How the pandemic has upended the lives of working parents

“ON SOME DAYS everything gets totally out of hand,” sighs Katharina Boesche, a German self-employed lawyer and mother of three. Fourteen months of closures and semi-closures of her daughters’ schools have taken a toll. She mostly works late at night or between 4am and 8am—when the house is quiet. The girls have coped with online learning, she says, but the seven-year-old needs a lot of supervision. Their school, like most in Germany, is only welcoming them back part-time. Mrs Boesche is stressed and exhausted.

Since the start of the pandemic countries have on average closed schools for 29 weeks, 17 of them full-time, according to UNESCO, the UN’s cultural agency. Most have begun to open their doors once again. But life is far from normal. In Europe and North America only four in ten children live in a country where schools are open full-time and in person. Most students are still struggling with some degree of virtual learning—as are those taking care of them.