Good morning! Today’s newsletter comes to you from Fortune’s Claire Zillman, a former Broadsheet author (IYKYK) back in our inboxes to answer the question we all have: why can’t schools and workplaces get on the same page? To our readers in the U.S., have a lovely Thanksgiving. We’ll be back in your inboxes on Monday. -Emma
It’s Thanksgiving Eve. Are you feeling festive—or totally exhausted? Turkey Day tomorrow marks the unofficial start of the holidays, a period that is part-heartwarming, part-stressful, especially for women who shoulder the season’s merry-making and administrative load.
In recent years, the burden seems to have grown with many schools closing for the entire week of Thanksgiving.U.S. employers, meanwhile, typically shutter for Thanksgiving and Black Friday, leaving parents in a bind of how to care for their children.
Extended Thanksgiving breaks typify the nightmare gulf between yearly school schedules and parents’ paid time off, with women typically scrambling to plug the holes. A TikTok creator struck a nervein January when she compared her and her husband’s combined PTO (35 days) with her kids’ days off or half-days (37). “The math just does not add up,” she said.
