The family in a pandemic: Will we ever be able to travel with young kids?

 A year and a half into the pandemic, policymakers have given little thoughtful guidance to families.

As countries around the world attempt to reopen their borders, officials have come up with an ever-changing list of labyrinthine policies to allow travel. A range of entry restrictions has been deployed, from home quarantines for vaccinated adults to spending up to three weeks in government-authorized facilities, with multiple tests along the way. The best strategy isn’t yet clear, but one thing in common: Few are taking into consideration families as a unit.

Acknowledging the difficult balance between the realities of employment and family demands could become one of the most important steps to opening up economies. But until parents have more clarity about how to cross borders with their young children or the hoops they have to jump through to be with them, there’s little hope of a full recovery.

Before the pandemic, travel had become an economic necessity for millions of people, who crossed borders every day to go to work and come back to their families. Globally, there are over 250 million international migrants. These aren’t just C-suite executives gallivanting between financial hubs. Foreign domestic workers, corporate employees, and economic nomads move around the world when better shots at employment emerge. Such migration rose manifold in the years before the pandemic. Knowing that loved ones were just a flight away was a critical piece of that equation.

All this has been thrown off by Covid-19. While rising vaccination rates are helping, many parts of the world remain shut to travel. This has created a huge emotional burden for families that have been separated. There’s an economic toll, too. Those who had to leave their jobs to be with their families are facing monetary consequences.

Substantial sums are at stake: Remittances, or money sent home, totaled over $550 billion in 2019. Spending on business travel is worth at least $1.4 trillion a year--and that doesn’t even account for all the informal sectors that require mobility for employment, such as domestic workers, startups, or freelancers.