Original Coverage & Source Attribution: time.com
Remote work seems to offer a solution. Parents can put dinner in the oven between meetings so that food is ready before kids’ hangry tantrums arrive. A youngster with a virus can sleep through it while Dad takes calls over Zoom, so what would have been a sick day turns into a mostly-productive day. The time-bind that made it feel impossible to show up for one’s kids and for one’s career can seem less, well, binding.
But, weirdly, the rise of remote work hasn’t necessarily improved parents’ mental health, and may have even harmed it. In research published in Science, we considered the mental distress of over half a million Americans, measured by taking medication for depression or anxiety, seeing a mental health professional, and other factors. We compared people in jobs that could be done from home, like software engineers and customer service representatives, to those whose jobs necessitate in-person work, like mechanical engineers and cashiers.
