Symposium: Women and Conservative Politics

FAMILY LIFE: SOLD ON WORK

Nell Gilbert r]"~he women's movement for equal opportunity in the

! 1960s spawned tremendous gains in education and labor force participation. Women's share of college en- rollments increased from 37 percent in 1960 to 57 per- cent in 2002. Since the mid-1980s more bachelors and masters degrees have been awarded annually to women than men. And women are increasingly going on to ca- reers in high status occupations, such as medicine, law, business, and higher education. Overall the female la- bor force participation rate climbed from 37 percent in 1960 to 60 percent in 2002. These developments have been accompanied by the expansion of family-friendly social policies designed to harmonize the competing de- mands of family life and work.

The core family-friendly policies include day care, parental leave benefits, preschool programs, and other publicly subsidized measures to reduce the friction be- tween raising young children and holding a job. In the United States, federal and state expenditures on childcare programs for low-income families amounted to $14.1 billion in 1999 and another $2 billion was distributed to the middle classes through the childcare tax credit. The Family Medical Leave Act provides 12 weeks of un- paid job-protected leave for workers in companies of 50 or more employees. Western European countries have a more extensive system of family-friendly policies with more generous parental leaves and publicly financed child care covering, for example, 70 percent of chil- dren from three years to school age in France, Ger- many, Belgium, Denmark and other countries.

The problem with family-friendly policies is that for many, if not most, two-earner couples with regular jobs and two children under six years of age there are not enough hours in the day to harmonize work and family life. Caring for young children is relentless and labor intensive work; they must be washed, fed, dressed, read to, driven to day care, taken to doctors, dentists, bar- bers, and shoe stores, not to mention extra-curricular activities. And for most of their waking hours children crave attention from their caretakers.

According to estimates from the Urban Institute 52 percent of children under five years of age with moth- ers employed full-time are in daycare for 35 hours a

week or more. A brief period of parental leave followed by 4-to-5 years of full-time day care services certainly makes work possible for two-earner families. Whether these arrangements lubricate the tensions of combining work and family or anaesthetize what is left of family life is an open question. But childcare and other family- friendly policies are not the only approach to reducing the frictions of work and family life.

There is another approach to reducing the tension between work and family life, which many women have decided to take. Throughout the advanced industrial- ized nations, the steep rise in female labor force partici- pation since 1960 has been accompanied by a decline in fertility. In the Unites States fertility rates dropped by 46 percent from 3.4 in 1960 to 1.84 in 1985 as female labor force participation climbed by 45 percent (from 37.7 percent to 54.5 percent). (Labor force participa- tion rates have increased slightly since 1985 along with fertility rates.) Correlation does not necessarily estab- lish causality. But one need not rely on correlations to conclude that the daily life of two-earner families is a lot more manageable without children or with one child than with two or more children. And indeed the data reveal that in 2002 labor force participation among mothers with one child was proportionately 15 percent higher than that of mothers with two or more children. Although it is possible that in the absence of family- friendly policies the decline in fertility would have been even greater, the negative trend remains. In Western European countries, with their more powerful arsenals of family-friendly policy, the birth rates have fallen even lower than ill the U.S.-- to well below replacement rates

Tile decline in fertility rates has been accompanied by a major shift in the distribution of the number of children among women. As shown in Figure 1,between 1976 and 2002 the proportion of women over 40 years of age that had either no children or one child increased by 80 percent.

There are many reasons why family life has been abondoned in favor of work. One explanation is that women have d i f fe ren t p red i spos i t ions toward childrearing, which mitigate or override the influences of biology and patriarchal socialization. According to

12 SOCIETY " �9 MARCH/APRIL 2005

Year 1976 1980 1985 1990 1995 1998 2000 2002

Figure 1

Percent Distribution of W o m e n 40 to 44 Years By N u m b e r of Children

N u m b e r of Children

0 1 10.2 9.6

17.9 17

2 \ 3 or more 21.7 ~ 58.6

35.4 \ 29.3

Source of Data: Barbara Downs, "'Fertility Rate of American Women: June 2002,'" Current Popuhition Reports (Oct.2003) U.S. Census Bureau, Table 2

this view, the changing rates of fertility and family size reflect the fact that most women have only recently gained the opportunity to exercise their preferences due to adwmces in contraceptive technology and women's rights.

Freed from biological determinism and traditional social expectations the shift away from motherhood and toward a work-or ien ted l i festyle represents what Catherine Hakim argues is "'the 'normal" distribution of women's responses to the conflict between family and employment." Another explanation suggests that although some women's choices may reflect clearly different predispositions for work and family life, the choices of many others are influenced by the societal context--what may look like a "'normal" distribution varies in response to policy incenlives and social ex- pectations. From this perspective it is the pattern of female socialization that has changed in response to modern expectations about the good life for women, which elevate the satisfactions of material comfort, oc- cupational achievements , and independence over childrearing and domestic accomplishments.

One reason often given for the rise of two-earner families and the decline in family size is that it costs too much for a family to live on a single average in- come and raise two or more children. Economic neces- sity is real. Certainly there are some women who would prefer not to work and have more children but are com- pelled to work outside the home and have fewer chil- dren than they desire for reasons of physical survival. However, for most people in the advanced industrial nations what is often considered economic "'necessity" is not a matter of survival bttt of an increasingly conl- fortable material lfl 'estyle--home ownership, automo- biles, color television, air conditioners, and the like.

As illustrated in the fl)llowing table, in 1994 house- holds below the poverty line had access to more mate- rial conveniences than the general population had in 1971. Yet the U.S. fertility rate in 1971 was 2.26 com- pared to 2.01 in 1994.

Poor All households* households

Percent of households with 1994 1971 Washing machine 71.7 71.3 Clothes dryer 50.2 44.5 Dishwasher 19.6 18.8

Refrigerator 97.9 83.3 Freezer 28.6 32.2 Stove 97.7 87.0 Microwave 60.0 < 1.0 Color television 92.5 43.3 VCR 59.7 0 Personal computer 7.4 () Telephone 76.7 93.0 Air conditioner 49.6 31.8 One or more cars 71.8 79.5

W. Michael Cox and Richard Aim "'By Our Own Bootstraps: Economic Opportunity and the l)ynamics of Income l)istribution'" Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Annual Report, 1995, p.22.

Taking another example, data on thirteen European Union countries (shown in Figure 2) reveal that be- tween 1987 and 1996 their average fertility rates de- clined from 1.64 to 1.59 while the average consump- tion on entertainment, recreational and ct, ltural activities climbed from less than 2.5 to over 2.8 percent of their total consumption. As people had fewer children, dis- cretionary spending on pleasurable activities increased.

FAMII.Y I.IFE: SOI,D ON WORK 13

Figure 2 Average fertility rates and average consumption of entertainment as % of total

consumption in 13 European Union countries (1987-1996)*

- -o Fertility z - - Consumption . 2 _ _ _ _ _ 1 . . . . . ' . . . . . 1 _ _ _ _

1 . 6 6 - ~-- -~ ' \,,\ \ /

/ \ , \, z %/ \

1 . 6 4 - -

1 . 6 2 - -

1 . 6 -

1 . 5 8 -

/

\ , ~ / /

/ i "/ \ /,"

/ \ / \ . . . . . . .

/ -

/ . ,~"/ \\

/ , / " , \ / \ ,

/ \ / \

~, ........... ~ J \ \ / ' *

V 1

87 89 91 93

Year

- 3

- 2 . 8

- 2.6

! 2.4

95

�9

Source of data: Eurostat, Eurostat Yearbook " A Statistical Eye on Europe (1987-1997) (Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Community, 1999)

Although it is difficult to draw firm conclusions from these examples, they do not argue that lower fertility rates are strictly associated with economic necessity. It appears that as far as economic considerations go, as- suming a family is not impoverished to start with, the choice to have few or no children is an expression of preference for the tangible pleasures of material con- sumption over the transcendental satisfactions of creat- ing and nurturing a young life.

Claims about the economic necessity for two-earner families frequently ignore two salient points. First, hav- ing children and staying at home to raise them is not necessarily a lifetime occupation. The economic value of parental care and household management is substan- tial during the early years of childhood and declines as children enter school. A home-care commitment of 5 to 10 years leaves most mothers 30 years or more to participate in the paid labor force. The basic choice is not between a one-earner and two-earner family, but how parental labor is divided over the family's life cycle. The real issue is whether in creating a balance between motherhood and employment women follow the male model of starting a lifetime pattern of work immedi- ately after school, which involves the concurrent per-

formance of child-rearing responsibilities and labor force participation or whether they initiate a sequential pattern in which they fully invest their efforts in childrearing and paid employment at different periods over the life cycle.

Obviously, certain career options are foreclosed on women who might opt for the sequential pattern of child rearing and labor force participation rather than follow the male model. Starting in their mid-thirties, it is dif- ficult to become a mathematician, media personality, physicist, doctor, fashion model, professional athlete, politician, and multi-national CEO. Also, there is a higher probability that those who start later in life will not, so to speak, win the race to the top of their career lines. The costs of a following a sequential pattern of full-time motherhood and paid employment involve lower probabilities of reaching the pinnacles of occu- pational success, at which few people arrive in any case. Room at the top is quite limited--the vast majority of people spend their lives laboring in the middle grounds of their occupations.

The second consideration concerns the actual ben- efit derived from two-earner families with children. Although a second income may lift the heads of an

1 4 S O C I E T Y ' " : �9 M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 5

impoverished family above the water line, the added value of the second income in working-and-middle- class two-earner families is often marginal, particularly for those in jobs at the bottom three-quarters of the pay scale. There is considerable shrinkage in the real con- sumption value of the second income once the tab for the loss of the "'hidden" production of traditional house- hold work is taken into account, along with the costs of work-related expenses, and increased taxes. According to Stein Ringen, the loss of family production reduces the income measure of economic growth in Britain by one-third to one-quarter. He notes that when the height- ened stress of two-earner families is factored into the equation, the additional income does not necessarily translate into a higher quality of life.

In the United States, Clair Vickery calculates that 34 percent of the wife's income in a two-earner family is consumed by work-related expenses and taxes. And Kristin Smith estimates that childcare costs alone ac- count for 20 percent of the income of the poor working mothers who paid for these services. The average costs of high quality care for a young child are probably much higher. According to the experts, current stan- dards for quality daycare include staff with at least two years of college, a background in early childhood de- velopment and cardiopulmonary resuscitation training. The recommended ratio for high quality care for chil- dren up to three years old is one caregiver for four children. Simple arithmetic suggests that it would cost $7,500-9,250 per child to fund a modest eight-child center in which the two staff were each paid $20-25,000 a year including benefits and the combined costs of insurance, rent, utilities, equipment, and food amounted to another $20-25,000. This comes to 30-37 percent of the income of women earning $25,0(10--an amount that represents the earnings of more than 70 percent of all women with income in 1998 and 50 percent of the women who worked year-round full-time.

After subtracting childcare, taxes, and work-related costs, what remains of a mother's income would not substantially enhance the lifestyles of many of the two- earner families in which the woman earned less than $25,000. In comparison, the loss of a second income for the two-earner families that included the 2 percent of women who earned more than $75.01)0 in 1998 would generally impose a palpable sense of lifestyle- deprivation.

The normative expectation that women should de- vote their adult life to participation in the labor force is f i rmly rooted in the Nordic count r ies . As Lane Kenworthy explains, the advantage of the Nordic ap- proach is that it "'promotes greater gender equality be- cause it better facilitates mothers' employment in terms

of both joining the labor workforce and limiting the interruption that results from the birth of a child." Al- though the view of childbirth as an interruption in la- bor force participation has not yet gained such com- plete accep t ance in the Uni ted States , modern socialization of women incorporates a mounting ex- pectation for a lifetime of paid employment. This ex- pectation involves more than the need for money to enhance materialistic lifestyles. The idea that two-earner families are required to meet the economic necessities of life is powerfully reinforced by the contemporary view of paid work which is widely associated with the virtues of personal empowerment, achievement and self- realization, particularly by public-opinion makers- - professors, journalists, authors, artists, and pundits I whose jobs tend to provide these benefits.

But the .joys of work are not evenly distributed. Tolstoy may have had it right that happy families re- semble one another, while unhappy families are all mis- erable in their own fashion. Whether they are happy or unhappy at home, however, there is considerably less variance in the demands of child-rearing and home management than in the demands of labor force par- ticipation. To say that there is less variance within home- centered work is not to say that it is less formidable or strenuous than labor force participation, ,just that the range of roles among the latter is more diverse--say from coal mining in the depths of the earth to flying airplanes at 30,000 feet or from sitting on a stool in a factory to a seat on the Board of Directors. The world of paid work encompasses a vast array of activities rang- ing from those that are low status, boring, physically demanding, poorly rewarded and dangerous to those that are high status, exciting, physically easy, well-re- warded, and safe-- the latter being in relatively short supply. The privileged few with high status, stimulat- ing, and well-rewarded jobs tend to experience the vir- tues of empowernaent, achievement and self-realization attributed to labor force participation. They have the kind of jobs in which doing lunch is considered work. But what about the many workers for whonl lunch is a one-hour break froln labor to refuel their bodies for the next shift? Or a mid-day meal they have to lk)rfeit in order to run household errands? The evidence here is telling.

Women seeking to emulate the pleasures of work supposedly enjoyed by men, might ask why the aver- age male worker scurries to enter retirement as quickly as possible. Voting with their feet over the last two decades an increasing. ~ proportion of men in the advanced industrialized nations have been exiting employment well before the standard age of retirement. Thus, the average employment/population ratio for men ages 55

FAMILY I.IFE: SOl.I) ON WORK 15

to 59 in nine major OECD cot, ntries declined from 72.2 percent in 1987 to 69.2 percent, in 1999; for men ages 60 to 64 the ratio declined more steeply from 45.1 per- cent in 1987 to 40.6 percent in 1999. In 1999, on the averaoe~, 50 percent of the men in these countries with- drew from the labour force at the age of 62.3 years or younger (the age for women was 61.1 years) and 25 percent of the men withdrew from the labour force at 58 years of age (57.4 for women) or less.

The attitudes expressed in international surveys con- vey sober evidence about people's preferences for work. Findings from the International Social Survey of over 10,000 respondents in eight OECI) countries reveal that given the choice only 8.8 percent of those in retirement "wanted to spend more time in a paid job." In Europe the phrase "'social exclusion," although used to describe various disadvantages, is most commonly applied to people who are unemployed. The results of the Inter- national Social Survey, however, suggest that a large proportion of the unemployed do not feel all that left out of things. Remarkably, only 55.8 percent of the unemployed workers surveyed indicated wanting to spend more time in a paid job. Similarly for those with part-time jobs only 28 percent wanted to spend more time working,

Finally, family lite has been sold on work because women are expected to be economically independent and socially autonolnous. A wife's financial dependence on her husband is no doubt diminished through labor force participation. But the personal autonomy gained through employment is in a larger sense paradoxical. The wife's economic independence is acquired at the cost of increased dependence on the market economy to meet many family needs previously satisfied within the privacy of the home lot reasons of mutual obligation and personal affection. Outsourcing caring and nmauring functions to day care centers, fast food chains and pizza delivery services depletes the bonds that are forged by the daily interactions and interdependence of family life. More to the point, for most wage labor the independence that comes with a paycheck is accompanied by obedience to the daily authority of supervisors, submission to the schedule and discipline of the work environment, deference to the de- mands of customers, and susceptibility to the vagaries of the marketplace. There are exceptions to the heightened vulnerability to daily oppression from strangers that at- tends wage labor, which include successful artists and writers, tenured professors, media personalities, and those generally at the top of the pyramid in the busi- ness world. These are the relatively small elite group of people for whom work represents a felicitous con- vergence of joy, independence, and meeting the felt necessities of highly affluent lifestyles.

The expansion of employment opportunities and equal rights for women must be ranked among the major social accomplishments of recent times. Consid- erable credit for these achievements rests with the femi- nist movement and its various strands of-~zquity, gen- der, libertarian, and religious feminists. Certainly, women's freedom of choice has been well-served to the extent that the rise of female labor force participa- tion and the decline in fertility and full-time commit- ment to the role of motherhood are an expression of inherent predispositions that clearly favor work-oriented over child-oriented lifestyles. This is no doubt the case for some women. But as noted earlier, other develop- ments may also have influenced the declining commit- ments to motherhood and family life. For some women it is indeed a matter of economic stu'vival, particularly as divorce rates have increased and in-home govern- ment-subsidized supports for single mothers have de- clined. The work-family choices of other women may be influenced by policy incentives, such as day care and other benefits that subsidize a shift in labor from hearth to market. And others may be responding to the modern pattern of female socialization, which incor- porates changing expectations about the necessary con- tributions of occupational achievement and individual independence to the good life.

We do not know precisely how the weight of these alternative influences bears on the declining commit- ment to motherhood. In light of expanding employ- ment opportunities and rights, much of the change might be attributed to the distribution of women's inherent predisposition toward a work-oriented lifestyle. How- ever, according to a 2003 Gallup poll, the desire to have children does not seem to have changed much over the years. Respondents' perceptions of 2.5 children as the average ideal family size were the same in 1980 as in 2003. Among the childless adults over 40 years of age sampled in 2003 over 70 percent indicated that they would have at least one child if they had it to do all over again. Of the entire sample only 4 percent of the respondents did not have or did not want to have chil- dren. When faced with life's many choices, the desire for children may be real and strong, but not as strong as other desires. One might want to have three chil- dren, a large house, a high status well-rewarded career and a yacht to sail around on when not working, mind- ing children, or taking care of the house. Desire does not necessarily reflect preference. Preferences are de- sires ordered according to the degree to which they are favored at the time choices have to be made. Faced with the choice between work and raising two or more children, many women in their 20s and 30s have in- creasingly expressed a preference for work--which has

16 SOCIETY ~ �9 MARCH/APRIl. 2005

profoundly altered the role of naotherhood and the char- acter of modern family life.

It is difficult to distinguish the degree to which women's preferences about work and family life ex- press inherent predispositions (with which they are born) or their socialization about what constitutes the good life. It is the familiar case of nature versus nur- ture. To the extent that the lauer is shaping women's choices about how to combine work and family life, the modern pattern of female socialization bears criti- cal examination. This pattern of socialization raises expectations about the necessity of paid employment, and extols the virtues of labor force participation, while it devalues childrearing and the domestic arts. It em- braces the conventional male model of a continuous line of employment that begins by entering the labor force early in l ife--and endorses the market as the only reahn in which serious people experience personal ac- complishment and self-determination.

As many early retirees will attest, the pleasures of work are greatly overrated. If for many if not most people the idea that labor force participation imparts joy and independence (particularly in contrast to fam- ily life) is a myth, how did it gain such a grip on mod- ern women? This myth has been perpetuated by an elite few in the professional classes for whom it is a real- i t y - p e o p l e who make their livings writing, thinking, and talking. One of the things that they write, talk and think about is how to improve the human condition. "'Gender f emin i s t s , " as described by Christina I loff Sommers, have been among the most influential opin- ion makers concerned with improving the condition of women. The modern pattern of socialization draws heavily on their doctrine, which asserts that all the tra- ditional differences between behaviors of men and women in work and family life are socially constructed. In the absence of expectations cultivated by traditional patriarchal society they claim thai the particulars of a sat- isfying life would be entirely the same for men and women. Thus, gender feminists promote expectations that women should participate equally with men at all levels in the labor force and that men should participate equally with women in every facet of domestic and childrearing ac-

tivity. To date, their effl)rts have been more influential in the socialization of women than men.

Ahhough the social expectations promoted by gen- der feminists confirm the ambitions and inclinations of some women, they do not serve the interests of all women, particularly those in the middle-and-working- classes. Even some high-powered professional women have had second thoughts about modern expectations for the good litE as noted in 2003 by the media alien- lion directed toward successful female lawyers, MBAs, and the like who were leaving glamorous well-paid jobs to stay home with their children. Dubbed members of an "'opt-out revolution," these women seemed to be re- jecting the work-oriented expectations that drove them through college and into graduate educations in Ivy League schools. But the revolution has not yet drawn as many new female recruits as have graduate schools of law, business, and medicine.

To observe that in the choice between work and motherhood, many women have been oversold on the gratifications of labor force participation, is not to ar- gue for a return to the traditional view that women behmg barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. Rather it is to suggest that public discourse on work-family choices would benefit from an evenhanded approach, which gives due consideration to diverse interests and the values of family life. Such an approach would bal- ance the esteem expressed for occupational achievement with appropriate respect and admiration for the joys of mothering and the accomplishments of the domestic arts---and convey equal regard for women engaged on the "'tEst track" of professional life and those who opt for a sequential pattern of motherhood and employ- tnent over the life course.

Neil Gilbert is Chernin Pro.lE~'sor ol'Social We!filre at the University (~[ Cali/ornia. Berkeley. His most recent book,~ include Transformation of the Welfare State: The Silent Surrender of Public Responsibility and two co-edited vol-

umes Changing Patterns of Social Protection ( with Rebe~'~a

A. Van Voorhis) and Welfare Reform: a Comparative As- sessment of the French and U.S. Experiences ( with Antoim'

Parent) both published by 7)'ansaction.

ISSN: 1098-092X

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FAMII.Y LIFE: SOLD ON WORK 17