A book (?)

As I said in my previous post, I am working mostly on personal projects on the train. One of those personal projects is outlining and brainstorming my idea for a book. The book will be about the motherhood penalty, a topic I have been studying for nearly a decade, but it will not just be a long-form version of a research paper. Instead, I hope a book would give me space to be less descriptive and more prescriptive and speculative. I particularly want to write about the motherhood penalty in the post-COVID world where we have the technology and experience to allow for remote work and/or a lot more telework.

Having had my own remote work clawed back from me makes the personal benefits of remote work particularly salient for me right now. I know it doesn’t work for everyone or for every job, and I plan to discuss that, and what inequities that might introduce. I am aware of the literature that shows real drawbacks of a remote workforce. But I think some of the potential benefits, particularly long-term benefits, are hard to measure, and may be ignored as a result. Worker really like remote work and telework, employers do not. Can we bridge that gap and what would it look like if we did? I also want to think more broadly about how ubiquitous remote work could shape not only work and family life, but communities.

There are three topics that I have been deeply focused on over the last several years. I’ve done work myself on the motherhood penalty, but have read broadly on the topics of geographic mobility and remote work/telework. My book would tie those threads together. It’s still in very early stages (I’m at 10 hours in on actually writing things down, starting an outline), and I’m finding the exercise of writing for a different audience and with a different goal interesting, even if nothing comes of it. But it might be a good time, before I get too far in, to get feedback on whether this sounds interesting. Would anyone actually want to read a book on the motherhood penalty in a remote work world?