What are the end points of our disciplines and when, if ever, could we be done? Seth Rudy and Rachael Scarborough King argue these are questions worth asking. Recent discourse has taken a pessimistic view of academic ends, from hand-wringing over the “end of the English major” to warnings that developing artificial intelligence programs will end the world if climate change doesn’t end it first.
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It’s been a tough 11 months for mothers. For about a millisecond after the onset of the pandemic, I hoped that remote work would cause fathers to finally see all of the myriad household tasks mothers do every day and begin doing their fair share. It didn’t happen. Instead of curing the fairness gap, we got the Great COVID Cop-out.
Nearly 80% of mothers have been primarily responsible for doing the housework since March, while 66% are chiefly responsible for the child care among partnered parents. When you look at home schooling, parents’ contributions are even more skewed. Three-quarters of mothers reported spending more time on it; only one-third of dads do. (All numbers are from a new study by sociologists Allison Dunatchik, Kathleen Gerson, Jennifer Glass, Jerry A. Jacobs and Haley Stritzel in Gender & Society,