Catherine Rampell provides us with this chart today showing job losses during the pandemic:
Back in December, men and women with children had both lost jobs at about the same rate—and it was a lower rate than men and women without kids. In January, women with kids ticked downward and they haven't made up any ground since then.
There are two possible lessons here. Lesson #1 is that although it took a while to show up, women with kids really have borne the brunt of the recession. Lesson #2 is that there's a lot of noise in the trendlines and you shouldn't draw any firm conclusions from just a few months of data. My personal guess is that in the end, it will turn out that women with children really did lose jobs at a higher rate than others, but the difference is likely to be smallish. It will probably be six months before we know for sure.
I think this time will be subject to many dissertations. Home schooling, working from home, additional unemployment help, stimulus checks, forced business closures, etc.
It would be interesting to see if this is the same for states where schools have been open compared to states where schools were closed. Undoubtedly many moms who were previously working had to quit to stay home with kids that were forced to do remote learning.