of Kate and Josh, a young Sydney couple with two children. Kate is a public servant, Josh an industrial designer. Until the pandemic their work routine dictated family life. She had gradually transitioned to full-time work as the children went to school, and he was working full time, commuting to an inner-Sydney office. Commuting added to their long working day, with the children at after-school care.

However, working from home has completely changed their lives. They spend more time with one another and their children. But what is most interesting, and instructive for the future, is that their productivity has not fallen. In fact, it has increased.

Josh’s role as a technical designer may seem more difficult to translate to WFH, but the difficulties have been overcome by technology that was not available five years ago. “If this had happened even two years ago it might have been difficult. Now it is easy.” He emphasises that this is not just his view. His colleagues all feel the same. Many of them have been lobbying for working from home for years, but oversight within the office by various managers was deemed too important.

However, now staff members have proved those demands can be met. Josh has not been in his office for months. When he does go, he says, it is usually just to check something. However, working from home allows much more concentration, for even longer periods, hence higher productivity.

“You don’t realise how much time you spend at the office simply chatting!” he says.

For Josh and his colleagues, the hardest part of WFH in the pandemic was not being able to go to China to oversee production. But to general astonishment, one imaginative colleague set up his garage to experiment with bits of equipment. What the ACTU would make of this type of innovation is uncertain. Unions are justified in examining the challenges of WFH conditions, but applying conditions to an essentially flexible WFH scenario is questionable. For example, Josh’s company has provided a whole range of technical support, but not all industries offer this. Security is another issue. However, the notion of fixed hours has gone out the window with WFH.

For Josh and Kate, the benefits far outweigh any increase in the hours of work. Recently, after taking the children to school, Josh and Kate went for a swim before putting in several hours in the little sun room-office. Josh later took a meeting sitting in his car while Kate was doing her regular mothers’ reading group. He has rearranged his life so that work and family are more seamlessly integrated, and this full-time working father can be much more involved with his family.

The feminist quest has always been for more paternal involvement, and the breakdown of the classic male-female domestic paradigm. The ideologues saw more women working and more institutional childcare as the way to do this. But this was an imposition of something that average mums and dads chafed against.

For mums, more involvement in the “outside” workforce did not mean less at home — if anything it meant more running around.

However, ironically, working from home has, to some extent, succeeded in the breakdown of that paradigm in many families — and they are happier for it.