The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated and brought into focus the ongoing disproportionate burden on mothers when it comes to household logistics, child care and financial inequity. It also revealed just how deeply embedded and structurally reinforced that burden is.

When labour that had previously been a shared social responsibility shifted into individual households, the load fell mainly to women. But perhaps even more important is that the true impact of this burden was invisible — even to women themselves.

Data over three years, from 2020 to 2023 — the height of the pandemic — laid bare the reality of a poorly scaffolded social structure. What had been seen as informal or “natural” for women to take on was, in fact, an uneven distribution of labour and responsibility.

That reality has clear economic effects. Canadian women earn approximately 69 per cent of the average salary of men. Mothers’ salaries also decrease by 49 per cent in the year after a child is born and 34 per cent 10 years later, while fathers’ salaries are largely unaffected.

This disparity — often referred to as the motherhood gap or child penalty — increases over time, crosses generations and is rooted in how societies value and distribute care work.

Studying families during COVID-19

Even before the pandemic, women were often responsible for the majority of housework and child care.

This was the status quo when COVID-19 arrived, as social isolation regulations increased family mental-health concerns while simultaneously decreasing social support.

Between January 2021 and August 2023, qualitative data was collected through semi-structured interviews and focus groups that included 113 people — social work students and professionals from King’s University College at Western University’s School of Social Work and the local school board — to examine the impact of COVID-19 on families who participated in the first three years of our Support and Aid to Families Electronically (SAFE) program.

Participants were asked how families were impacted during COVID-19 and the associated restrictions. We did not expect the disproportionate cost of these increased household responsibilities to be invisible.

Our social systems position women, particularly mothers, as the primary load-bearing point, shouldering a concentrated burden within families. When the already inadequate scaffolding of social structures is removed, as it was during COVID-19, the pressure is too concentrated. Policies, social expectations and workplace culture reinforce these imbalances.

Inequality hiding in plain sight

There were stories of mothers juggling working from home with children’s daily needs, balancing in-person work without child care and facing unemployment and financial peril. After each story, and among other questions, we asked if they thought any of this was related to their gender.

Overwhelmingly, the women said, “No.”

The unequal burden of the COVID-19 pandemic on women was evident in the new roles they were required to undertake, the stress associated with these roles and the psychological and emotional impact of these increased expectations.

However, the concentrated weight of this load was not recognized by those bearing it.

The participants in our study did not identify the stories they shared — of job loss, of being an in-home caregiver (daycare provider, food preparer, entertainer, social support) or of providing mental-health case management and support when everything, including in-school learning, closed — as being connected to the fact that they are women.

The responses revealed how deeply gendered expectations are internalized, framed as circumstance or coincidence rather than inequality.

For example, some of the women said they took on more of the household burden simply because they happened to be the ones who were home during the day, while others said they took on more because they were the one working outside of the home during the day. One participant said:

“Whoever was at home dealing with [our] three children, [they’re] not really doing any of the household stuff. And that just happened to be my husband who was always home. [I would] come home [after having] worked, I now deal with kids and dinner, and then I’m also doing all of the household things. This was burdensome, but I don’t really think it was because I [am a woman].”

Even when the cost of this burden was clear, the fact that it was gendered remained hidden. Another said:

“I don’t think I closed down the business because of being a woman. It was just a lot to handle. It was just draining on a day-to-day.”

It was understood that if women are unable to bear the load, foundational social structures could fracture, as one mother observed:

“My mental health had the greatest impact on the mental health and emotional regulation of the entire household.”

The cost of ignoring the burden

There are profound positives to motherhood, and conceding the need for equity and balance does not contradict them. Rather, acknowledging the disproportionate responsibilities related to household well-being, child care, education and financial equity validates women’s struggle to keep up. It also challenges internalized dominant messages for all of us.

The mental health and educational impact of COVID-19 on children, youth and families will be longstanding. The impact on parents, particularly mothers, will be ongoing.

Only once we truly acknowledge this disproportionate burden can we discuss how these expectations fail everyone, particularly during times of structural instability.

Until caregiving and emotional labour are recognized as shared social responsibilities, rather than private obligations borne disproportionately by women, crises like COVID-19 will continue to deepen existing inequalities.

Jane E. Sanders received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant number 430-2021-00162.

When parents separate, decisions about children are often among the most contested aspects of the legal process. In cases involving allegations of intimate partner violence (IPV), judges are often tasked with resolving disputes of extraordinary complexity as they try to balance children’s best interests and safety with parents’ rights to remain involved in their kids’ lives.

In these types of cases, rulings about access to the children are about more than determining parenting schedules. Decisions shape whether children are protected and if abuse continues through the legal system itself.

Bill C-223, the Keeping Children Safe Act, is Parliament’s attempt to address how Canadian courts navigate these tensions. Introduced in September 2025 by Liberal MP Lisa Hepfner, the bill proposes changes to the Divorce Act aimed at strengthening how courts address family violence during divorce and custody proceedings.

Misused parental alienation claims

Research shows that accusations of parental alienation are sometimes used to undermine or silence parents who report abuse or coercive control. This dynamic disproportionately affects mothers.

IPV survivor support groups and advocates have long raised concerns about the weaponization of parental alienation claims against mothers in cases involving IPV — especially against those who raise concerns about their children’s contact with an abusive parent.

This dynamic often follows a familiar pattern — a mother experiencing IPV may seek to limit parenting time due to child safety concerns. In response, the other parent may allege parental alienation.

When courts accept these allegations, the focus shifts away from abuse and toward the primary caregiver’s behaviour, which can then be interpreted as manipulation.

In some cases, this has led to expanded or even court-ordered contact, including reunification interventions, despite children’s expressed fears or resistance to contact with the other parent.

Requiring evidence, facts

Bill C-223 aims to address this by directing courts to rely on evidence-based understandings of coercive control, trauma and abuse dynamics rather than on the assumption that violence stops when partners separate or that children’s resistance to contact with one parent is always the result of influence from the other.

Organizations like the National Association of Women and the Law and Battered Women’s Support Services have argued that the bill addresses well-established research findings that in cases where alienation is alleged and IPV has happened, protective mothers are often penalized for prioritizing their children’s safety.

Limiting alienation claims, then, is not a denial that children can be harmed when one parent undermines their relationship with the other. Instead, it acts as a safeguard against post-separation abuse continuing through the legal process.

Oversimplifying complex family situations

Despite support for the bill among advocacy groups, some legal scholars and family justice researchers have raised concerns about how it may limit judges’ ability to respond effectively. This is particularly the case in situations where one parent has genuinely undermined a child’s relationship with the other parent, even in the absence of IPV.

Critics point out that when children resist contact with one parent, it’s often due to a mix of emotional, relational and environmental factors, including loyalty conflicts, emotional pressures or prolonged exposure to parental conflict or abuse — even if that abuse wasn’t directed at them.

It is precisely because similar dynamics can arise in both abusive and non-abusive situations that critics argue judges require broad discretion to examine multiple possible explanations for a child’s resistance, including — in some cases — deliberate interference by a parent.

This suggests that limiting reliance on alienation-style evidence could restrict how courts evaluate such complexity, raising concerns about how effectively high-conflict parenting disputes can be resolved.

Critics of the bill aren’t defending or overlooking the historic misuse or weaponization of alienation claims. Instead, they question whether the bill risks replacing one flawed framework with another — one that may be poorly suited to ambiguous or less typical cases.

Balancing protection and children’s voices

At the centre of debates over Bill C-223 is a broader question about what effective child protection should look like in family law.

On one hand, the bill strengthens children’s voices and moves away from reducing their views as simply a product of parental influence.

At the same time, there is value in maintaining judicial flexibility. Even though clearer legislation may reduce the misuse of claims like parental alienation, there is still risk when limiting the range of options available to judges faced with complex situations.

Bill C-223 certainly reflects a positive shift in Canadian law towards trauma- and violence-informed approaches. It’s a clear effort to align legal frameworks with the research on abuse, coercive control and child well-being

But whether the bill ultimately achieves its intended goal will depend not only on its final wording, but also how courts interpret and apply its principles in practice.

As debates over Bill C-223 continue, the question is not whether reform is needed, but how to develop legal frameworks that protect children from harm while also preserving the flexibility that is needed to respond to complex, highly individualized cases.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Tucked into the Ontario Ministry of Education’s newly introduced Putting Student Achievement First Act is a mandate requiring teachers to use ministry-approved learning resources in classrooms.

Providing learning resources sounds neutral and even helpful. But it raises deeper questions about teacher professional autonomy, and where the Ontario government is directing education dollars.

The most important resource in any classroom is the educator, supported by conditions needed to do the work they were professionally prepared to do.

When problems become products

In a digitized education market, learning resources increasingly arrive as “bundled systems:” assessments, textbooks, subscriptions, scripted lessons, professional development and data-tracking tools.

Researchers have long warned that “edu-business” expands when public systems are described as being in crisis, creating demand for market-based solutions.

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Read more: Tax ‘pandemic profiteering’ by tech companies to help fund public education

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30 years of literacy reform

Ontario schools have not lacked literacy initiatives. Over three decades, Ontario educators have worked through waves of reform: Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) accountability, early reading expert panels, guides to effective instruction, the Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat, as well as reforms targeting putting research into practice, multimedia literacy and serving students with special needs.

In my 44 years in education, I have seen Ontario schools cycle through one purchased literacy program after another, such as Jolly Phonics, Four Blocks and Fountas & Pinnell’s Leveled Literacy Intervention.

Ontario’s Right to Read Inquiry called for evidence-based approaches, particularly for students with disabilities. Within this wider aim, the inquiry also challenged classrooms’ reliance on programs, calling for boards and teachers to “determine on their own what programs, approaches and materials are best and how they can implement them.”

Teaching reading is complex and repeated reforms have not produced the measurable improvements policy frameworks seek to capture.

Right to Read inquiry

The Right to Read inquiry report issued 157 recommendations to improve students’ literacy learning with emphasis on curriculum, teacher professional development and early screening of foundational reading skills.

Beginning in 2023, Ontario required twice yearly screening for all children in kindergarten, Grade 1 and Grade 2.

To support this, Ontario approved commercial suppliers and in 2024–25, allocated $12.5 million for screening tools and another $12.5 million for intervention program licences.

Some resources covered by these agreements are associated with large multinational vendors such as Pearson. Policy researcher Curtis B. Riep examines how this education company is an example of the growing role of corporate “partners, contractors and enablers” in education systems increasingly shaped by market logic.

Parents may recognize marketed resources in classrooms today like scripted lessons, slide decks or worksheets or readers sold by companies like UFLI (University of Florida Literacy Institute) Foundations.

Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner has called for open contracting so the public can see what is purchased, how suppliers are chosen, what contracts cost and who is accountable.

Yet reporting about awarded suppliers on the the Ontario Education Collaborative Marketplace (OECM) — a not-for-profit sourcing organization that partners with Ontario’s education sector and the broader public sector — still gives scarce detail about where public funds are going.

Appeal of ‘the quick fix’

The appeal of the quick fix is not new. As American journalist H.L. Mencken warned more than a century ago: “There is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible and wrong.”

My own research has shown how commercial products can displace teachers’ professional judgment with externally designed systems.

Even when screening tools are efficient and well-designed, teachers often lack the time, class-size conditions and specialist support needed to respond meaningfully to the results.

Canadian political scientist Janice Gross Stein has warned that public institutions can become so focused on measurable accountability that they lose sight of the broader context. While the Right to Read inquiry identified failures in Ontario’s reading approaches, Canada still scored well above the OECD average in reading in 2022, with Ontario among the stronger-performing provinces.

Strengthening reading instruction is essential. That doesn’t mean buying commercial programs is the answer — especially when deteriorating classroom conditions are driving qualified teachers away, leaving schools increasingly reliant on unqualified supply workers.

Literacy and the opportunity gap

Canadian literacy professor Jim Cummins cautions against moving too quickly, from labelling children “at risk” to buying new programs. The “right to read,” he argues, must also include the “opportunity to read” — early immersion in language and books gives children advantages no commercial package can reproduce.

Often overlooked in the rush to purchase products is the fact that the Right to Read report also called for improving the conditions that make effective instruction possible: sustained professional learning, specialist support and adequate funding. Yet the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario shows that real per-student operating funding has fallen to its lowest level in 10 years.

Those cuts land in classrooms where nearly one in five Ontario children lives in poverty and where educators are responding to rising violence, mental-health concerns, food insecurity and housing instability.

These are the conditions under which purchased programs are being asked to do the work of a properly supported education system.

Invest in people, not just products

Durable outcomes take time and are measured in years, not tests. The broader goal is to cultivate readers whose literacy enables full civic participation.

Comparative research on high-performing education systems points to sustained investment in well-prepared teachers, professional autonomy and coherent public systems.

Ontario stands at a familiar crossroads: keep reaching for solutions that are quick to purchase and easy to measure, or do the harder work of building lasting public capacity.

Equitable conditions for learning

The Right to Read report called for a stronger system grounded in professional knowledge, sustained support and equitable learning conditions: smaller primary classes, restored specialist support, rich early language environments and teacher education grounded in deep literacy expertise.

If we invest in teachers, and in the conditions children need to learn, literacy improvement becomes what it should be: a public education system serious about building our children’s future.

Kathryn Hibbert does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Florida’s Indian River Lagoon has been an ecosystem in decline going back to 2011, when harmful algal blooms led to a severe decline in seagrass, the foundational component of shallow coastal ecosystems.

Seagrass meadows stabilize sediments, improve water clarity and provide critical habitat and forage for species ranging from invertebrates to sea turtles and manatees. Seagrass also generates a significant amount of economic activity in the state of Florida.

The loss of seagrass in the Indian River Lagoon System undermined fisheries, tourism and wildlife, ultimately leading to the starvation of more than 1,200 manatees from 2020-25, peaking in 2021-22.

Mosquito Lagoon is part of the Indian River Lagoon system that spans 28 miles (45 kilometers), running from Cape Canaveral in the south up to Ponce Inlet in the north. As in the rest of the lagoon system, years of nutrient pollution and recurring algal blooms had diminished seagrass cover to nearly zero by the early 2020s. By most accounts, Mosquito Lagoon had crossed a critical ecological tipping point.

In the fall of 2022, hurricanes Ian and Nicole struck Florida’s east coast within six weeks of one another, bringing intense rainfall, storm surges and coastal erosion. In the immediate aftermath, seagrass declined even further.

But a few months later, in the spring of 2023, seagrass began to return. Satellite imagery revealed rapid and widespread regrowth.

We are geographers who study environmental change. Our research documents this unexpected recovery and examines what it may reveal about ecosystem resilience in heavily degraded coastal systems.

One of us, Hannah Herrero, is a Volusia County native who grew up around the lagoon. She returned to her hometown at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was there that some local guides and fishermen she’d known for years suggested that our team should use satellite imagery to look at the state of collapse in the lagoon.

The study we designed as a result used satellite imagery and machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence that uses advanced algorithms to learn and predict patterns, to track seagrass dynamics in Mosquito Lagoon before, during and after the storms. This approach allowed us to observe change at a scale and frequency that is difficult to achieve using only traditional field survey methods.

Tracking seagrass from space

Monitoring seagrass coverage “the old-fashioned way” involves going into the lagoon and laying out transects, straight lines that cut through a landscape, so standard observations could be recorded. We would then have to boat or wade all along those lines to measure seagrass extent and locations and create digital maps manually to show where it is present.

As you can imagine, this is a time-intensive process that’s limited by how far you can boat or swim in a day, and by financial resources.

So we decided to use satellite imagery instead. This method is not without its own challenges – water turbidity, or cloudiness, seasonal variability and the patchy nature of vegetation that grows on the bottom of the lagoon all make it difficult to observe seagrass growth directly on the imagery.

To address this challenge, our study used imagery from NASA’s Harmonized Landsat–Sentinel program, which combines data from multiple satellites into a consistent record of photos of the same areas taken frequently over time. We analyzed imagery collected between September 2022 and January 2024, focusing on periods before and immediately after the hurricanes and throughout the subsequent recovery.

We applied a type of machine learning model called Random Forest to classify each image into seagrass and nonseagrass categories.

The machine learning algorithm is informed by training samples collected in the field, but once the model has learned the signature of seagrass, it is able to then apply the classification model to the rest of the lagoon and across time with limited human input. We can then validate this classification.

Heading into the field

First, we had to train the model using hundreds of GPS points collected in the field over multiple seasons. This step helps to ensure that satellite classifications align with on‑the‑ground conditions and are accurately interpreting the images.

Over several weeks during the summers of 2020 through 2023, our team spent many hours navigating Mosquito Lagoon in a small skiff designed for shallow depths, recording seagrass presence.

It wasn’t always easy – Florida summers are intensely hot and humid, and Mosquito Lagoon definitely lived up to its name. But we got to see a wide variety of wildlife, including manatees, dolphins, sea turtles and alligators. And occasionally, on lucky days, we even spotted a roseate spoonbill or reddish egret.

Our experience in the field highlighted why this system matters: Mosquito Lagoon is a remarkably vibrant place, teeming with wildlife. These long days on the lagoon, surrounded by its biodiversity and immersed in its unique sense of place, are what anchor the remote sensing data to on-the-ground ecological conditions and make the resulting models credible.

What we found

Our analysis reveals three distinct phases of seagrass coverage.

First, seagrass declined sharply following hurricanes Ian and Nicole. By December 2022 and early 2023, satellite imagery showed virtually no detectable seagrass across the lagoon.

Then, in March 2023, we identified a statistically significant shift. Seagrass began to reappear, initially in small, scattered patches.

Finally, during late spring and summer 2023, seagrass expanded rapidly. By July 2023, it covered more than 20% of the lagoon – levels not observed in more than a decade. Coverage then declined again during the winter of 2023–24, as expected based on seasonal growth cycles. But even our last observation, completed in January 2024, showed seagrass covering 4.3% of the lagoon, substantially higher than pre-recovery levels during the winter season.

In spring 2026, seagrass in Mosquito Lagoon has remained at stable levels. Although it still experiences fluctuations due to algal blooms, seasonality and other changes in the ecosystem, we have not seen a complete loss of seagrass again like what was occurring for over a decade.

Importantly, this pattern was not random. Regrowth occurred primarily in the central and southern parts of the lagoon, areas historically known to support dense seagrass meadows. The timing also aligned with established seagrass seasonal growth patterns, which strengthens our confidence that the observed changes reflect true ecological recovery.

How storms may have contributed

We cannot prove that hurricanes directly caused the seagrass recovery that we document in our study. Further study beyond the scope of our work is needed to evaluate this possibility. However, we believe the sequence of events suggests that the storms may have altered environmental conditions in ways that enabled regrowth.

Hurricane Ian delivered large volumes of fresh water into the lagoon, potentially suppressing salt‑tolerant macroalgae that compete with seagrass for sunlight and nutrients.

Six weeks later, Hurricane Nicole breached coastal dunes and created several new inlets between the lagoon and the Atlantic Ocean. These openings allowed salt water into the lagoon, likely altering salinity and changing water circulation and conditions.

The hurricanes may also have redistributed seagrass fragments and mobilized dormant seed banks, accelerating regrowth once conditions stabilized. Ecologists have observed similar mechanisms in other coastal systems affected by tropical cyclones.

Beyond Mosquito Lagoon

Mosquito Lagoon’s collapse and eventual tentative recovery illustrates both the vulnerability and resilience of coastal ecosystems. Even after years of decline, the Mosquito Lagoon coastal ecosystem demonstrated an ability to recover relatively rapidly when physical conditions shifted.

At the same time, resilience does not guarantee permanence, and we believe this recovery should be viewed cautiously.

From a practical standpoint, our study also highlights the value of satellite imagery and machine learning for ecosystem monitoring. These tools allow scientists, resource managers and local communities to detect change consistently and respond before losses spread.

Hannah V. Herrero is the Director of Science for the Lagoon Watermen Alliance, a Florida-based non-profit. The mission of Lagoon Watermen Alliance is to protect the entire Indian River Lagoon system by advocating for science-based solutions that will lead to improved water quality, protection of imperiled habitats and safeguarding of gamefish populations.

Stephanie Insalaco-Wyner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.