Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought new attention to the burdens of unwaged and unrecognized care labor, which are often shouldered by women. In March 2020, headlines highlighted how the sudden unavailability of childcare resources forced many women out of the workforce as they assumed expanded childcare duties. The contradictions and limits of the social policy approach to care labor in America, however, long predate the pandemic.
Legislators across the political spectrum have long embraced a liberal, individualist ideology and set their sights on eliminating low-income mothers’ “dependency” on public programs (Fraser and Gordon, 1994). The resulting social policy regime pushes low-income mothers, and particularly women of color, into wage labor, often in the form of precarious, low-wage service jobs. Government-backed childcare resources are limited, and access is restricted: the federally funded Head Start program is heavily means-tested according to federal poverty guidelines, and its implementation varies widely by state. Therefore, with most American families forced to navigate private childcare markets, a lack of affordable, accessible, high-quality options pushes many working mothers back into the home. As Leah Ruppanner observes in Motherlands (2020), “the financial squeeze of childcare is greatest among middle-class mothers who lack sufficiently high total family incomes to afford formal care and who do not qualify for means-tested subsidized care” (p. 31).
The United States policy environment cannot be analyzed as a singular “welfare state”—variations in policy design and implementation produce significant differences across state and regional boundaries. In her analysis of these differences, Ruppanner explores a noteworthy paradox: states with high levels of “gender empowerment,” where women are represented in state legislatures, hold greater economic power, and participate in higher-status areas of the labor market, are often sites of strained, cost-prohibitive childcare markets that prevent women from reentering the workforce. Meanwhile, states with strong “childcare regimes” offer affordable, accessible, high-quality care options. Postpartum mothers in these states are more likely to return to full-time work. In other words, “progressive” states that place social and cultural value on women‘s independence often fail to enact policies that support working mothers as they attempt to balance work and family, but “conservative” states where heteropatriarchal family structures are valorized often offer superior childcare resources, enabling mothers to maintain careers outside the home. Possible explanations offered by Ruppanner‘s research include a low cost of living, the prevalence of church-subsidized daycare programs, and strong markets for feminized “pink-collar” labor in “childcare-regime” states. Readers who are interested in exploring the historical and theoretical linkages between a conservative social order and the liberal American welfare state would enjoy Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism by Melinda Cooper (2017).
Using regression analysis and demographic mapping, Ruppanner explores how various regional, cultural, political, and policy factors facilitate mothers’ successful continuation of full-time work. Ruppanner proposes a four-type typology of U.S. welfare states along the axes of “gender empowerment” and “childcare regimes,” with the ideal type ranking highly in both regards. By focusing exclusively on married mothers, Ruppanner attempts to test how various approaches to childcare policy come to bear on the tradeoff between mothers’ capacity as independent earners and their financial dependence on breadwinning partners. As Ruppanner admits, the analysis in Motherlands does not address racial and ethnic disparities, the unique challenges of single mothers who have no choice but to negotiate childcare while also earning wages, and the varying forms of family and kinship networks outside the married pair. However, the broad trends and typologies of welfare states in Motherlands offer an important starting point for future studies in the field of family policy.
To meet the needs of working families, Ruppanner argues that we need to advance universal, rather than means-tested, childcare programs. Washington, D.C. presents a promising blueprint: around 70% of eligible three- and four-year-olds participate in the District‘s universal preschool program, which accomplishes a twofold mission of boosting children‘s school readiness and increasing maternal employment (p. 106). Additionally, policies that increase work flexibility, such as shorter work weeks and flexible hours, would support parents attempting to balance care work with wage labor. Not only does flexible scheduling offer mothers more options for structuring the hours and conditions of their labor, but it also increases opportunities for families to share childcare responsibilities between partners. As social welfare policy shapes the social and cultural environment of a state, solutions that promote more democratic, egalitarian gender roles within families could significantly impact the working conditions of women. To that end, Ruppanner suggests that we must stop framing childcare and maternal employment as a “women‘s issue” and instead treat it as a collective social problem requiring a serious, multi-dimensional approach.
Social workers, as members of a feminized “helping profession,” are well aware of how the burden of care often falls on women. As childcare and housework are often unwaged and unrecognized forms of labor, professional care work all too often takes the form of precarious low-wage, low-status jobs, which are disproportionately held by women. As we strive to promote childcare policies that support mothers balancing the demands of family and work, we must continuously work to strengthen the quality and conditions of care labor—including our own.