Dual-Income Parents: The Exhausted American Middle
Cross posted from BlogHer.com:
Back in the mythic 50s and 60s, housewives like Betty Friedan and Betty Draper were very bored. The Feminine Mystique opens with this description of an average housewife’s day: “Many women no longer left their homes, except to shop, chauffeur their children or attend a social engagement with their husbands.”
Contrast this to the average day of 2009’s Janice Ramos, featured in Joan Williams and Heather Boushey’s new study, “The Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict.”
Janice Ramos is a married, 30-year-old registered nurse who lives in a home she owns with her husband, a technician, and two children, an eight-year-old son and a 14-month- old baby. She works the night shift so she can be home with her kids during the day. Her husband, whose shift starts at 9:00 a.m., gets the children up and fed and takes
the baby to a neighbor’s and the older child to school. Janice arrives home at 8:30 a.m. after they have already left. She sleeps for five hours, then picks up the baby and meets her son at the bus stop around 3:00 p.m. She spends a few hours helping with homework and playing with the baby, and then goes to sleep when her husband returns from work around 5:00 p.m. She sleeps until 9:00 p.m., when she leaves to arrive at the hospital at 10:00 p.m.
Ramos is part of what Williams and Boushey call the “missing middle.” These parents, writes Lisa Belkin, are working “highly supervised jobs that often leave them one sick child away from being fired”; these are “Americans who are neither rich nor poor,” and “have a median annual income of $64,000, earning between $35,000 and about $110,000 a year. Their median income has fallen 13 percent since 1979 (in inflation-adjusted dollars).”
The middle is 53 percent of Americans, but the authors say because they are not as vocal and visible as professionals, the infamous “opt-out” group, or as desperate as the poor, they receive the least attention and even less help.
Time is a finite resource. Think of our lives are pies: pieces are divided between work time, home and family time and personal time. Cali Yost explains that conflict arises when our work and home time demands become so great that we simply run out of time. This is the state of many Americans.
Reading the “Three Faces” report is eye-opening and extremely sad because work-life conflict among all income levels is so pronounced. I was most struck by the phenomenon of “tag-team” parents like Janice Ramos in our new two-worker norm. In the study, exhaustion is a common theme of life in the middle. One parent says, “My daughter always wants to do things with me, but I’m too exhausted.”
Are you a tag-team couple? What effects does it have on your relationship and sense of well-being?
Lisa Belkin wrote, “Is work-life balance a luxury? In many ways, yes. Only those with both financial security and some control over their work lives have the freedom to recalibrate it.” Williams and Boushey’s report makes it clear that for married couples, time together as a family is a luxury, much less time for oneself. They also note that tag-team couples are between three to six times more likely to divorce.
Which leads me to the political hypocrisy of our legislators (almost everything I read these days leads me there). The U.S. is hostile to creating federal legislation that supports family-friendly workplaces — and it is this legislation that would help the tag-team parents, those caught in the middle.
Legislation that does exist helps poor women with childcare subsidies. Wealthier women can make more choices about their work and family lives. In either instance, as Williams and Boushey note, “The problem is viewed as not the lack of adequate public policies but rather the personal choices of a small set of mothers who are in families that do not look like most U.S. families. Politicians have actively used these narratives to reject moving forward on a work-family agenda.” Meanwhile, the majority of U.S. families soldier on, with little money, time or breathing room to spare.
Even more ironic?
“Nearly 60 percent of mothers in the middle work full-time or more, but only 42 percent of low-income mothers do. Both parents work full-time or more in more than half — or 51 percent — of all middle-income families as compared with only 15 percent of poor ones. The percentage of full-time work is slightly higher in professional-managerial families —- 57 percent -— but they can do all kinds of things to make life more workable.”
I’m a lucky professional example: The more money I make, the more money I willingly spend to outsource as much as I possibly can.
Families in the middle also pay more, percentage-wise, for childcare than do poor families or those at the top:
In March 2009 dollars, low-income families pay around $2,300 a year per child for childcare for children under age six —- about 14 percent of their income. Families in the middle average $3,500 a year —- six percent to nine percent of their income. Professional families pay about $4,800 a year —- three percent to seven percent of their income.
(Personally, I would be thrilled to only have to pay $4,800 a year for childcare -— I don’t know where that figure is from!)
The report concludes, “If one had to choose a single word to describe life in the middle, it might well be exhaustion.”
Exhaustion is no way to make America great again. The solution, says Williams, “is flexibility without retaliation” from employers. Carolyn Maloney has a bill before Congress: support her. Another key is culture change and recognition: Some hourly based companies with hourly workers DO use flexible work schedules. Working Mother Magazine, for the first time this year, is honoring them, as it has done for years with its “100 Best Companies” to work for.
PS: Listen to BlogHer’s Elisa Camahort Page interview Heather Boushey and Joan Williams.
Morra Aarons-Mele
www.womenandwork.org
Nursing vs. extinguishing our demons…and butts
Barack Obama (who a Hillary supporting friend snarkily refers to as “Messiah”) smokes. Even though he’s “95% cured,” “there are times when I mess up,” he admitted in a press conference yesterday.
Oh, the smoking must drive Michelle crazy! And the girls! I can still remember being a little girl and crying because both my parents smoked and just could not seem to quit. I couldn’t imagine how hard it was- it was so far outside my ken. One of the biggest adjustments I’ve had to make as a grown up is accepting that I cannot change the bad habits of those I love. I can only support them as they try to change. Husband, father, even myself as I struggle to lose baby weight. How we balance our concern for ending the bad habits of those we love without being nags? The truth is, you never know what will happen. When my son was born, my mom told me “you’re now a hostage to love.” How true that was.
But every once in a while, you read something that makes you think, “Goddammit, why can’t x person take care of himself! Doesn’t he realize how lucky he is!” This article, from Asha Dornfest via the American Cancer Society’s More Birthdays blog, struck me. Asha writes about her childhood friend Mike, who battled lung cancer at 34:
Mike says that cancer has made possible a vitality and an immediacy that he never knew existed. Without cancer, he may have never had the motivation or courage — or even the inclination — to run a marathon, or climb Mt. Whitney, or hike to Machu Picchu. More importantly, the time he spends with his wife, Linda, and his son, Griffin, is a gift Mike never takes for granted.
The art of compromise (with apologies to Elizabeth Bishop)
The art of compromise isn't hard to master .... compromise something every day. Accept the ambivalence of lost opportunities, the hour spent doing something you don't want to. The art of compromise isn't hard to master.
I’m not going to the Democratic National Convention, and I’m sad about it. I am obsessively watching CNN (after a 4 month self-imposed moratorium on cable news), checking my email for party invites in Denver, and questioning choices. I’m about 6 months pregnant, starting a new career, and in the light of day, staying at home instead of going to the Convention seemed like the right thing. The doctors agreed. After all- my blogging is a passion, not a financial sustenance. My BlogHer colleagues Erin Vest and Maria Niles will do an amazing job covering things- Erin even got that Nokia N95 to stream live via Qik. Go Erin.
I mentioned my ambivalence last night to a recent mother of a now 8 month old baby. She said, “get used to compromise!” You think you’re going to have to put your needs just on hold? How about having your needs completely not matter? Having everything you do subsumed by this one little creature- by someone else?
I’m sure to people with children this is the oldest story in the book, so apologies for my whininess.
But, yes, compromise. Not something I’m used to. When I read Leslie Bennetts’ underrated book The Feminine Mistake I was struck by her thesis that women of my generation just need to learn how to compromise. In Bennetts’ view, for example, modern motherhood for the working woman is not a binary question of giving up a career to become the perfect stay at home mom vs. being an addled, overachieving working mother with a kid in full time care. No, Bennetts writes, we need to compromise, Maybe be a little less overachieving at work, a little less perfection-seeking as a mother.
So I guess not going to the Convention is but a first step in the endless compromising of parenthood, its real financial and physical responsibilities. And yet, it stings.
The original poem, “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop:
The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. --Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Iraq Vets Against the War Videos
Must Watch
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=CMDAug5wIVAW
Army hiring 25% more psych workers because of Iraq
Bobby Muller, help! Cross-posted from BlogHer.org:
AP reports: Overwhelmed by the number of soldiers returning from war with mental
problems, the Army is planning to hire more than 25 percent additional psychiatrists and other medical workers.
As Moondanzer (her son is in law is in Iraq) writes on Moon’s Rants and Raves
And just think it only took our great leaders 5+ years(not counting the Viet Nam nightmare) to figure this out. I only hope to God that they are also going to supply President Bush, Cheney, and Rove with a psychiatrist. Because God knows they need something!
More from the AP:
A contract finalized this week but not yet announced calls for spending $33
million to add about 200 psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers to
help soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health
needs, officials told The Associated Press on Thursday. Ritchie (Col. Elspeth Ritchie, psychiatry consultant to the Army surgeon general) said long and repeat deployments caused by extended wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are causing more mental strain on troops. “At the time that the war began, I don’t think anybody anticipated how long it would be going on,” she said.Surveys of troops in Iraq have shown that 15 percent to 20 percent of Army soldiers have signs and symptoms of post-traumatic stress, which can cause flashbacks of traumatic combat experiences and other severe reactions.About 35 percent of soldiers are seeking some kind of mental health treatment a year after returning home under a program that screens returning troops for physical and mental health.
As we’ve been discussing on this blog for months, this issue has been brewing for years now but like Iraq, it seems unsolvable even with additional staff. The Walter Reed scandal brought like to the dire situations of many vets, but mental health continues to be a sticky discussion point in this country, even when the numbers prove soldiers’ mental health cannot be ignored. NPR has not ignored the dire straits of many returning vets. Hat tip to Christy Hardin Smith for links to the exceptional reporting from Daniel Zwerdling has kept listeners informed of this terrible saga. Take a listen.
About Me
Morra Aarons-Mele utilizes social media strategies to help employers, employees and communities connect. She also consults with leading organizations on how women can use the internet for professional and personal development. In her spare time, Morra enjoys blogging about women and politics. Read her full bio >>
Recent Posts
- Dual-Income Parents: The Exhausted American Middle
- Women Online: My new company
- Listen in- What Do Kids Really Think About Their Working Parents?
- Learning how to be equals at home and work
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