The least worst choice

notes

Notes: 1 through 10

1. Perhaps the best outcome of the publication of Lisa Belkin’s The Opt Out Revolution is that it spawned a deluge of intelligent criticism discussing the realities of motherhood, work, and barriers to women’s leadership, including articles by Joan Walsh of Salon, Katha Pollitt of The Nation, Bee Lavender of HipMama, and Susan J. Douglas for In These Times. An online discussion board at nytimes.com also generated over 900 reader comments in the week following the publication of Belkin’s article.

Clueless in Manhattan by Joan Walsh
There They Go Again by Katha Pollitt
Revolution or Regression by Bee Lavender
Mommas in the Marketplace by Susan J. Douglas

2. Reports about mothers leaving the professional workforce to focus on family crop up in work-life columns and lifestyle pages of major and local dailies, popular magazines, and television news segments at regular intervals, but particularly in the weeks before Mother’s Day. More recently, the Washington Times ran a feature by Gabriella Boston, Home from the Office (November 16, 2003) and in early October 2003 Sue Shellenbarger, the work-life columnist for the Wall Street Journal, wrote an article about the stress on breadwinners in single-earner families. Also: Family Time: Why some women quit their coveted tenure-track jobs, Piper Fogg, The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 13, 2003; A Labor of Love, Star Tribune, May 9, 2003; Full-time moms trade careers for kids, Bill Torpy, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, April 8, 2003; What moms want now, Redbook Magazine, March 2003, which reports on a survey that found “Sixty-five percent of stay-at-home moms are pleased with their choice, while a mere 27 percent of mothers who work full-time say they have jobs because they want them and find them fulfilling”; Mommy, Me and an Advanced Degree, Ann Marsh, The Los Angeles Times, January 6, 2002.

3. Data on mothers’ workforce participation is from the U.S Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, Fertility of American Women: June 2002, issued October 2003. Overall, the number of mothers who return to paid employment within 12 months of a child’s birth has declined slightly since an all-time high of 59 percent in 1998. Today, 54 percent of mothers with infants and 72 percent of other mothers between the ages of 15 and 44 work for pay – rates of maternal employment that have been relatively stable since the early 1990s.

4. Why Moms Stay Home, Joan C. Williams, The Washington Post, July 17, 2003.

5. 2002 National Study of the Changing Workforce, The Families and Work Institute, 2003. The authors of the 2002 NSCW do note that jobs classified as “managerial” include “people who manage fast-food outlets and small retail stores as well as CEOs of major corporations”, and “professionals” include “high-earning physicians and lawyers as well as low-earning nurses and school teachers”. According to the study, two out of every three women work in “other” occupations – primarily in the service and manufacturing sectors.

6. For example, see Shared Work, Balanced Care: New Norms for Organizing Market Work and Unpaid Care Work by Eileen Appelbaum, Thomas Bailey, Peter Berg, and Arne L. Kalleberg, Economic Policy Institute, 2002.

7. 2002 National Study of the Changing Workforce, The Families and Work Institute, 2003. One of the things that may change married women’s mind about the “fair” distribution of care work and paid work is that they are typically responsible for over two-thirds of the unpaid labor that goes into housekeeping and child-rearing, and the tasks they regularly do -- such as the household shopping, preparing and serving food, and helping children with schoolwork -- tend to be more time sensitive than the domestic tasks men take responsibility for.

8. Gallinsky, et al, Feeling Overworked: When Work Becomes Too Much, The Families and Work Institute, 2001.

9. 2002 National Study of the Changing Workforce, The Families and Work Institute, 2003.

10. ibid

Notes: 11 through 20

11. The Conference Board, Executive Action Brief No. 69, September 2003, America’s Unhappy Workforce: Job Satisfaction Continues to Wither by Lynn Franco. The organization has been tracking the job satisfaction of U.S. workers since 1995.

12. U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, Fertility of American Women: June 2003, October 2003

13. 2002 National Study of the Changing Workforce, The Families and Work Institute, 2003.

14. More Companies Downsize Family Friendly Programs, Stephanie Armour, USA Today, October 19, 2003

15. Men are doing more around the house than they were 25 years ago, but in most dual-earners couples with children, dad is not carrying anywhere near half of the carework load. The 2002 National Study of the Changing Workforce (The Families and Work Institute, 2003) found that 77 percent of women in dual-earner families with children take greater responsibility for cooking, 78 percent take greater responsibility for cleaning and 70 percent take greater for routine childcare. The “second shift” lives, and the prospect of reducing the daily grind of double-duty may be enough to convince some mothers that it’s time to reassess their commitment to paid work.

16. According to the 2002 National Survey of the Changing Workforce (The Families and Work Institute, 2003), wives in dual-earner couples contribute an average of 42 percent of the household income.

17. Work and Family: The Balancing Act, Alfred P. Sloan Center Newsletter, University of Chicago, June 2001. Preliminary results from the 500 Family Survey.

18. 2002 National Study of the Changing Workforce, The Families and Work Institute, 2003.

19. The Mom Economy: The Mothers’ Guide to Getting Family-Friendly Work, Elizabeth Wilcox, 2003. http://www.themomeconomy.com

20. See Sharon Hays, The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood, 1996 and Motherhood and its discontents: Why mothers need a social movement of their own, Judith Stadtman Tucker, The Mothers Movement Online, 2003

Notes: 21 through 32

21. Clearinghouse on International Developments in Child, Youth & Family Policies at Columbia University, Issue Brief, Spring 2002 Mother's Day: More Than Candy And Flowers, Working Parents Need Paid Time-Off

22. Family Matters: A National Survey of Women and Men conducted for The National Partnership for Women & Families, February 1998

23. 2 out of every 5 U.S. workers are not protected by the FMLA. U.S. Department of Labor, Family and Medical Leave Surveys 2000 Update

24. The Clearinghouse on International Developments in Child, Youth and Family Policies at Columbia University, Maternity, Paternity, and Parental Leaves in the OECD Countries 1998-2002

25. Susan Nall Bales, Early Childhood Education and the Framing Wars, 1998

26. Child Care Costs Busting NJ Family Budgets, Peggy O’Crowley, The Star-Ledger, April 11, 2003

27. Conservatives Push for Marriage Promotion Programs, Betty Holcomb, Women’s Enews, October 15, 2002

28. U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, Children’s Living Arrangements and Characteristics: March 2002, June 2003

29. U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, Children’s Living Arrangements and Characteristics: March 2002, June 2003

30. Hardships in America: The Real Story of Working Families, Economic Policy Institute, July 2001

31. Read the MMO commentary by Sara Eversden, Wake up call: Think family-friendly workplace policies are the new norm? Think again.

32. CNN.com, Tips for workforce re-entry, by Shelly K. Schwartz, May 11, 2001