The key, unspoken problem is that in primarily knowledge-based economies like ours, childcare is incompatible with most forms of paid work. Children aren't economically useful for a long time, and are disruptive in professional work environments. https://twitter.com/melindagates/status/1358854151082450945

Women who do domestic or artisanal work in the home can strap a young baby to their backs, or give older children simple tasks to do. Men who do farming or trades can use teenagers as apprentices. Even an untrained 12 year old can hold things, carry messages etc - be of some use

But children are worse than useless in an office. So we came up with schools, partly to train children to work in knowledge economies, and partly to keep them out of the way during the working day.

To be clear: I think schools should reopen as soon as possible, because it's terrible to keep children isolated during lockdown. But I don't buy the "essential to socialisation" claim - as if being in the same building as hundreds of other kids of exactly the same age is natural!

What's much more typical historically is for children to be treated like little adults from a young age, to spend a lot of time with their parents and other family members, and to contribute to the household economy as soon as they're able to.

But this isn't workable for most parents in the modern West. You need to be separate from your children to do your job, and you often need two full-time incomes in order to maintain a good standard of living, so you can't afford to have one parent specialise in childrearing

Hence you end up with women doing the double shift. Or worse, at the moment, trying to do a full-time professional job from home AND homeschool AND do other domestic work, which is impossible. But this 'unpaid labour' analysis doesn't quite get it.

Childcare and domestic work is just as important and honourable a form of labour as any other. But it's 'unpaid' (read: 'useless') in an economy that is orientated away from the home and doesn't attach value to childhood wellbeing. Schools and nurseries provide economy of scale.

This isn't an easy problem to solve, because you just can't strap a baby to your back and set off to do your professional job. It doesn't work. But I don't accept the dichotomy between paid work that should be celebrated, versus unpaid work that should be avoided at all costs.