Can Zoom Save the American Family?

In 2021, founders will decide the future of the family. And for the sake of a generation of parents and children, I hope we choose to believe that work and family can coexist peacefully with the aid of a mute button.

Indeed, most of Corporate America punished the women and men who opted to work from home, believing a dated lie that one can’t be as productive or an effective member of a team without sharing the physical world with others. To make the sale, you had to break bread with the customer. To hire the employee, you had to go out for drinks. Yet, in a dig... See more

This growing decline in familial support for raising children—and college-educated women becoming the lynchpin for knowledge work in America— meant that demand for paid family services has increased dramatically. In the 1990s and 2000s, this question of how to support working parents became another front in the culture war.

What if “staying home” became the default option for every knowledge worker? What if home and work—the two poles of American life that have long been in violent opposition—merged to become the sources of both American dynamism and family unit cohesion? And what if, by some unexpected 2020 fluke, Zoom ends up saving the American family?