User:BeckMarin/Work–family balance in the United States

Article Draft

Legislation[edit]

Mother's Pensions of 1910 [new]

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, 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.

Head Start of 1965 [new]

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. 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), 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 [new]

In 1988, the Family Support Act 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 [new]

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.

Child Care Development Fund of 1996 [new]

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 [new]

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.

Effects on families[edit]

Problems affecting middle-class families[edit]

Ideology of motherhood[edit]

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." 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. 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 are often critiqued for not pursuing meaningful careers. They respond by saying that the childcare and other domestic work 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 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.

Solutions[edit]

~last para~

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 {as indicated in Burger} 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 {As indicated in Palley and Shdaimah’s research}. Current policies are motivated by the improvement of children’s development, facilitating employment among mothers, or alleviating poverty.