In this book, Neil Gilbert examines how capitalism, feminism, and the state influence lifestyle choices and the changing role of motherhood. They do so, he argues, by generating norms, values, and hence social pressures that subordinate motherhood to the market. Gilbert, the social policy professor for whom I worked as a graduate student at the School of Social Welfare, U.C. Berkeley, thirty-six years ago, argues that the main policy approaches to harmonizing work and family--"family-friendly" and gender-neutralizing policies--both subordinate family to work. They assume and support the male model in which paid work starts early and is continuous. The traditional model of a father who provides and protects and a woman who manages the home and nurtures the children has given way to one in which both parents give priority of time and effort to the labor market. Periods in which the mother absents herself from work in order to have children are seen as "interruptions" and the aim of policymakers and feminist pundits--is to get mothers, whether they are on welfare or pursuing high-powered careers--back into the labor market as early as possible.
Gilbert shares the general view that "something must be done" to harmonize work and family life. But what? There are, he says, two common policy approaches to this challenge:
1) So-called family-friendly policies; and
2) Gender-neutralizing policies.
1) "Family-friendly" measures to allow mothers with young children to work include, for example,
a. Early child care
b. Paid parental leave
c. Part-time work
d. Such voluntary measures as flexible hours, special family leave, telephone access.
Gilbert illustrates this approach with the example of the University of California system, which provides its tenure-track faculty with day care for toddlers; two years' leave from the tenure track; a part-time option; paid maternity leave; and paid relief from teaching for two semesters (p.161).
2) Gender-neutralizing policies aim at modifying traditional gender roles in relation to both work and family life by such measures as:
a. Parental leave reform (so that the full benefit requires fathers to take some of the leave).
This second approach is a remarkable case of how policy-makers and "gender feminists" often differ markedly from the mass of the population--in Sweden, the pioneer of such policies, as in the U.S. In both countries less than half of parents think that men and women should participate equally in paid employment and child care. Swedish men take a small percentage of the leave they are entitled to and the men who take such parental leave are concentrated among highly educated men in the public sector. There is a common notion that such fathers as do take the leaves, time them to coincide with major sporting events like the Winter Olympics. But the truth seems to be that they are taken in the summer and around Christmas as a way to extend vacation time.
The views of those who developed and passed such policies into law are in stark contrast to the views of most married parents now as in the past. Women as well as men find substantial benefits for the family in a degree of specialization and division of labor. That, as Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher argue, is an important advantage of marriage in the first place (
The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially). In Sowell's terms Waite and Gallagher respect the collective, historical wisdom implicit in the ways millions of people over many generations have shaped the institution of marriage through living out their lives and passing on to their children what they have learned from experience and the experience of earlier generations. The policy elites see the masses as lagging behind the views of the enlightened. Their policies are based, not on what women actually want, but on what enlightened elites think they should want. This divergence does not seem explicable in terms of the masses of women lagging behind their more advanced leaders but all moving in the same direction. "From 1997 to 2007," according to a Pew Research Center study that Gilbert cites, "the percentage of both employed and at-home mothers who considered full-time work to be their ideal situation declined by one-third" (p.170).
Most important from Gilbert's perspective, both the "family-friendly" and gender-neutralizing approaches to harmonizing work and family life do so by subordinating the latter to the former. The aim is to increase and maintain female labor force participation by moving mothers with young children into paid employment on the male model. (Hence the quotes around "family-friendly" since these policies seek to increase women's paid work by easing the competing demands and "interruptions" of children. Thus gender feminists, in particular, favor for women an early start on their careers and continuous work to retirement with minimal or no interruption for raising even young children.
In contrast to these work-oriented policies that promote mother-child separation in order to promote lifelong paid work on the male model, Gilbert proposes an alternative. He does not seek to scrap these separationist policies (Eberstadt's term) that ease female labor force participation, but proposes increasing the options for women in ways that allow for them to choose to give higher priority to their children.
This alternative to the male model Gilbert calls the sequential pattern of labor force participation and parenting at home. In line with the constrained vision, he does not offer either a comprehensive list of policy options or a blueprint for any particular initiative. Rather, he says, "My purpose is to broaden public perceptions of the choices and help reframe the debate..." (p.165).
Possibilities for policy that supports the sequential pattern and widens the lifestyle options for mothers of young children are:
3) Sequential pattern
a. Home care allowance (but for families without a breadwinner, this would require alternatives to employment-based health insurance)
b. Credit-sharing--e.g., community property laws and credit splitting for Social Security and pension benefits, dividing equally the rights to such assets acquired since marriage.
Gilbert has braved much controversy and hostility in the politically correct world of social work and social welfare to follow the evidence and the logic of his argument.
Gilbert seeks to show how feminism, the market, and social policy shape family life. In different ways, these material and ideological pressures all work together to push women into the male career model, prioritizing work over family life from the earliest years of motherhood.
Gilbert examines the forces that shape those millions of individual decisions--feminism, capitalism, and policy. All, he argues, seek to harmonize work and family at the expense of family. They are not neutral about the matter, seeking only to expand women's options. Like Linda Hirshman
Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World, they all prioritize mothers' labor force participation on the male model--work early and work continuously. As others have compellingly shown, the solution Gilbert critiques sacrifices both the needs of children (Mary Eberstadt,
Home-Alone America: The Hidden Toll of Day Care, Behavioral Drugs, and Other Parent Substitutes) and the wants of women (Susan Pinker,
The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women and the Real Gender Gap).
