This story has been updated.
In addition to all the other damage it has done, the coronavirus pandemic has been catastrophic for working mothers.
When much of the country first locked down this spring in an effort to slow the spread of the virus, women’s unemployment rose to the highest rate ever recorded. That didn’t happen simply because women are overrepresented in industries most imperiled by the virus, such as personal care, hospitality, retail and education, though they are. Even in those fields, women were laid off at higher rates than the men who work alongside them.
And as the pandemic continued to rage, those losses became more permanent and profound. An analysis by The Post’s Heather Long, Andrew Van Dam, Alyssa Fowers and Leslie Shapiro found that mothers — though working at lower rates than fathers before the shutdowns — experienced steeper job losses than fathers. As child care has dried up or come to be seen as unsafe, and as school stays largely virtual across much of the country, it’s mothers, not fathers, who are dropping out of the workforce to tend to their youngest children and oversee the education of older ones.
For a lot of families, that decision is sensible, however unfortunate. Though the number of women living in heterosexual households who earn as much or more than their male partners has risen, in 69 percent of those families, the man makes more. Gender equity may take a back seat when a family is just trying to stay afloat. But what families hope may be short-term decisions could well have long-term consequences, whether they’re measured in economywide permanent losses for women in the workforce or personal pain.
Enter Emhoff, who not only took a leave of absence from his high-powered job at law and lobbying firm DLA Piper to support Harris on the campaign trail, but seems completely, sincerely delighted to be part of his wife’s success. A campaign spokesperson on Tuesday told Bloomberg Law that Emhoff plans to leave DLA Piper by Inauguration Day. Such a move would make Emhoff more available to the incoming Biden-Harris administration. The decision allows both the firm and Harris to avoid the perception that DLA Piper was cashing in on its connection to the vice president.
Yes, there’s a difference between stepping back from your job due to a deadly pandemic and taking a break because your spouse is chasing history. It also helps that Emhoff and Harris are wealthy, and that the promotion from U.S. senator to vice president comes with a substantial raise.
Yet it has nonetheless been a quiet, consistent delight to see Emhoff so seamlessly inhabit the role of supportive political spouse. Whether he’s pulling Harris in for a long embrace after her debate with Vice President Pence or making space for her on a crowded stage after her victory speech so she can introduce her grandnieces to President-elect Joe Biden, Emhoff never calls attention to the nearly unprecedented nature of what he’s doing.
Instead, he treats it as natural that he would be there in this way for his wife. As he put it in a campaign appearance earlier this year, “I’m doing what I always do: supporting Kamala, being there for her, loving her and giving her whatever support she needs.” That’s a powerful message at a moment when, for some families, it might not seem so automatic to put the woman’s hopes and dreams first.
The example Emhoff sets next might be even more important. After all, for all the talk on the campaign trail about what John Zaccaro and Bill Clinton would do if Geraldine Ferraro or Hillary Clinton were elected vice president or president, neither man ever actually became second or first husband. Emhoff will have to invent his role, whether that means dad-dancing with Ellen DeGeneres, doing pro bono legal work or both.
Whatever he chooses, Emhoff will be a living illustration for men that being a breadwinner and professional alpha male isn’t the only role available to them — nor is it necessarily the most emotionally sustaining. Emhoff’s enthusiastic embrace of his new position and a creative approach to it could signal to other men that there are other ways to live and other goals to pursue. And his experience could remind them that what so many women already know: that there is tremendous joy to be had in helping someone you love succeed at the highest level.
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