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In normal times,Watch Live TV parenting can be simultaneously rewarding and exhausting.

Moments of joy are followed by a meltdown, then tears, a hug, and snacks, which leads to quiet time and then play — intellectual, physical, or imaginary — when you marvel at your child, until it's dinner time and they refuse to eat anything on the table and become grouchy during bedtime until finally drifting off to sleep, but not before leaving their room to look for chapstick, use the bathroom, check on the dog, and sneak in one last hug.

On good days, you go to bed feeling like a decent parent capable of mistakes but whose children are generally thriving.

During the coronavirus pandemic, however, the typical ups and downs of childrearing are just the beginning. For parents working at home, without access to school or childcare, daily life is akin to household whiplash: Parents scramble to feed, entertain, discipline, and teach children while simultaneously meeting deadlines, sitting in Zoom calls, and trying their damndest to be productive. Sometimes the work happens at 6am or midnight. If you're unlucky, sometimes the parenting happens at those exact times.

If the widely shared social media posts and essays are any indication, people are grappling with this new reality as best they can, looking for inspiration — and chances to commiserate. Most parents are putting on a brave face because there appears to be no other option: To save lives, we must keep schools and daycare facilities shut down.

There is another solution but it's one parents don't seem to be talking about collectively: Pressing elected officials to provide paid leave for every worker who's at home caring for a child who otherwise would be with a paid caregiver, at daycare, or in school.

Legislation passed last month gave that benefit to workers at companies with fewer than 500 employees, which left out millions of parents. Congress is considering expanding it to cover the majority of workers, according to advocates, and parents should pressure their representatives to ensure it's in the next stimulus bill. The benefit would provide parents the reprieve they desperately want and need, because the bargain we've struck thus far isn't sustainable.

At the precise moment when parents are trying to remain valuable at work, in anticipation of pay cuts, furloughs, and layoffs, their children need a calming, engaged presence throughout the day. This would theoretically be manageable if it lasted just a few weeks. But in cities like San Francisco, New York, and Seattle, which have been shut down for a month and where school won’t reopen until the fall, parents expect at least a few grueling months of physical, mental, and emotional labor. Every day they must choose, multiple times, between their livelihood and their children.

Parents, who must also somehow cope with their own pandemic-related anxiety and stress, are already verging on burnout. The effects will be especially intense for single parents, families barely making ends meet, and women, who still perform more childcare and household tasks than men.

The legislationpassed recently providing up to 12 weeks of paid leave for childcare is an imperfect benefit. It requires a 10-day waiting period, allows small businesses and employers of health care providers and emergency responders to opt-out, and only covers two-thirds of a worker’s pay. But expanding this option to all workers is a far better alternative than requiring parents to report to work without breaks while taking care of children for months on end.

Some companies have been flexible with their employees, expressing empathy and encouraging parents to take vacation time if they need it. Microsoft announced last week that it would provide 12 weeks of paid leave for childcare during the pandemic, but we should not pin our hopes on the magnanimity of companies when parents can push the government for a solution that helps everyone, not just the relative few. Universal paid leave to care for children who cannot attend school or cannot be with a childcare provider is essential.

But parents shouldn’t stop there. They should also demand a billion-dollar bailout of the childcare sector and its workers; the crisis is equally terrible for them and business owners. In mid-March, the National Association for the Education of Young Children surveyed more than 6,000 childcare providers and found that 30 percent of them could not survive a closure longer than two weeks without financial support from the government. Seventeen percent cannot survive a closure of any length without aid. Without providers to care for children, there is no chance the economy will recover.

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Faced with the possibility of laying off workers or permanently closing, providers are holding a child's spot by continuing to collect payments from parents, some of whom are angry and resent forking over a lot of cash for services they're not receiving. While there are liberal proposals that offer solutions to this problem, so far the government has improbably made parents, who are grappling with their own financial instability, the safety net for childcare providers. This pits the two groups, whose fates are closely intertwined, against each other.

This isn't new, says Ai-jen Poo, co-founder and executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) and director of the advocacy coalition Caring Across Generations.

Parents and childcare providers have long had a complex relationship. The government has chronically under-invested in childcare, doing little to make it affordable for families and well-paid for workers. An analysis published this year by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, found the government spends $34 billion on early care and education annually. Parents actually outspend the government, putting $42 billion into childcare and education.

So parents bear the brunt of government inaction and pay exorbitant amounts for high-quality care while workers typically make a meager living performing a job that's critical to our economy. Parents and childcare providers blame each other when the government has failed both groups.

"What this has done has exacerbated a system that was piecemeal at best and fundamentally broken in my perspective," says Poo. The pandemic is "compounding the incredible isolation and impossible set of choices that families were given."

Poo believes this crisis calls for a bailout of working families with a care fund. The government would give workers a cash stipend or payment to help them secure childcare once the economy reopens.

Julie Kashen, director of women's economic justice at The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, and senior policy advisor at the NDWA, recently laid out a five-point plan for Congress, which she says is considering expanding the paid leave benefit. Her plan includes a $100 billion bailout for families, childcare workers, and the sector at large. This funding would put money in the pockets of parents and childcare workers while stabilizing preschools and childcare programs. Ideally, childcare businesses could endure the rest of the pandemic shutdown without having to collect fees from parents.

After all, if the government thinks it worthwhile to rescue the airline industry to the tune of $25 billion, why shouldn’t another critical part of our nation’s infrastructure get the same, if not better, treatment? There is a political appetite on the left for such a solution. Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Tina Smith, and Tim Kaine, among others, have supported at least a $50 billion childcare bailout.

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Making this a reality requires a culture shift. We need to reflect on and reject the entrenched sexism and racism that’s made it possible to define professional childcare work as little more than household help. We must admit that asking parents to independently solve their childcare problems is not fair, practical, or conducive to strengthening the economy. We must embrace paid leave for childcare as a benefit that makes workers ultimately more productive instead of viewing it as a liability.

Both Kashen and Poo say it's up to parents to demand their elected officials, particularly Congressional Republicans who've blocked previous efforts to increase access to childcare, act quickly. Of course, parents are home right now trying to manage this crisis on very personal terms and are likely exhausted by the prospect of adding one more item to their to-do list.

Perhaps they might be inspired by the idea that this moment in our history will define our values for a generation. Finally, parents have a real opportunity to help build something better for the future so their children don’t inherit the same broken system.