In the deep quiet of a still dark morning Renee reaches her arm out from under her thick flowered comforter and across the bed to hit the snooze button on her alarm clock. For a few blessed (and pre-planned) minutes she avoids the wakeful classic rock blaring into her bedroom from her alarm. Renee hits the snooze button exactly three times before finally casting off her covers. She does this each morning, and each morning she sleepily thinks the same thing, “It’s too early. I was just at work two seconds ago, and I don’t want to go back already.”
Everything about Renee’s morning is structured for speed and efficiency. At 5:45 A.M., with her young son, Wade, and husband, Alan, still sleeping, Renee drags herself out of bed and sleepwalks to the shower. She brushes her teeth while the shower is warming, making sweeping circles on the mirror with her hand so she can see her reflection. Renee’s movements, though she’s thoroughly tired, are crisp, hurried, and automatic—she’s repeated the routine daily for several years.
Renee knows exactly how long each of her morning tasks will take to the minute. That, for instance, between 6:00 A.M. and 6:12 A.M. she needs to put on her makeup, get herself dressed, get her son’s clothes out and ready for the day, and get downstairs to the kitchen to start breakfast.
All this is done with an eye on the clock and a subtle, yet constant, worry about time, “I’m always worried that I’m going to be late to work.” Her mind loops over the potential delays that could be ahead, “Is there going to be traffic? Am I going to get stuck behind a school bus? Is my son going to act normal when I drop him off or is he going to be stuck to my leg? Am I going to get a parking space in the office garage or am I going to have to run five blocks through the city to get to work on time?” And if there isn’t any garage parking, which happens often, then in order to be on time to work Renee has to run up six flights of stairs in heels because she doesn’t have extra time to waste waiting for an elevator. She’s done this climb more than once.
Why the stress? At her work, if Renee is late more than six times, then she’s in danger of losing her job. Like many American mothers, Renee needs her income to help provide for her family.
In our modern economy, where more often than not two wage earners are needed to support a family, American women now make up 46 percent of the entire paid labor force. In fact, a study released in June of 2005 found that in order to maintain income levels, parents have to work more hours—two parent families are spending 16 percent more time at work or 500 more hours a year than in 1979 just to keep up.Women, and mothers, are in the workplace to stay. Yet public policy and workplace structures have yet to catch up.
For example, the option of flextime would make a world of difference for Renee and her family, “Flextime would make a huge difference in my life because with my job function there are busy days and late days. As long as I’m there 40 hours a week and get my job done, then I don’t know why anyone would care. I don’t understand why there’s such an 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. ‘law’ in my workplace.”
Renee lives for her family. Even with her harried mornings, she always saves time for a fifteen-minute morning cuddle on the couch with her young son, Wade, before they rush out the door. They chat while snuggling and greet the day together.
Each morning as her husband, Alan, who owns a tiling company, gets going to work, it falls to Renee to drive Wade to daycare on her way to work as a payroll specialist at a large bank. It’s Renee’s job that provides the health insurance and other benefits for her family since her husband owns his own business.
At 7 A.M. sharp Renee and Wade get into the green family Windstar and start driving. Freeway traffic is often stop-and-go during the morning commute, and Renee regularly finds herself sitting in traffic with white knuckles worrying about being late to work. “I have to wake up, wake my kid up, deal with a morning tantrum, drop him off at daycare, fight traffic, agonize about whether I am a horrible mother for leaving him at daycare, worry if I’m going to be late to work—and that’s just the morning before my work day starts at 8 A.M.,” says Renee.
Seemingly mundane challenges like these, Renee tells us, become overwhelming when coupled with the financial anxieties that face so many families in America. Renee and Alan would like to have a second child, but they worry that they simply can’t afford one right now. For them, the high cost of childcare for Wade, lack of flextime at work, and daily expenses, all add up to just a one-child family.
“It’s horrible when you are considering whether or not you can ever have another child based on if you will be able to get ahead,” comments Renee, “and by no means do we live, or want to live extravagantly: we just want two cars, two kids, and a vacation here and there.”
Renee and millions of other parents across the country are seriously struggling to meet the demands of work and parenthood. Vast numbers of women are chronically tired and drained. But the American credo teaches us to be fierce individualists, with the result that most parents toil in isolation and can’t envision, or don’t expect, help. But when this many families are struggling, it’s time to recognize we have common problems that can be most constructively addressed through working together to bring about broad and meaningful change in our families, communities, workplaces, and nation.
Motherhood is perhaps the most important, and most difficult, job on the planet. While we raise our children out of an innate sense of love and nurturing, we also know that raising happy, healthy children who become productive adults is critical to our future well-being as a nation.
But right now, motherhood in America is at a critical juncture. As women’s roles continue to evolve, more women than ever are in the workforce, and more children than ever are raised in homes without a stay-at-home parent.3 At the same time, public and private policies that affect parenting and the workplace remain largely unchanged. We have a twenty-first century economy stuck with an outdated industrial-era family support structure. The result is that parents, mothers in particular, are struggling to balance the needs of their children with the demands of the workplace.
Being a mom in America today involves prodigious amounts of work at home and, for most mothers, in outside jobs as well. Specifically, among all of the moms in America, almost three-quarters have jobs outside of their homes.4 America’s mothers are working, and working hard. Then, too, America’s mothers are working hard but for less money than men (and less money than women who are not moms). In fact, right now the wage gap between mothers and non-mothers is greater than between women and men—and it’s actually getting bigger. Non-mothers with an average age of thirty earn 10 percent less than their male counterparts; mothers earn 27 percent less; and single mothers earn between 34 percent and 44 percent less.5 “It is well-established that women with children earn less than other women in the United States,” writes Jane Waldfogel of Columbia University in The Journal of Economic Perspectives. “Even after controlling for differences in characteristics such as education and work experience, researchers typically find a family penalty of 10–15 percent for women with children as compared to women without children.”6
What this also means is that it’s still common for women and men to hold the same job and receive different pay. In fact, women lost a cent between 2002 and 2003, according to the U.S. Census, and now make 76 cents to a man’s dollar.7 Most of these wage hits are coming from moms because the lower wages they receive drag down the overall average pay for all women.
The United States has a serious mommy wage gap. Why? Because, as Waldfogel writes, “The United States does at least as well as other countries in terms of equal pay and equal opportunity legislation, but . . . the United States lags in the area of family policies such as maternity leave and childcare.”8 Studies show this mommy wage gap is directly correlated with our lack of family friendly national policies like paid family leave and subsidized childcare. In countries with these family policies in place, moms don’t take such big wage hits.
Speak to mothers across the nation and you will hear that the vast majority of them find they hit an economic “maternal wall” after having children. By all accounts, this wall is why a huge number of professional women leave the workforce, as well as a core reason so many mothers and their children live in poverty. Tragically, statistics from 2001 reveal that in the United States of America—land of opportunity—a full one-quarter of families with children under age six earned less than $25,000 that year.9 An income level that is so low most families of four would qualify for food stamps.10
But mothers across America are not just crying out for better (or at least fair and equal) pay; they are also yearning to live a life in which they aren’t cracking under pressure, a life in which they know that their children will be well cared for, a life in which it’s possible to be at home with their son or daughter even just one afternoon a week without worrying about sacrificing a disproportionate amount of their income and benefits—or simply losing their job altogether.
Some would argue mothers just need to find the proper balance between parenting and career. We believe there is more to it than that.
While Renee’s story captures the essence of what millions of working American women face each morning; Kiki’s daunting experiences simply trying to find a job shows just how deeply rooted, and widely accepted, discriminating against mothers is in our country.
A single mother of two, Kiki moved to a small, one stoplight Pennsylvania town in 1994. She was truly on her own. Her husband had left several years earlier, when her children were two and four years old. Kiki hadn’t known how she’d make it as a single parent until her mother, a petite powerhouse and survivor of a World War II Russian gulag, stepped in to help. But when Kiki’s mother passed away a decade later, there was nothing to keep Kiki in the Long Island city where she’d been living. The rapid property tax increases in Kiki’s carefully landscaped neighborhood of gorgeous Cape Cod homes were quickly exceeding her economic reach as a single working mother. So Kiki left in search of a smaller city with a lower cost of living.
With this move, Kiki and the kids were alone in a new town that had just two supermarkets and several diners serving a variety of aromatically enticing pork, sauerkraut, and dumpling dishes. It was just the change she wanted. Kiki was able to buy a Dutch Colonial Cape Cod house at the top of a “small mountain” in the Poconos with nearly two acres of land for a fraction of the price of her old house. It seemed ideal, until she started looking for a job to support her family.
On a hot, humid August day, at an interview for a legal secretary position in a one-story brick building, Kiki sat down in a hard wooden chair to face a middle-aged attorney ensconced behind a mahogany desk. His framed diplomas lined the walls, and legal books filled the shelves behind him. Kiki remembers the attorney clearly, even his general height at 5’10” and the color of his light brown hair. The interaction was significant enough to remain seared in her mind’s eye a decade later. “The first question the attorney asked me when I came in for the interview was, ‘Are you married?’ The second was, ‘Do you have children?’ ”
It was the eleventh job interview in which she’d been asked the very same questions since moving to Pennsylvania. After answering eleven times that she wasn’t married, and that yes indeed, she was a mother of two, Kiki began to understand why her job search was taking so long.
She decided to address the issue head on this time, “I asked him how those questions were relevant to the job, and he said my hourly wage would be determined by my marital and motherhood status.” Kiki then asked the next obvious question: “How do you figure out an hourly wage based on these questions?”
His response was as candid as it was horrifying, “He said if you don’t have a husband and have children, then I pay less per hour because I have to pay benefits for the entire family.” The attorney noted that a married woman’s husband usually had health insurance to cover the kids, and since Kiki didn’t have a husband, he was very clear that he “didn’t want to get stuck with the bill for my children’s health coverage.”
Kiki started to get angry, “The weather was warm, and it was warm in the office, and then when I got angry it got a lot warmer!”
It was the first time Kiki pushed for an explanation, and she was appalled by the answer. “I said to him, ‘You mean to tell me that if I am doing the exact same work, typing the same exact subpoena as a coworker, you’re going to pay me less because I have no husband and have kids?’ And he very smugly told me, ‘Yes, absolutely.’ ”
He couldn’t do that, it was illegal, Kiki wondered, wasn’t it? The attorney countered that it was perfectly legal—and as an attorney, he ought to know. He invited Kiki to check out the law herself and then ushered her out the door (without a job, of course).
Furious, Kiki went straight home, her black and silver 1989 Chevy Blazer hugging every curve as she drove up the winding road to her house. She got out of her car, stomped across the crushed stone pathway to her front door, flung her canvas purse on the couch, and called the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. She found out that the lawyer was right. The questions were legal, as was paying a single mother less than other applicants. Pennsylvania, like scores of states, does not have state employment laws that protect mothers.
The sad truth is that Kiki isn’t struggling alone. Recent Cornell University research by Dr. Shelley Correll confirmed what many American women are finding: Mothers are 44 percent less likely to be hired than non-mothers who have the same résumé, experience, and qualifications; and mothers are offered significantly lower starting pay (study participants offered non-mothers an average of $11,000 more than mothers) for the same job as equally qualified non-mothers.11 The “maternal wall” is a reality we must address if we value both fair treatment in the workplace and the contributions working mothers make to our economy.
Stories like those of Renee and Kiki, confirm something just isn’t right about what we’re doing—or not doing—to address the needs of mothers across our nation. Some companies and states are adjusting and innovating with family friendly programs, but such programs are not the norm.12 Mothers and their families are hurting. We need to open a whole new conversation about motherhood in the twenty-first century by illuminating the universal needs of America’s mothers and spelling out concrete solutions that will provide families—whether rich, poor, or middle class—with real relief.
Frankly, we are at a transition point in American history. While most mothers work in this country, we simply don’t have sufficient supports in place for parents and families. To suggest that mothers just need to find the proper balance between work and family is to profoundly misunderstand the issue. The truth is that our society hasn’t caught up to support the unprecedented diversity of roles modern women take on in a single day. At the heart of the matter is the need for change.
National policies and programs with proven success in other countries—like paid family leave, flexible work options, subsidized childcare and preschool, as well as healthcare coverage for all kids—are largely lacking in America. These problems are deeply interconnected and often overlap: Without paid family leave parents often have to put their infants in extremely expensive or substandard childcare facilities; families with a sick child, inadequate healthcare coverage, and no flexible work options often end up in bankruptcy (indeed illness is one of the top causes of bankruptcy).
On the up side, fixing one of these problems often has numerous positive repercussions. Family friendly workplace policies are becoming more common, drawing more attention and support because companies that do this well are thriving. These companies are thriving because they have lower employee turnover, enhanced productivity and job commitment from employees, and consequently lower recruiting and retraining costs.13 The good news is there are plenty of workplace success stories, and we can learn from these successes. Our country can change—and together we can launch the movement to see to it that it does.
To spark this deeply important motherhood revolution, we introduce our Manifesto Points, each of which is explored in the subsequent chapters. Specifically, we ask our readers to support:
By tackling these interconnected problems together—rather than in isolation—we create a powerful system of support for families. No mother should have to choose between caring for her infant and feeding her children. Working together, we can improve the quality of our lives. And we can make sure our children inherit a world in which they will thrive as adults and future parents. The Motherhood Manifesto is a call to action, summoning all Americans—mothers, and all who have mothers—to start a revolution to make motherhood compatible with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
1. MOTHERHOOD IN AMERICA ENDNOTES:
1. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Employed Persons by Occupation, Sex and Age,” 2003-2004, Table 9, Page 207, www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat9.pdf (accessed January 2006).
2. New America Foundation, “New America Foundation Proposes Bold Workplace Flexibility Policy for All Working Parents and Releases Data Showing Families Running Harder to Stay in Place,” news release, June 23, 2005, www.newamerica.net/Download_Docs/pdfs/Doc_File_2438_1.pdf.
3. American women now make up 47 percent of the entire paid labor force. Women aged twenty-five to thirty-four have seen a dramatic rise in labor. force participation, from 63 percent in 1975 to a much higher 81 percent in 1999. A full 72 percent of American mothers work outside of the home. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Employed Persons by Occupation, Sex and Age”; Deirdre Gaquin, Special Tabulations of the March 1975 and March 2000 Current Population Surveys (Women’s Research and Education Institute, 2001), in Cynthia B. Costello et al., The American Woman 2003–2004: Daughters of a Revolution—Young Women Today (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 62; and Barbara Downs, Fertility of American Women: June 2002, Current Population Reports, U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, D.C., 2003, www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/p20-548.pdf.
4. Downs, Fertility of American Women: June 2002.
5. In 1980, mothers earned 56 percent of men’s salaries, while non-mothers earned 66 percent (a 10 percent mommy wage gap). But by 1991, nonmothers’ earnings rocketed to 90.1 percent, while mothers earned only 72.6 percent (an increased 17.5 percent mommy wage gap). SOURCE: Jane Waldfogel, “Understanding the ‘Family Gap’ in Pay for Women with Children,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 12, no. 1 (1998): 137–156.
6. Jane Waldfogel, “Understanding the ‘Family Gap’ in Pay for Women with Children,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 12, no. 1 (1998), 137–156.
7. U.S. Census Bureau, “People: Income and Employment,” 2005, http://factfinder.census.gov/jsp/saff/SAFFInfo.jsp?_pageId=tp6_income_employment.
8. Waldfogel, “Understanding the ‘Family Gap.’ ”
9. Children’s Defense Fund calculations, based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey Annual Demographic Supplement,Detailed Income Tables, “Table FINC-03. Presence of Related Children Under 18 Years Old—All Families, by Total Money Income in 2001, Type of Family Work Experience in 2001, Race and Hispanic Origin of Reference Person,” ferret.bls.census.gov/macro/032002/faminc/new03_000.htm.
10. USDA Food and Nutrition Service, “Fact Sheet on Resources, Income, and Benefits,” October 2005, www.fns.usda.gov/fsp/applicant_recipients/fs_Res_Ben_Elig.htm.
11. Shelley Correll, “Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty?” (paper presented at the American Sociological Association’s 100th annual meeting in Philadelphia, PA, August 15, 2005); Daniel Aloi, “Mothers Face Disadvantages in Getting Hired, Cornell Study Says,” Cornell University News Service, August 4, 2005, www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Aug05/soc.mothers.dea.html.
12. Jyoti Thottam, “Reworking Work,” Time, July 25, 2005, www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1083900,00.html; James T. Bond et al., 2005 National Study of Employers: Highlights of Findings (Families and Work Institute, 2005), familiesandwork.org/summary/2005nsesummary.pdf; and Families and Work Institute, “2005 National Study of Employers Reveals Changes in Work Life Assistance Offered to America’s Employees,” news release, October 13, 2005, familiesandwork.org/press/2005nserelease.html#nse.
13. Bond et al., 2005 National Study; and Families and Work Institute, “2005 National Study of Employers Reveals Changes.”
14. U.S. Census Bureau, “Table H1: Percent Childless and Births per 1,000 Women in the Last Year: Selected Years, 1976 to Present,” October 23, 2003, www.census.gov/population/socdemo/fertility/tabH1.pdf.
15. xvi. Gaquin, Special Tabulations. in Costello et al., The American Woman 2003–2004, 62.
16. Waldfogel, “Understanding the ‘Family Gap.’ ”
17. U.S. Census Bureau, “People: Income and Employment.”
18. Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce, “Off Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success,” Harvard Business Review, March 2005.