Work–family balance in the United States
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Work–family balance in the United States refers to the specific issues that arise when men and women in the United States attempt to balance their occupational lives with their family lives. This differs from
work–life balance in the United States Work–life balance in the United States is having enough time for work and enough time to have a personal life in the United States. Related, though broader, terms include and . United States history Agricultural work: 1800–1850 The first ...
: while
work–life balance Work may refer to: * Work (human activity), intentional activity people perform to support themselves, others, or the community ** Manual labour, physical work done by humans ** House work, housework, or homemaking ** Working animal, an animal tr ...
may refer to the health and living issues that arise from work, work–family balance refers specifically to how work and families intersect and influence each other. Work–family balance in the U.S. differs significantly for families of different social class. Middle-class family issues center on dual-earner spouses and parents while lower class issues center on problems that arise due to single parenting. Work–family balance issues also differ by class, since middle class occupations provide more benefits and family support while low-wage jobs are less flexible with benefits. Solutions for helping individuals manage work–family balance in the U.S. include legislation, workplace policies, and the marketization of
care work Care work is a sub-category of work that includes all tasks that directly involve care processes done in service of others. It is often differentiated from other forms of work because it is considered to be intrinsically motivated. This perspectiv ...
.


History

Family structure (how the family is organized) historically has been influenced by social-level forces, many of them economic.Coontz, Stephanie. 2000. "Historical Perspectives on Family Studies." Journal of Marriage and the Family 62: 283-297. According to family historian
Stephanie Coontz Stephanie Coontz (born August 31, 1944) is an American author, historian, and faculty member at Evergreen State College. She teaches history and family studies and is Director of Research and Public Education for the Council on Contemporary Fami ...
, marriage and family formation in the 17th century was heavily influenced by desires to form economic and political alliances. Children were seen as a method of ensuring the passage of political and economic power to future generations.Coontz, Stephanie. Marriage: A History. New York: Penguin, 2006. Influenced by
the Englightenment The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment; german: Aufklärung, "Enlightenment"; it, L'Illuminismo, "Enlightenment"; pl, Oświecenie, "Enlightenment"; pt, Iluminismo, "Enlightenment"; es, La Ilustración, "Enlightenment" was an intel ...
, several changes to marriage occurred: the move toward individualism and the loosening of church influence over families after the
Protestant Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and ...
resulted in the flourishing of the two-parent farm family. Prior to the
Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...
, the two-parent farm family was the dominant family model, in which both parents working side by side on family farms The two-parent farm family ceased to be the dominant family model after the
Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...
occurred. The 1920s was the first time that the majority of children lived in two-parent breadwinner-homemaker families (one where the father supported the family financially and the mother supported the family domestically). In 19th century farm settings, children were an important part of their families' agricultural livelihoods. As industrialization occurred and families shifted from rural agricultural settings to urban ones, the number of children per household also declined. Children became less of an economic benefit and more of a cost: urban life necessitated educating children which was costly. During the 1910s and 1920s, women delayed childbirth for economic opportunities that were present in urban areas. However, this trend reversed during the Great Depression because of the lower number of economic opportunities available for women. As a result, Depression Era women were more likely to marry and have children earlier. In 1900, roughly 40 percent of single women were employed versus only five percent of married women (Preston, 2003). This 35 percent gap persisted for many years. Goldin (1992), in a study of women college graduates in the twentieth century, concluded that those graduating between 1900 and 1920 had to make "a distinct choice between family and career". The
Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...
opened about 3,000 part-day Emergency Nursery Schools for about 75,000 children from 1933 to 1935, which provided child care to help eligible adults looking for work and which employed teachers in an industry where two-thirds of private nursery schools had closed during the Depression. Men were drafted into the military in large numbers during World War II, and women with young children were needed to supplement single women and those with older children at wartime factories. Problems with women leaving children in unsafe situations while working began to appear. ENS capacity peaked at 130,00 children in 1944. Wartime New Deal measures such as the Lanham Act and Servicemen's Dependents Allowance Act of 1942 provided federal funding for day care centers starting in 1942. The
breadwinner The breadwinner model is a paradigm of family centered on a breadwinner, "the member of a family who earns the money to support the others." Traditionally, the earner works outside the home to provide the family with income and benefits such as ...
homemaker Homemaking is mainly an American and Canadian term for the management of a home, otherwise known as housework, housekeeping, housewifery or household management. It is the act of overseeing the organizational, day-to-day operations of a hous ...
model regained dominance during the twenty-year period immediately after World War II. The
economy An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with the ...
relied upon the male
breadwinner The breadwinner model is a paradigm of family centered on a breadwinner, "the member of a family who earns the money to support the others." Traditionally, the earner works outside the home to provide the family with income and benefits such as ...
to earn the income to support his family financially, while women were relied upon to do the
care work Care work is a sub-category of work that includes all tasks that directly involve care processes done in service of others. It is often differentiated from other forms of work because it is considered to be intrinsically motivated. This perspectiv ...
and other forms of domestic work to support her husband's earnings. As the economy went into recession during the 1970s, women entered the workforce in large droves. Families could no longer survive on the single income of the male breadwinner and both sexes were relied upon for financial support. The dominant family model starting in the 1970s was the dual-earner family where both parents worked. Women also entered college in higher percentages.Torr, Berna M. 2011. "The Changing Relationship between Education and Marriage in the United States, 1940-2000." Journal of Family History 36(4): 483-503. However, the economy was still assumed to run on an outdated breadwinner-homemaker model as evidence by the following things: women made significantly less income than men, they were still expected to do the majority of domestic work, and the nine-to-three o'clock school schedule of children still existed. The recession of the 1970s also further pushed the correlation between income and family structure. As more and more previously lucrative manufacturing jobs were sent overseas, men without college educations could no longer support their families on a single wage. Women's labor force participation rates have steadily increased since the 1940s Since the 1970s, the relationship between marriage and college education has also been positive. Congress passed the Comprehensive Child Development Act in 1971, which subsidized child care to make it universal, but the bill was vetoed by President
Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
.


Legislation

Historically significant pieces of legislation have been enacted at the federal level to address the sex disparities in the workplace. These pieces of legislation attempt to address the wage gap in the U.S., gender discrimination in hiring and firing, and the occupational rights of workers in taking family and medical leave. Despite these significant legislative efforts, the U.S. still lags behind other developed countries in progressive family-friendly work policies.


Mother's Pensions of 1910

From 1890 to 1910, the proportion of working women increased by 8%, from 1.2 million to 3.1 million workers, which influenced the creation of Mother's Pensions in 1910, which gave non-working mothers pensions to offset their need to work outside the home. According to scholar
Sonya Michel Sonya Michel is an American historian. She is Professor Emerita at the Department History, University of Maryland, College Park, University of Maryland. She has also taught at Brandeis University, Brown University, Harvard University, Princeton Uni ...
, this legislation did little to decrease the wage gap between men and women because women “preferred to work, did not fit the criteria,” or the states ran out of funds.


Equal Pay Act of 1963

The
Equal Pay Act of 1963 The Equal Pay Act of 1963 is a United States labor law amending the Fair Labor Standards Act, aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex (see gender pay gap). It was signed into law on June 10, 1963, by John F. Kennedy as part of his New Fro ...
attempted to abolish wage and payment discrimination between men and women.


Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

Title VII The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requi ...
mandates against gender discrimination in the workplace. It makes gender discrimination on the basis of pregnancy and childbirth illegal. The
Pregnancy Discrimination Act The Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) of 1978 () is a United States federal statute. It amended Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to "prohibit sex discrimination on the basis of pregnancy." The Act covers discrimination "on the basis of ...
of 1978 is an amendment to Title VII that explicitly prohibits discrimination against pregnant women.


Head Start of 1965

The only federal childcare ever implemented was Head Start, which was created in 1965 as a part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s
War on Poverty The war on poverty is the unofficial name for legislation first introduced by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during his State of the Union address on January 8, 1964. This legislation was proposed by Johnson in response to a national ...
. Head Start is a program for low-income families that provides early education and care for 3- to 5-year-olds. Head Start is free for eligible families (those living below the
federal poverty line In the United States, poverty has both social and political implications. In 2020, there were 37.2 million people in poverty. Some of the many causes include income inequality, inflation, unemployment, debt traps and poor education.Western, ...
), but families apply and there is no guarantee for a spot. In 2017, there were 1 million children enrolled in Head Start and Early Head Start, but there are about 19 million children under five in the United States and around 3 million children under five living in poverty.


Family Support Act of 1988

In 1988, the
Family Support Act The Family Support Act of 1988 () was a federal law that amended Title IV of the Social Security Act to revise the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program to emphasize work, child support and family benefits, as well as on withholdi ...
was passed, which required parents using federal programs, like Head Start, to actively be working, getting an education, or taking part in professional training. At the time, 56% of mothers with children under 6 were already in the workforce, which meant that mothers who were unable to comply with guidelines were denied the assistance they were previously eligible for.


Child Care and Development Block Grant and Title IV-A At-Risk Child Care

Child Care and Development Block Grant and Title IV-A At-Risk Child Care were passed due to a demand for childcare support among middle- and upper-middle-class families, as Head Start was restricted to families that were below the Federal Poverty Line, and the recognition that families who were at risk of losing work would soon enter the welfare system but could use help before they qualified for traditional assistance.


Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993

The
Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) is a United States labor law requiring covered employers to provide employees with job-protected, unpaid leave for qualified medical and family reasons. The FMLA was a major part of President Bill C ...
requires employers to provide job-protected unpaid leave for certain family and medical reasons. Legitimate reasons include pregnancy, childbirth, adoption,
foster care Foster care is a system in which a minor has been placed into a ward, group home ( residential child care community, treatment center, etc.), or private home of a state-certified caregiver, referred to as a "foster parent" or with a family ...
placement, and care for an ill family member. However, this legislation is limited: coverage is only extended for twelve weeks and for employees who have worked for at least twelve months at the same job. Short-term medical illness and routine medical checkups were not covered until the FMLA, and family members other than parents, spouses, and children are not covered. Some states have extended the definition of family on their own, and therefore extended the coverage of FMLA.


Child Care Development Fund of 1996

In 1996, the Child Care Development Fund was created to allow states flexibility in creating childcare provisioning for low- and lower-middle-income families. Despite this change, families still face significant barriers when trying to access these subsidies, with less than ¼ of eligible families using them.


Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit of 1998

The Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit offsets childcare expenses. The tax credit covers 20 to 35% of costs and is capped at $3,000 for one child and $6,000 for two or more children. It offsets income taxes, so families in lower-income brackets receive little money in return. In 2016, only 15% of families received this subsidy.


The American Families Plan of 2021


Effects on families

The structural economic changes have influenced specific aspects of the family.Edin, Kathryn and Rebecca Joyce Kissane. 2010. "Poverty and the American Family: A Decade in Review." Journal of Marriage and Family 72:460-479. However, not all families are affected in the same way. In the U.S., whether or not a family is dual or single-earner is related to their social class and income. The economic changes in the past couple of decades have affected middle-class and lower-class families very differently in many aspects, especially since the 1970s economic recession. These family
inequalities Inequality may refer to: Economics * Attention inequality, unequal distribution of attention across users, groups of people, issues in etc. in attention economy * Economic inequality, difference in economic well-being between population groups * ...
significantly affect the intersection of
race Race, RACE or "The Race" may refer to: * Race (biology), an informal taxonomic classification within a species, generally within a sub-species * Race (human categorization), classification of humans into groups based on physical traits, and/or s ...
and
social class in the United States Social class in the United States refers to the idea of grouping Americans by some measure of social status, typically economic. However, it could also refer to social status or location. The idea that American society can be divided into socia ...
as well.


Problems affecting middle-class families

Middle-class families have certain class-specific problems that arise when family and work intersects. Many of them have to do with the balance parents must create between their career aspirations and their familial desires. Because the middle class has greater access to more stable occupations and the chances for occupational
mobility Mobility may refer to: Social sciences and humanities * Economic mobility, ability of individuals or families to improve their economic status * Geographic mobility, the measure of how populations and goods move over time * Mobilities, a conte ...
, many middle class American families must deal with the ultimate decision between balancing their families with their jobs. Although the figures vary depending on parents' household income, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates families spend anywhere from $134,370 to $269,520 raising a child from birth through age 17.


Delayed fertility

Middle-class women oftentimes delay
motherhood ] A mother is the female parent of a child. A woman may be considered a mother by virtue of having given birth, by raising a child who may or may not be her biological offspring, or by supplying her ovum for fertilisation in the case of gesta ...
until after the peak of their Fertility rate, fertility at age 29–30, a delay that has become more common in the last two decades. Motherhood is delayed because of the higher educational and career aspirations middle-class women oftentimes make—the career incentives are too great to pass up.Caucutt, Elizabeth M., Nezih Guner, and John Knowles. 2002. "Why Do Women Wait? Matching, Wage Inequality, and the Incentives for Fertility Delay." ''Review of Economic Dynamics'' 5:815–855. While middle-class women on average have children at age 29, lower-class women typically have children much earlier in their lives because of the lack of incentives to delay childbirth. According to Edin and Kefalas, lower-class women do not make the same delay because they are oftentimes lacking the career and educational incentives that middle-class women have. The delay in fertility becomes a problem among middle-class women when they delay childbirth past their fertility peak. Since fertility peaks at a certain age, pushing childbirth past that age significantly decreases the probability that certain women will be able to have children. The media has been an influence on women's fertility choices: popular celebrities who have managed to have children well into their forties and other medical miracles covered in the media oftentimes give women false hope that they themselves will also be able to bear children later in life. For every success story, however, there are many more disappointments.


Ideology of motherhood

Although American women have made significant strides in the workplace, they are still culturally and socially required to be mothers first and foremost. The cultural ideas of motherhood in the U.S. have given birth to a new ideal: a working mother who not only has a wonderful career but also manages to flawlessly balance her family and domestic duties as well. This ideal is known as the " supermom."Hays, Sharon. "The Mommy Wars: Ambivalence, Ideological Work, and the Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood." In Family in Transition, edited by Arlene S. Skolnick, 40-56. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2003. The media is a culprit in this depiction: A study examining the portrayal of mothers in magazines showed that the most popular magazines in the U.S. still continue to promote the traditional role of motherhood while undermining homemakers by portraying them as superficial and negative.Johnston, Deirdre D., and Debra H. Swanson. 2003. "Invisible Mothers: A Content Analysis of Motherhood Ideologies and Myths in Magazines." Sex Roles 49: 21-33. Instead, only the Supermom type is portrayed and rarely critiqued. As a result of this Supermom ideal, cultural contradictions of motherhood widely exist. Working mothers are often critiqued for being selfish and not spending enough time with their children. They defend their position by saying they work to support their children economically.
Homemakers Homemaking is mainly an American and Canadian term for the management of a home, otherwise known as housework, housekeeping, housewifery or household management. It is the act of overseeing the organizational, day-to-day operations of a house ...
are often critiqued for not pursuing meaningful careers. They respond by saying that the childcare and other
domestic work A domestic worker or domestic servant is a person who works within the scope of a residence. The term "domestic service" applies to the equivalent occupational category. In traditional English contexts, such a person was said to be "in service ...
they do for their families is much more important. Only the unrealistic depiction of the supermom can balance these two ideological extremes, but that ideal is an unrealistic solution for most women. The idea that parents only should raise their children is not a long-standing social expectation, but one that is reserved to the United States and its conservative nuclear family values. Before modern medicine, high mortality rates meant it was common for children to be raised by others outside their immediate family. This idea did not make its way to the New World because the
Puritans The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant. ...
put high value on families raising their children and preparing them for the world, and if the parents could not fulfill this role, the children were taken away. For a brief period in the early 1800s, infant schools challenged this notion, but by the mid-1800s, counter-movements de-popularized this belief and reinforced that mothers specifically were supposed to raise their children. During World War II, the United States saw for the first time a nationwide, federally funded nursery school program, but after the war, the program was automatically disbanded since women no longer had to work outside the home. Despite the disbanding of these programs, many women chose to stay in the workforce. To combat this belief, propaganda spread that mothers working poorly impacted their children’s mental well-being. The propaganda worked, and in the summer of 1945, 1 out of 4 women working in factories quit, and the remaining women were pushed into lower-paying, traditionally female-oriented jobs. It was not until the 1960s and 1970s, when more mothers started to enter the workforce, that the idea of childcare switched from something meant for children with problems at home to something that was a nationwide necessity.


Inequalities in care work

Despite the career gains women have made, their husbands have not reached parity in terms of their
domestic work A domestic worker or domestic servant is a person who works within the scope of a residence. The term "domestic service" applies to the equivalent occupational category. In traditional English contexts, such a person was said to be "in service ...
and
care work Care work is a sub-category of work that includes all tasks that directly involve care processes done in service of others. It is often differentiated from other forms of work because it is considered to be intrinsically motivated. This perspectiv ...
. Women in the
developed world A developed country (or industrialized country, high-income country, more economically developed country (MEDC), advanced country) is a sovereign state that has a high quality of life, developed economy and advanced technological infrastruct ...
, including the U.S., still do hours more of housework than their male counterparts, despite their success in the workplace.Craig, Lyn and Killian Mullan. 2010. "Parenthood, Gender and Work-Family Time in the United States, Australia, Italy, France, and Denmark." Journal of Marriage and Family 72: 1344-1361. Working mothers on average do more work and sleep less than their husbands.Maume, David J., Rachel A. Sebastian, and Anthony R. Bardo. "Gender, Work-Family Responsibilities, and Sleep." Gender and Society 24(2010): 746-768. The perception of who does more housework is also skewed by whether or not the husband or the wife is reporting. Unsurprisingly then, working mothers do not spend a significantly lower amount of time with their children compared to women who do not work—working mothers simply sleep less on average. As a result, many middle-class families have resorted to alternative methods of child care.Owens, Erica and Gail Ring. 2007. "Difficult Children and Difficult Parents : Constructions by Child Care."
Journal of Family Issues ''Journal of Family Issues'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes papers in the field of family studies. The journal's editor-in-chief is Constance L. Shehan (University of Florida). It was established in 1980 and is currently publi ...
28(6):827-850.
A common option is to buy child care, such as
day care Child care, otherwise known as day care, is the care and supervision of a child or multiple children at a time, whose ages range from two weeks of age to 18 years. Although most parents spend a significant amount of time caring for their child(r ...
providers and centers.


Problems affecting lower-class families

Lower class families have been heavily influenced by income as well. Lower-class families have a different set of work–family balancing issues, many of which are much more difficult to solve than those of middle-class families.


Single-parenting

Lower-class families are disproportionately made up of single mother households. According to Kathryn Edin, this is because of the lack of incentive to marry other lower-class men among lower-class women, and the desire to save marriage for more quality prospects. Unlike middle-class women, lower-class women do not have the same financial and marriage incentives to marry especially in the face of likely divorce. As a result, lower class mothers have less incentive to delay their
childbearing Pregnancy is the time during which one or more offspring develops ( gestates) inside a woman's uterus (womb). A multiple pregnancy involves more than one offspring, such as with twins. Pregnancy usually occurs by sexual intercourse, but ca ...
to later years. Many of the problems shared by single parents are disproportionately felt by the lower class for these very reasons. The inability to use the income and time of two spouses has a harmful effect upon the work opportunities of lower-income mothers. Another factor is income: single-mothers tend to work lower income wage, which come with few benefits such as
maternity leave Parental leave, or family leave, is an employee benefit available in almost all countries. The term "parental leave" may include maternity, Paternity (law), paternity, and adoption leave; or may be used distinctively from "maternity leave" an ...
, health insurance,
childcare Child care, otherwise known as day care, is the care and supervision of a child or multiple children at a time, whose ages range from two weeks of age to 18 years. Although most parents spend a significant amount of time caring for their child(r ...
,Press, Julie, Jay Fagan, and Elisa Bernd. 2006. "Child Care, Work, and Depressive Symptoms Among Low-Income Mothers." Journal of Family Issues 27(5): 609-632. and flexible schedules. Low-wage work oftentimes is characterized by weekly schedule changes,Wessels, Anke. 2003. "Displacing mothers from work and welfare." UNESCO. little flexibility, and extreme short notice for changes. As a result, lower class mothers have a greater a time crunch and more conflict in balancing their work needs with those of their children. Single mother home environments are much poorer because of nonstandard hours and schedules.


Care work

Single-mother and lower-class families have a much more difficult time negotiating
childcare Child care, otherwise known as day care, is the care and supervision of a child or multiple children at a time, whose ages range from two weeks of age to 18 years. Although most parents spend a significant amount of time caring for their child(r ...
or finding sustainable childcare options. The breadwinner-homemaker family and economic model does not apply to single-parent families because the single-parent must be both roles at all times. Because child care services cost a substantial amount, low-income mothers spend a higher percentage of their income on child care than middle class mothers do. Few low-income mothers are happy with their childcare arrangements especially in light of the fact that low-income childcare arrangements suffer from frequent disruptions.Usdansky, Margaret L. and Douglas A. World. 2008. "When Child Care Breaks Down : Mothers' Experiences With Child Care Problems and Resulting Missed Work." Journal of Family Issues 29(9):1185-1210. In the United States, state assistance for childcare is nowhere near the level of other developed countries and has actually decreased.


Solutions

The United States has lagged behind the
social benefits Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifical ...
that support working families when compared to other developed countries. Of the twenty-one richest countries in the world, only the United States does not mandate paid parental leave, and among the industrialized Western nations only the United States does not mandate paid vacations.Gerson, Kathleen. "Finishing the Gender Revolution." The Unfinished Revolution: How a New Generation Is Reshaping Family, Work, and Gender in America. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010. Print. Many solutions to the family-work balance problem have been observed in other countries and proposed in the U.S. Solutions specific to the U.S. have also developed recently. Recent U.S. policy has focused on "restoring marriage" rather than providing direct support to children. Head Start was the first big push away from the charity-based mindset of childcare as seen through day nurseries, but even as childcare entered the political sphere, it has been considered as a program to address poverty only, which is one reason why we do not see universal child care in the United States. The 1970s and 1980s shifted the framing of childcare as an accessibility and affordability issue that also affected working parents, but still the programs passed were relegated to funding childcare, not creating childcare. Moving into the 1990s and 2000s, the framing became centered around working women’s need for childcare, but contrasting views that mothers should stay at home to take care of their young children halted provisioning from happening. There has been a shift in views on motherhood, with only a minority of Americans supporting the notion that mothers should stay home, but this is yet to be reflected in policy, with most still supporting the belief that middle-class women should take care of their children instead of pursuing a career . Current policies are motivated by the improvement of children’s development, facilitating employment among mothers, or alleviating poverty.


Care crisis

The care crisis in the United States refers to the lack of care work as the result of
globalization Globalization, or globalisation (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize (-isation, -ization), see spelling differences), is the process of foreign relation ...
. For the middle class, there has been an ongoing debate over who should take care of children: family members or child care providers However, the debate is slowly shifting to one concerning parents and child care providers to
domestic workers A domestic worker or domestic servant is a person who works within the scope of a residence. The term "domestic service" applies to the equivalent occupational category. In traditional English contexts, such a person was said to be "in service ...
.
Globalization Globalization, or globalisation (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize (-isation, -ization), see spelling differences), is the process of foreign relation ...
and the entrance of women into the workforce has prompted the mass immigration of transnational care chains - poor women who leave their home countries and go to developed countries to work specifically as domestic workers.Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette. Domestica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. This has become an option for many middle and upper-class families. Poor families, however, still do not have the same care work markets that middle-class families do. Relying on formal child care providers is less disruptive and risky, but providers still pose a significant price problem.


Workplace

There are many workplace policies that can alleviate the burden of work–family balance for many middle-class families. Some options in family-friendly workplaces include providing
paid leave The labour law concept of leave, specifically paid leave or, in some countries' long-form, a leave of absence, is an authorised prolonged absence from work, for any reason authorised by the workplace. When people "take leave" in this way, they are ...
or options for reduced hours.Singley, Susan G. 2005. "Transitions to Parenthood: Work-Family Policies, Gender, and the Couple Context." Gender and Society. 19: 376-397 Workplaces are realizing that employees with well balanced family and work lives are actually valuable to firms: workplace childcare assistance can increase
productivity Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production proces ...
and
morale Morale, also known as esprit de corps (), is the capacity of a group's members to maintain belief in an institution or goal, particularly in the face of opposition or hardship. Morale is often referenced by authority figures as a generic value ...
among employees, as well as lessen turnover, accidents, and
absenteeism Absenteeism is a habitual pattern of absence from a duty or obligation without good reason. Generally, absenteeism is unplanned absences. Absenteeism has been viewed as an indicator of poor individual performance, as well as a breach of an implic ...
. Childcare options for working parents can be key in workplace satisfaction.Payne, Stephanie C., Allison L. Cook, and Ismael Diaz. 2011. "Understanding childcare satisfaction and its effect on workplace outcomes: The convenience factor and the mediating role of work-family conflict." Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 1-21. Workplace supports such as personal time off, paid leave, on-site or nearby childcare, financial assistance for childcare, and other family-friendly policies are Western European workplace norms that could solve the work–family balance problem in the United States. There are many other options of work–family policies that lead to happier and more productive workers.Cardenas, R. & Major, D. (2005). Combining employment and breastfeeding: Utilizing a work-family conflict framework to understand obstacles and solutions. Journal of Business and Psychology, 20(1), 31-51. Some of these options include educational classes, such as classes on the wellbeing of a newborn or family, put on by the company, that has been shown to be associated with less reported work–family conflict.Frye, N. & Breaugh, J. (2004). Family-friendly policies, supervisor support, work-family conflict, family-work conflict, and satisfaction: A test of a conceptual model. Journal of Business and Psychology, 19(2), 197-220. A room that would allow for breast milk pumping could be one of the most helpful work–family policies for a company and family. A 1995 study found 86% of breastfed infants experienced no illness during the 1-year duration of the study and another study found breastfeeding infants decreases the chances of acute infections. Breastfeeding will help the company because breastfeeding has been linked to lower health care costs. This prolonged breast feeding saved one company $240,000 in health care savings and $60,000 in reduced absenteeism. Some other work–family policies that could help the family and company include various scheduling options, such as paid vacation, flex schedules, remote work, part-time work, and job sharing. Employees who have this flexibility increase productivity and have less work–family spill over and they are less likely to miss work due to family related issues. One extremely important aspect of all these policies is the management support and work environment that go along with it. It has been shown multiple times that the work culture influence whether employees take advantage of work–family policies.Secret, M. (2000). Identifying the family, job, and workplace characteristics of employees who use work-family benefits. Family Relations, 49(2), 217-225. This work culture is a better predictor of use of policies than individual's needs or values. If an individual feels that using a policy will affect his/her chances of advancement he/she is more likely to refuse to use the policy. This is why management support is a big part of this work–family policy. However, many constrains still exist. These workplace policies are largely only offered at higher salary jobs, which are once again out of reach for the poor. The huge lack of government funding at the state and federal levels also make these workplace policies unrealistic at this point.


Government support

If government support for workplace family-friendly policies or childcare subsidies was stronger, more solutions could be attempted. For example, child care subsidies by the government actually result in less childcare and work disruptions and could impact low-income families as well by making childcare more affordable. However, government support is not at the level of other developed countries. Legislation such as the
Family and Medical Leave Act The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) is a United States labor law requiring covered employers to provide employees with job-protected, unpaid leave for qualified medical and family reasons. The FMLA was a major part of President Bill C ...
had little impact on gender inequality in care work and was strongly opposed by businesses.Forry, Nicole D. and Sandra L. Hofferth. 2011. "Maintaining Work: The Influence of Child Care Subsidies on Child Related Work Disruptions." Journal of Family Issues 32(3):346-368. :Fewer than half of working parents stay home when their children are sick, even though research shows that sick children recover more quickly when a parent is there. …54 percent of working women are not entitled to any paid leave for taking care of a sick child or other family members.Crittenden, A. (2001). Conclusion. In A. Crittenden, The Price of Motherhood (p. 239). New York: Holt. If our society were to follow in the footsteps of other countries who allow
paid time off Paid time off, planned time off, or personal time off (PTO), is a policy in some employee handbooks that provides a bank of hours in which the employer pools sick days, vacation days, and personal days that allows employees to use as the need or ...
for taking care of sick children or even for having children our country might be able to get rid of the welfare program. Mothers wouldn't need welfare because they could have a job and be able to take care of children. Employers would have to allow parents to leave work to take care of children and they would have to pay them for it as well. When the parent is still getting a paycheck there would be no need for welfare programs to supplement another income or for a lack of income.


See also

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Family structure in the United States The traditional family structure in the United States is considered a family support system involving two married individuals providing care and stability for their biological offspring. However, this two-parent, heterosexual, nuclear family ...
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Public holidays in the United States The schedule of public holidays in the United States is largely influenced by the schedule of federal holidays but is controlled by private sector employers who provide 62% of the total U.S. population with paid time off. Public holidays with ...
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Work–life balance in the United States Work–life balance in the United States is having enough time for work and enough time to have a personal life in the United States. Related, though broader, terms include and . United States history Agricultural work: 1800–1850 The first ...
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Double burden A double burden (also called double day, second shift, and double duty) is the workload of people who work to earn money, but who are also responsible for significant amounts of unpaid domestic labor. This phenomenon is also known as the Seco ...
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Intra-household bargaining Intra-household bargaining refers to negotiations that occur between members of a household in order to arrive at decisions regarding the household unit, like whether to spend or save, whether to study or work. Bargaining is traditionally defined ...
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Shared earning/shared parenting marriage Shared earning/shared parenting marriage, also known as peer marriage, is a type of marriage where partners at the outset agree to adhere to a model of shared responsibility for earning money, meeting the needs of children, doing household chores, ...
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Sociology of the family Sociology of the family is a subfield of the subject of sociology, in which researchers and academics study family structure as a social institution and unit of socialization from various sociological perspectives. It can be seen as an example o ...
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Time bind ''The Time Bind'' is a book by sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild in 1997, ''The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work''. The book refers to the blurring distinction between work and home social environments. Hochschild fou ...
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Work–family conflict Work–family conflict occurs when an individual experiences incompatible demands between work and family roles, causing participation in both roles to become more difficult. This imbalance creates conflict at the work-life interface. It is impor ...


References


External links


American Sociological Association Section on Family

American Sociological Association Section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work

On Balance by Leslie Morgan Steiner - The Washington Post

A Better Balance - Advancing the rights of working families
{{DEFAULTSORT:Work-family balance in the United States United States family United States labor law Labor relations in the United States Society of the United States Family in the United States