Hhpt Ww Youtube Jackie Guerrido

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What concerned me more in the survey findings was the public’s animosity — or at best, ambivalence — concerning the value of maternal employment. Only 22 percent of all adults surveyed feel the rise in maternal employment has been “a good thing” for society. (Those findings were more stable than the mothers-only portion of the survey.) Attitudes in this regard have also changed over time, but it’s significant that 40 percent of a nationally-representative sample of Americans still feel that maternal employment is a blight, rather than a benefit to the nation. It’s possible to parse those findings too, of course, and I’d be interested in hearing what other people have to say. But under the circumstances, my concern is that legislation for part-time parity and the right to request shorter or flexible work hours — which I agree is necessary and actively support — is going to make it easier for some women to integrate paid work and family responsibilities, but not increase mothers’ and caregivers’ equal opportunities for advancement, or induce employed fathers to share caregiving more fully. If you’re a mother in the paid workforce today, you’ve got to contend with the reality that a whole bunch of people think you really shouldn’t be there. And I find it hard to believe that this bias against maternal employment, even when it’s not outspoken, doesn’t shape mothers’ work experiences or employment preferences. Indeed, there is plenty of solid research suggesting that gender stereotyping and cognitive bias affect mothers’ employment outcomes.

I think public opinion about the value of maternal employment is something recent work-life research hasn’t given enough attention to in discussions about the need for more and much better work-life reconciliation policy in the U.S. (That’s my impression, anyway — I’m happy to be corrected.) And I’m worried that the policy solutions the public is most likely to support in the near future are likely to be a sort of hybrid approach which will reduce the most egregious economic and occupational penalties associated with motherhood and caregiving but keep working women with one foot glued to the kitchen/nursery room floor, and not transform the ideal worker norm for men and elite white-collar workers.

I wrote more about the Pew Survey here:
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=whats_a_working_mother_worth

Sign me frustrated — JST

I took a labor economics course in 2002, at which time I had a 4-year-old daughter and a 1-year-old son, and as the class moved through each unit of the course, I shook each concept and thumped on it and held it up to bright light and asked it to explain “WHY?” Why had my time had been worth upwards of $35 per hour (in 1999 dollars) when I had been willing to supply it in 50-hour-per-week chunks, but now that I was only willing to work 35 hours per week or less, my time was only worth about $10 per hour (in 2002 dollars) for the same credentials and skill set? A 71% penalty! Surely it couldn’t be THAT cumbersome to manage part-timers in the workforce? And the cost of benefits didn’t explain it - I was perfectly willing to take no-benefits jobs because my husband had good insurance, but I still couldn’t get anywhere near my former wage. Finally when we reached the concept of “signalling,” I said “Bingo!” Just as employers prefer college degrees for jobs that don’t require them because a college degree handily signals that the employee can work responsibly toward a long-term goal, I think the willingness to work long hours is a signal that employers use to handily measure intangibles like commitment and dedication. As long as we’re all competing as individuals against one another, each of us trying to show that we’re the ideal worker, the power of that signal continues unabated. It’s only when we collectively insist on change that we’ll finally see it.

I think the measure that would create the most change would be to enact part-time parity legislation. If people could cut back their hours without getting fired and without taking a 70% hit on their per-hour pay, you’d see so many women and men asking for reduced schedules that it would become a new norm. Parents of young children want it, people approaching retirement want it, Gen-Xers and Gen-Yers want it. If we protect the right to ask for it, the demand will be there.

My second observation is that we are hearing much more than is normally tolerated about the comparisons between support for workers and families here in the U.S. vs. (any!) other countries. Roz just reviewed the list. This information was reiterated in the recent hearing on work and family in the House of Representatives last month (in itself an intriguing development; supposed a first of a series, altho this is not clear). It was echoed in the pages of the DOL’s recent report that summarizes the tens of thousands of comments it solicited about the FMLA last winter. I’m hoping against hope that this might be one tiny but not insignificant shred of evidence for Mary Devereaux’s (the futurist) contention that when something is genuinely untenable (like our healthcare system and our lack of Federal family policy), it will (eventually) break apart and be replaced. With what, we might ask? I personally think that is in large part our collective responsibility, those of us who operate at the intersection between the worker, the family, the workplace and the community. I can’t help being occasionally excited by the prospect of all the change that is going to overtake Washington, D.C. in the next 2 years. Maybe some of it will be positive. Is it prophetic or mere coincidence that my own organization is opening an office in DC at the end of this year?

To start with the study doesn’t define what “part-time” work means. “Part-time” has long been a term used to describe very casual, usually low-paid jobs. In the PEW study, a female doctor who chooses to work four days a week instead of five is tossed into the same category as the bored housewife who works a few hours a week at a local retail store.

Also, the PEW study asked working mothers what their “ideal” work situation would look like, and most respondents said they’d like to work less. Who wouldn’t—especially in today’s pressured, on-call-all the-time work culture. But the study didn’t ask women, for example, whether they would prefer to work part time if such jobs offered much lower wages, little opportunity for advancement, and boring work.

And what women say they want is at odds with what they actually do. In the US, just 24 percent of working mothers have part-time hours, labor statistics show, and mothers working part time have not increased in number in the last decade. No wonder. Most part-time jobs are crummy jobs, with little prestige and low pay. Past research shows that most workers, men and women, say they’d prefer to work fewer hours if they could do so with no great loss in pay—but wouldn’t cut back if they’d earn a lot less.

What mothers most likely want is not part-time, pin-money jobs, but good jobs that give them flexibility to spend time with their families.

U. S. working mothers might want fewer hours, even if they can’t afford to work fewer hours because they have fewer supports than women in other countries:
• 37 countries guarantee parents some type of paid leave when children fall ill. The US does not.
• 163 countries offer paid maternity leave. The US does not.
• All industrialized countries except Australia offer paid family and medical leave, the US does not. And Australia guarantees a full year of unpaid leave while the US offers 12 weeks.
• 45 countries offer paternity leave. The US does not.
• 96 countries mandate paid annual leave. The US does not.
• The US is tied for 39th with Ecuador and Surinam for enrollment in early- childhood education for 3-5 year olds.

Moreover, the PEW study gives the impression that women are looking for more family time while fathers seem unconcerned about this issue. Again, that’s not what the larger research picture says.