You can spend time with your children

The argument

The argument holds that quarantine, whatever else it does, creates an opportunity that ordinary working life does not: parents are at home with their children for extended periods. Business trips and client meetings across the globe have been postponed, and the travel and evening commitments that routinely remove a parent from the household are not taking place. The time this returns is not occasional but daily and sustained. What proponents claim for that time is that it produces something durable rather than merely pleasant. The parent-child bonds formed during such a period are expected to have long-term positive impacts on the mental health of both parties, because a bond is built through accumulated ordinary contact rather than through concentrated effort in a short window. A period in which a parent is simply present for the undramatic parts of a child's day supplies exactly the kind of contact that a schedule of travel and meetings tends to crowd out. The benefits identified on the child's side are specific. Positive parent-child relationships are associated with higher levels of self-esteem in adolescents, higher levels of satisfaction, and lower levels of distress and anxiety. Proponents note that these are outcomes measured well after the relationship is formed, which is what supports treating the period as an investment rather than a temporary comfort: the association holds into adolescence, long after the circumstances that created the time have ended. The final claim concerns what remains once the conditions lift. The memories forged during the quarantine period will have a lasting impact on parent-child relationships, and the relationship carries the period forward even though the period itself is finite. On this reading the mental health consequences of quarantine cannot be assessed by looking only at its costs, since for households with children it also produced a form of contact that normal working arrangements make difficult to obtain.

Context

Quarantine has caused many companies to implement work from home policies, letting parents spend more time with their children.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The argument relies on the assumption that many children’s home lives are happy and the parents are responsible. The unfortunate reality is that many children do not have happy home lives. Social workers and doctors across the world have recorded a spike in child abuse cases as parents and children are forced to spend large amounts of time in close confines. With the added stresses of unemployment and isolation, abusive parents are more likely than ever to take their rage out on their children, causing lasting mental health issues for the victims.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P3] More time together doesn't mean stronger relationship bonds.