Juggling careers and kids was already a struggle for millions of women in America. Then the pandemic hit. Ellen McCarthy reports on why working moms are leaving the labor force in droves – and what that could mean for the future of our country.

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When they met as students in Chicago, Vondetta Taylor and Jennifer Anderson were all aspiration. Taylor was training to be a chef. Anderson was working toward a career in broadcasting. And they both dreamed of starting their own families one day.

Careers and kids didn’t seem like too much to hope for or too much to handle back then. Growing up in the 1980s and ’90s, Taylor and Anderson were part of a generation of young women raised with the expectation that they could have it all, and that they should have it all.

But when the pandemic hit and their kids were sent home from school, their circumstances soured. And as Ellen McCarthy and Amy Joyce reported, the two friends became part of a legion of women who had no choice but to leave the labor force.

“I had made a decision that I was no longer going to beat myself up about what type of interaction that I needed to have with my son, which would cause whatever type of performance for my job,” Taylor said. “I chose my son over my job.”

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Working moms are not okay