New Patterns and Pressure Points

American family life has undergone a good many changes in recent decades. For this reason, the family-life-cycle approach is unrepresentative of more and more American families. The traditional concept of the family – in which the husband is the only breadwinner, the wife is a homemaker who is not part of the paid labor force, and there are minor children – may be useful for some purposes, but it does not represent the typical American family today. In fact, less than 7 out of 100 American families currently fit this description. The family-life-cycle approach barely touches on the father’s family contribution, and then only at the time of retire­ment. It makes no reference at all to the mother’s work. Indeed, it fosters the notion that there are two categories of women: those who are married and those with careers. Yet increasing numbers of women are spending a larger amount of time in roles that lie outside the traditional family. So the career woman and the mother may be one and the same person. A good place to begin our consideration of changing family patterns and pressure points, then, is with employed mothers.

Employed Mothers

Perhaps the most dramatic change in the family in this century has been the entry of women into the world of paid work. As we pointed out, sexual in­equality has been sustained historically by assigning the economic-provider role to men and the childrearing role to women. However, over the past several decades in­creasing numbers of mothers with children have found employment outside the home. Sixty percent of Ameri­can children had working mothers in 1987, up from 48 percent in 1977. Twenty-five million of these children were aged 6 to 17, while 11 million were younger than age 6. As the age of their youngest child increases, so does the likelihood that a mother will find employment outside the home. Fifty-two percent of mothers with children aged 1 or younger were working or looking for work in 1987. The figure rose to 59 percent for mothers whose youngest child was 2 years old and to 63 percent for those whose youngest was 4 or 5 years old (Joe Schwartz, 1988d).

Serious concern is frequently voiced about the fu­ture of the nation’s children as more and more mothers enter the workforce (Ricks, 1987; Zinsmeister, 1988). A good many working mothers also experience guilt for not staying home with their children (B. Berg, 1986). Many people fear that the working mother represents a loss to children in terms of supervision, love, and cognitive en­richment (Belsky and Rovine, 1988). Yet overall, an ac­cumulating body of research suggests that there is little difference in the development of children whose moth­ers work and children whose mothers remain at home (Cochran and Gunnarsson, 1985; Meredith, 1986; Mac-Kinnon and King, I988). In fact, many psychologists and sociologists are no longer asking whether it is good or bad that mothers work. Instead, they are finding that a more important issue is whether the mother, regardless of employment, is satisfied with her situation (Stuckey, McGhee, and Bell, 1982; Ainslie, 1984; Ross and Mirowsky, 1988). The working mother who obtains personal satisfaction from employment, and does not feel excessive guilt, and who has adequate household ar­rangements is likely to perform as well as or better than the nonworking mother. Women who are not working and would like to, and working mothers whose lives are beset by harassment and strain, are the ones whose chil­dren are mostly likely to display maladjustment and behavior problems.

With the entry of women into the labor force, ar­rangements for child care are shifting from care in the home to care outside the home. Not only are more mothers working, but so are neighbors, aunts, and grandmothers who once were available for child care. Yet even with these changes, most children under 5 years of age are still taken care of in their own home or in another home (see Figure 13.3). Estimates on the num­ber of latchkey children – defined as youngsters between 5 and 13 years of age who are unsupervised before or after school – range from 2.4 to 7 million. Contrary to popular stereotypes that depict latchkey children as pri­marily from minority group and low-income single-parent homes, most are white and middle class and live in suburban or rural communities (Chollar, 1987). An additional 500,000 preschoolers were in the same pre­dicament. For significant portions of the day or night, many working parents are unable to care personally for their children, and they lack relatives or friends to whom they can turn for reliable babysitting. One answer to this problem is day care. But the quality of the day care cur­rently available and affordable leaves many people dissat­isfied. Ralph Nader, the consumer activist, describes some centers as “children’s warehouses.” And sex-abuse scandals at centers from California to New York have terrified a good many parents. Additionally, low-quality facilities function as networks for spreading a variety of diseases, especially colds, diarrhea, and dysentery (Rick, 1984; Brock, 1986).

The United States is one of the few industrialized nations that does not have a comprehensive day-care program. European nations – particularly Sweden – have established nationally subsidized support systems. In contrast, a 1985 study by the Conference Board, a business research group, found that American parents pay about $3,000 per child a year for out-of-home child care services (Noble, 1986b). Only 2 percent of the na­tion’s business and government employers sponsor day-care centers for their workers’ children, and only 3 per­cent provide financial assistance designated specifically for child care (New York Times, January 17, 1988:14). Schools are also under pressure to offer services to 3- and 4-year-olds and to provide a safe haven beyond the nor­mal school day for older children. Child-care advocates warn that the failure to develop a national policy will result in “a generation of neglected children” (Palmer, 1984; Hewlett, 1988).

There is, however, one encouraging note. Most child psychologists agree that high-quality day care and nursery schools afford acceptable child-care arrange­ments (Clarke-Stewart and Gruber, 1984; Meredith, 1986; MacKinnon and King, 1988). Such programs are characterized by small group size, high staff-child ra­tios, well-trained staffs, good equipment, and attractive and nurturing environments. Most children show re­markable resilience. Throughout the world, children are raised under a great variety of conditions, and the day-care arrangement is just one of them. What is crucial is that children have consistent and warm relationships with their care-givers. Moreover, working mothers pro­vide a somewhat different role model for their children.