The economic reorganization of bread winners in the traditional family setting have left many workers in the US to lead unbalanced lives in reference to financial strains, inadequate care, and other barriers that encourage economic insecurity, threaten child well-being and promote gender inequality in the workplace. With a shift in domestic roles, more mothers are in the labor market along with fathers and more fathers are sharing in childcare. But whereas men also experience time binds in balancing work and family life, it is women who bear the brunt of the burden.
Work and life has been most notably out of balance for women who endure the brunt of the work-family conflict due to socially-constructed beliefs surrounding gender and the impacts of these beliefs. A working mother is faced with heightened tension when the Ideal Worker norm[1] conflicts with the Motherhood norm[2] (Drago, 2007). So there is a socially-constructed motherhood norm where a working mother is expected to figure out a way to efficiently care for her children but she is also expected to work for earnings while making sure to be an ideal employee as a requisite to enhance the prospect of job advancement. In order to enhance her job advancement prospects, she must learn to make sure her family life does not conflict with her work life, and she must do so privately with limited help from the benefits that government mandates via family-friendly work polices such as the Family & Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA). So if mothers are all mostly in the workforce with fathers...who's watching the children? Why is this a private problem when every human product born to a country is released into it's society?[1] The Ideal Worker norm—a belief among managers and professionals in total commitment to career, and high rewards for this commitment (Drago, p. 7).
[2] The Motherhood norm—a society-wide belief that women should be mothers, and perform unpaid family care and low-paid care for others in need (Drago, p. 7).
Works Cited: Drago, Robert W. Striking a Balance. Boston, MA: Dollars & Sense, 2007.
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