Making Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving
360
Making Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving
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Overview
The work-family conflict that mothers experience today is a national crisis. Women struggle to balance breadwinning with the bulk of parenting, and social policies aren’t helping. Of all Western industrialized countries, the United States ranks dead last for supportive work-family policies. Can American women look to Europe for solutions? Making Motherhood Work draws on interviews that Caitlyn Collins conducted over five years with 135 middle-class working mothers in Sweden, Germany, Italy, and the United States. She explores how women navigate work and family given the different policy supports available in each country. Taking readers into women’s homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces, Collins shows that mothers’ expectations depend on context and that policies alone cannot solve women’s struggles. With women held to unrealistic standards, the best solutions demand that we redefine motherhood, work, and family.
This edition includes discussion questions for reading groups.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691202402 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 05/05/2020 |
| Pages: | 360 |
| Sales rank: | 503,846 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
SOS
Let's face it: it's harder to be a working mother in the United States than in any other country in the developed world. The US has the least generous benefits, the lowest public commitment to caregiving, the greatest time squeeze on parents, the highest wage gap between employed men and women, and the highest maternal and child poverty rates. Alongside Papua New Guinea, it is one of two countries on the planet without federally mandated paid maternity leave. It is the only industrialized nation with no minimum standard for vacation and sick days. Most US companies don't offer any policies to support the caregiving responsibilities of their workers.
It's no exaggeration to say that women's work-family conflict is a national crisis. Seventy percent of US mothers with children under age eighteen work outside the home. Most work full time. Yet women still complete the lion's share of child-rearing and housework, which means that moms work a "second shift" after their regular workday ends. Mothers are overwhelmed. Their partners know it. Their kids know it. So do their colleagues, employers, relatives, and friends. And the crisis transcends boundaries of race, class, region, and religion.
The great news is that it doesn't have to be this way. Alternatives to the seemingly intractable hardships that women with children face do exist. This book pushes the work-family debate across national borders to discuss policy solutions to mothers' overwhelm. I draw on wisdom gleaned from five years of conversations with 135 employed mothers in Sweden, Germany, Italy, and the United States to understand what they believe helps and hinders their work-family conflict. I identify what other countries are doing right — and wrong — in trying to resolve women's struggles.
Mothers' tribulations are central to this book. But this is not a chronicle of their despair. Their stories call us to action. Women's work-family conflict perpetually dominates the pages and airwaves of US media outlets. Each election cycle features heated debates about work-family supports. Yet folks in the States have seen little in the way of policy reform after elections end. The truth is that mothers in the US are drowning in stress. To be sure, moms with more resources can keep their heads a bit higher above the floodwaters than those with less capital to marshal in times of need. But no woman escapes the deluge entirely.
This begs the question: Why has the US done so little to support parents? The truth is, it's not an accident. And it's not the case everywhere in the world. Historians and sociologists teach us that the United States was founded on the ethos of individualism. Today, the belief in personal responsibility is woven into the fabric of our country through our welfare state provisioning. We can think of welfare states as "interventions by the state in civil society to alter social and market forces." The US welfare state centers on the liberal belief that the market provides for citizens' welfare; the state should intervene only when the market fails. This free-market approach means that adults are encouraged to work and to find private solutions for child-rearing and housework.
The principle of personal responsibility is central to American society, and it underlies the country's social policies. The US is one of the few nations with no mention of the word "family" in its constitution. Unlike most industrialized countries, it has no federal body dedicated specifically to family issues. The country has no explicit national family policy. The federal government doesn't have any universal programs for work and family provisions, and it doesn't require employers to provide them. The limited policies available (mostly cash and in-kind transfer programs), what those in the US call welfare, are generally available only to the country's poorest.
The message here is this: if you have a family, it's your job and yours alone to support it. Economist Nancy Folbre contends that US culture views having children as a lifestyle choice, much like having a pet. If you don't have the time or money to care for a pet, or a child, you shouldn't have one. This line of reasoning meshes well with the tenets of individualism and principles of free-market capitalism. But of course pets and children aren't the same. Children provide crucial benefits as future workers and taxpayers. We don't rely on pets to one day become our teachers, post office employees, doctors, and garbage collectors. Raising children well is in a country's collective best interest. And yet US society leaves parents, mostly mothers, on their own to accomplish this herculean goal that benefits everyone. Sociologists Michelle Budig and Paula England call this America's "free-rider problem."
The United States' privatized approach also exacerbates inequalities among workers. A few elite employers elect to offer helpful work-family policies, so only some privileged workers (typically highly educated, salaried employees) have access to these supports. The most vulnerable, oftentimes hourly workers — those most in need of support — are the least likely to have access to work-family benefits. Today, for instance, businesses offer paid family leave to just 14 percent of the civilian workforce — primarily white, male professional and managerial workers who are employed at large companies. The highest income earners in the US are three and a half times more likely to have access to paid family leave than those with the lowest incomes. Many millions of people in the US are forced to make do without work-family policy supports because their employers don't offer these benefits. These days, Americans tend to believe work-family conflict is inevitable. And, following the discourse of personal responsibility, people in the US think women can resolve their stress — they just need to try a little harder to strike the balance so they can "have it all."
Mothers' work-family conflict is not an inevitable feature of contemporary life. And it's not the fault of women. Moms in the US are trying their best to resolve this conflict on their own. And it's easier for some than others, given the race and class inequalities that stratify society. But moms are at their wits' end. This privatized model is failing all women with children, women who numbered 85.4 million according to a 2012 US Census Bureau estimate.
US senator Kamala Harris suggests that it's futile to brood in "depression and anger and anxiety" about the country's inequalities: "I'm done with that. I don't like that feeling, I don't think any of us do." Her suggestion? "We have to be joyful warriors." Take up the gauntlet, Senator Harris argued: "I say we go in fighting with our chins up and our shoulders back, knowing that this is about fighting for the best of who we are."
I couldn't agree more. We need to find a better way to organize work and family life. Can we envision a country in which all parents have access to the work-family policies they clearly need? What if we gave families a helping hand rather than collectively feeling resigned or pointing fingers at mothers? I'm optimistic. Folks in the United States are now thinking and talking about workplace supports for families. Work-family initiatives are front and center in the country's public debates, which were unlikely to make headlines at the turn of the twenty-first century. Now that politicians are talking about these issues, it's time to push them for real, lasting change.
But what would it look like to extend a helping hand to women and families? Rather than turning to firm-level solutions to work-family conflict, we can look to other countries for answers. The US doesn't need to start from scratch to envision a better, kinder, more just world. Different countries offer various roadmaps given their diverse histories of policy supports for employment and parenthood. Policies like paid maternity leave have been available to the entire labor force in many European countries for decades. Some US scholars have pointed to Europe as a "gender-equality nirvana," often drawing policy "lessons from abroad" to try to improve women's status in the US.
Surprisingly, there's been no systematic comparative study of how women think about and experience work-family policies to date. When pundits discuss European social policy on the evening news, rarely do audiences learn more than the basics about a policy's provisions. It's uncommon to hear more than soundbites from a handful of mothers, fathers, or policymakers. Sometimes those interested in expanding US work-family supports tend to idealize the offerings available in Europe and assume that they are uniform. There's a sense of yearning that, across the Atlantic at least, another world is possible. But we lack an understanding of how mothers in Europe perceive these policies in their day-to-day lives. Without these insights, how can we really learn from European experiences? Transforming life for American women and families will take more than a sense of longing. It requires knowledge and insights gleaned straight from the source: we need European and American mothers in the conversation. Otherwise, policies intended to help moms may turn out to be idealistic, patronizing, and ineffective. This book shows what women themselves think they need to lead healthy, happy lives at work and at home.
* * *
All Western capitalist countries are facing the collision between new social and economic realities and traditional conceptions of gender relations in work and family life. The conventional breadwinner/homemaker model is now largely outdated, given that two-thirds of all mothers work for pay outside the home in the industrialized West today. Different welfare states have responded with varying social and labor market policies to reconcile the modern puzzle of how to divide the responsibility for economic production and the social reproduction of child-rearing. Each arrangement creates a very different picture for mothers who work outside the home while raising children.
What are the day-to-day experiences of working mothers in countries that have offered very different policy solutions to work-family conflict and gender inequality? Such benefits include paid parental leave, affordable universal childcare and health care, part-time and flexible work schedules, vacation and sick day provisions, and cash allowances to parents, among others. In Germany, for instance, parental leave is offered for up to three years and used primarily by women, whereas in Sweden parental leave is largely gender neutral and more moderate in length. What lengths of leave do women prefer after having a baby? Part-time schedules are common in Germany, but less so in Italy and Sweden. How do women feel about part-time work in each context?
This book investigates how women in Europe and the US perceive and experience motherhood and employment in light of the policies available to them. I consider what we can learn from European countries in trying to resolve US mothers' work-family conflict. And since no nation is yet truly a gender-equality "nirvana," even the much-lauded Nordic countries, I reflect on what European countries may continue to learn from one another as they amend their policy provisions.
To understand what life is like under the main welfare state regimes of the industrialized West — divergent routes on the policy roadmap — I turned directly to mothers themselves to get their perspective on how motherhood works in different policy contexts. Listening to women's voices, to what they have to say about their daily lives, their deeply personal struggles, and their opinions of what they need to be happier and healthier, is the best way to craft solutions to gendered social problems that seem intransigent. By gaining firsthand knowledge of how working mothers combine paid work with child-rearing in countries with diverse policy supports, I expose the promises and the limits of work-family policy for easing mothers' stress.
Work-family conflict is the product of public policies and cultural attitudes that must change if we are to improve the lives of mothers and their families. In other words, context matters. Moms don't work and raise their children in isolation, devoid or somehow outside of society, culture, history, and the political and legal structures they reside in day-to-day. Women with children inhabit what I call lifeworlds of motherhood — the distinctive social universe of individual experiences, interactions, organizations, and institutions shaping the employment and childrearing possibilities that women can envision for themselves. What mothers want and expect in their work and family lives is confined by their lifeworld — from the largest federal policies and dominant societal beliefs about women, men, families, and work, to the structure of jobs, to the minutiae of everyday dealings with partners, friends, relatives, children, and coworkers. I focus on mothers because in all industrialized nations, mothers have historically been the targets of work-family policies, they are still responsible for most housework and childcare, they report greater work-family conflict than men, and they use work-family policies more often than men.
I argue that it's time to abandon the goal of work-family balance. Framing work-family conflict as a problem of imbalance is an overly individualized way to conceive of a nation of mothers engulfed in stress, and it doesn't take into account how institutions contribute to this stress. Instead, I issue a rallying cry for a movement centered on work-family justice. This change in phrasing matters because it politicizes our understanding of mothers' stress and socializes the responsibility for solving it. US society has long told moms that their work-family conflict is their fault and their problem to solve, which ignores the broader context of their lifeworld. Striving for balance is a highly personal, inadequate solution to a social problem that impacts every corner of society. Everyone needs care. What we need now is for society to value caregiving, as well as the people who provide that care. And not just lip service about how great and important and honorable the labor of caregiving is: it means little as a country to praise families as the bedrock of the nation if we fail to reinforce these values with the material and financial supports that families need to care for one another. The rest of the industrialized world has already reached consensus on this. The US lags far behind.
Championing the cause of work-family justice requires approaching US society as a collective. To achieve work-family justice is to create a system in which each member of society has the opportunity and power to fully participate in both paid work and family care. The rhetoric of justice highlights the reality that this conflict is not the outcome of individual women's shortcomings or mismanaged commitments but rather the result of cultural attitudes and policies embedded in workplaces and systems of welfare provisioning. Indeed, work-family conflict, like all social problems, "doesn't reflect some unalterable law of nature; it reflects the existing social organization of power." Put simply, mothers don't need balance. They need justice.
Sociologist Erik Olin Wright contends that, "While we live in a social world that generates harms, we also have the capacity to imagine alternative worlds where such harms are absent." He calls these alternative worlds "real utopias" — viable, emancipatory alternatives to dominant institutions and social structures. In the right circumstances, Wright argues, utopian visions can become powerful collective ideas to motivate political movements. The movement for work-family justice is one such opportunity.
Across the countries where I conducted interviews, one desire remained constant among mothers. Women wanted to feel that they were able to combine paid employment and child-rearing in a way that seemed equitable and didn't disadvantage them at home or at work. Moms need the safety and confidence that come with social supports — at home, in their friendship groups, among their colleagues, with their supervisors, in their firms, and from the federal government. The pursuit of work-family justice means ensuring that every woman has access to support when she needs it, regardless of her income, education, race, or marital or immigration status. Men, too. These social policies are fundamentals, no-brainers. It's time for the United States to build a stronger safety net that meets the needs of all mothers, and, by extension, their families.
* * *
Let's start by considering what we already know about the role of the government in shaping gender relations. In the United States, opportunities in the public sphere appear gender-neutral. For instance, men and women can pursue any jobs they please. No one is legally barred from rising to the highest office in the US because of their gender. In these ways, the US is far ahead of the curve. One hundred countries still impose restrictions on the types of jobs in which women can work. Married women in seventeen nations are still obliged by law to obey their husbands. Thirty-one countries have laws that designate men as heads of household.
(Continues…)
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Table of Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
1 SOS 1
2 Sweden: "It is easy in Sweden to work and have kids." 27
3 Former East Germany: "I wouldn't know how to handle forty hours… That's no life." 69
4 Western Germany: "'You are a career whore,' they say in Germany." 112
5 Italy: "Nobody helps me. It is very difficult in Italy." 151
6 The United States: "We can't figure out how to do it all at the same time." 196
7 Politicizing Mothers' Work-Family Conflict 246
Appendixes 267
Appendix A Notes on Methods 267
Appendix B Interview Schedule 288
Notes 291
References 311
Index 331
Discussion Questions 341
What People are Saying About This
“Through insightful interviews with employed mothers living in diverse national contexts, Caitlyn Collins demonstrates clearly and convincingly that our growing caregiving crisis stems from unjust social arrangements, not irresponsible individuals. The breadth and depth of Making Motherhood Work make it a unique and invaluable contribution that calls for nothing less than a worldwide movement for work-family justice.”—Kathleen Gerson, author of The Unfinished Revolution: Coming of Age in a New Era of Gender, Work, and Family“Making Motherhood Work is destined to become a classic. Caitlyn Collins conducted in-depth interviews with 135 employed, middle-class mothers in the United States and in three European countries. She finds that mothers face conflict between their work and family responsibilities in all four countries, even gender-egalitarian Sweden. Collins points to European policies that could positively impact mothers and families in the United States. Yet she notes the pervasive influence of cultural expectations of mothers that are coercive and unattainable. All four countries need a cultural redefinition of motherhood that describes and honors what is possible.”—Mary Blair-Loy, author of Competing Devotions: Career and Family among Executive Women“Comparing women in Europe and the United States and how they combine work and motherhood, Making Motherhood Work is the first cross-cultural investigation of what it feels like to live within different cultural and policy worlds. Mothers (and fathers)—even future ones—need to read this fascinating, thought-provoking, and illuminating book.”—Allison J. Pugh, author of The Tumbleweed Society: Working and Caring in an Age of Insecurity“This ambitious and beautifully written book considers how women manage work and family in varying contexts. Carrying out wide-scale interviews in multiple settings and countries, Making Motherhood Work shows how differences in work-family policies lead to differences in the challenges that women face. An impressive contribution.”—Joya Misra, University of Massachusetts, Amherst