Download or read book Labor s Love Lost written by Andrew J. Cherlin and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2014-12-04 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two generations ago, young men and women with only a high-school degree would have entered the plentiful industrial occupations which then sustained the middle-class ideal of a male-breadwinner family. Such jobs have all but vanished over the past forty years, and in their absence ever-growing numbers of young adults now hold precarious, low-paid jobs with few fringe benefits. Facing such insecure economic prospects, less-educated young adults are increasingly forgoing marriage and are having children within unstable cohabiting relationships. This has created a large marriage gap between them and their more affluent, college-educated peers. In Labor’s Love Lost, noted sociologist Andrew Cherlin offers a new historical assessment of the rise and fall of working-class families in America, demonstrating how momentous social and economic transformations have contributed to the collapse of this once-stable social class and what this seismic cultural shift means for the nation’s future. Drawing from more than a hundred years of census data, Cherlin documents how today’s marriage gap mirrors that of the Gilded Age of the late-nineteenth century, a time of high inequality much like our own. Cherlin demonstrates that the widespread prosperity of working-class families in the mid-twentieth century, when both income inequality and the marriage gap were low, is the true outlier in the history of the American family. In fact, changes in the economy, culture, and family formation in recent decades have been so great that Cherlin suggests that the working-class family pattern has largely disappeared. Labor's Love Lost shows that the primary problem of the fall of the working-class family from its mid-twentieth century peak is not that the male-breadwinner family has declined, but that nothing stable has replaced it. The breakdown of a stable family structure has serious consequences for low-income families, particularly for children, many of whom underperform in school, thereby reducing their future employment prospects and perpetuating an intergenerational cycle of economic disadvantage. To address this disparity, Cherlin recommends policies to foster educational opportunities for children and adolescents from disadvantaged families. He also stresses the need for labor market interventions, such as subsidizing low wages through tax credits and raising the minimum wage. Labor's Love Lost provides a compelling analysis of the historical dynamics and ramifications of the growing number of young adults disconnected from steady, decent-paying jobs and from marriage. Cherlin’s investigation of today’s “would-be working class” shines a much-needed spotlight on the struggling middle of our society in today’s new Gilded Age.

Download or read book Making Motherhood Work written by Caitlyn Collins and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The work-family conflict that mothers experience today is a national crisis. Women struggle to balance breadwinning with the bulk of parenting, and social policies aren't helping. Of all Western industrialized countries, the United States ranks dead last for supportive work-family policies. Can American women look to Europe for solutions? Making Motherhood Work draws on interviews that Caitlyn Collins conducted over five years with 135 middle-class working mothers in Sweden, Germany, Italy, and the United States. She explores how women navigate work and family given the different policy supports available in each country. Taking readers into women's homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces, Collins shows that mothers' expectations depend on context and that policies alone cannot solve women's struggles. With women held to unrealistic standards, the best solutions demand that we redefine motherhood, work, and family.

Download or read book Work and Family in America written by Leslie Stebbins and published by ABC-CLIO. This book was released on 2001-08-13 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As more women pursue careers and more men stay at home, the spheres of work and family will never be the same. Work and family in America offers a comprehensive and insightful overview of these two overlapping worlds. This book includes an extensive directory of work-family organizations. Surveying current research findings, social trends, and public controversies, the author examines the changing cultures of the workplace, family, and home. It also looks at the shifting role of men as they become more involved fathers, trends in daycare and child development, the degree to which dual-career couples share housework, and the relationship between employment and self-esteem.

Download or read book How My Family Lives in America written by Susan Kuklin and published by Paw Prints. This book was released on 2009-07-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three children, an African American, a Hispanic American, and a Chinese American, shares, in words, photographs, and even recipes, the everyday positive experiences they have living with at least one parent who did not grow up in the United States. Reprint.

Download or read book Fast Forward Family written by Elinor Ochs and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Called "the most unusually voyeuristic anthropology study ever conducted" by the New York Times, this groundbreaking book provides an unprecedented glimpse into modern-day American families. In a study by the UCLA Sloan Center on Everyday Lives and Families, researchers tracked the daily lives of 32 dualworker middle class Los Angeles families between 2001 and 2004. The results are startling, and enlightening. Fast-Forward Family shines light on a variety of issues that face American families: the differing stress levels among parents; the problem of excessive clutter in the American home; the importance (and decline) of the family meal; the vanishing boundaries that once separated work and home life; and the challenges for parents as they try to reconcile ideals regarding what it means to be a good parent, a good worker, and a good spouse. Though there are also moments of connection, affection, and care, it’s evident that life for 21st century working parents is frenetic, with extended work hours, children’s activities, chores, meals to prepare, errands to run, and bills to pay.

Download or read book The Changing Rhythms of American Family Life written by Suzanne M. Bianchi and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2006-07-13 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last forty years, the number of American households with a stay-at-home parent has dwindled as women have increasingly joined the paid workforce and more women raise children alone. Many policy makers feared these changes would come at the expense of time mothers spend with their children. In Changing Rhythms of American Family Life, sociologists Suzanne M. Bianchi, John P. Robinson, and Melissa Milkie analyze the way families spend their time and uncover surprising new findings about how Americans are balancing the demands of work and family. Using time diary data from surveys of American parents over the last four decades, Changing Rhythms of American Family Life finds that—despite increased workloads outside of the home—mothers today spend at least as much time interacting with their children as mothers did decades ago—and perhaps even more. Unexpectedly, the authors find mothers' time at work has not resulted in an overall decline in sleep or leisure time. Rather, mothers have made time for both work and family by sacrificing time spent doing housework and by increased "multitasking." Changing Rhythms of American Family Life finds that the total workload (in and out of the home) for employed parents is high for both sexes, with employed mothers averaging five hours more per week than employed fathers and almost nineteen hours more per week than homemaker mothers. Comparing average workloads of fathers with all mothers—both those in the paid workforce and homemakers—the authors find that there is gender equality in total workloads, as there has been since 1965. Overall, it appears that Americans have adapted to changing circumstances to ensure that they preserve their family time and provide adequately for their children. Changing Rhythms of American Family Life explodes many of the popular misconceptions about how Americans balance work and family. Though the iconic image of the American mother has changed from a docile homemaker to a frenzied, sleepless working mom, this important new volume demonstrates that the time mothers spend with their families has remained steady throughout the decades.

Download or read book Work and Family in America written by Leslie Stebbins and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2001-08-13 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surveying current research findings, social trends, and public controversies, Work and Family in America examines the changing cultures of the workplace, family, and home. Once viewed as a "women and day care" problem, work-family now encompasses a vast and complex set of issues. Eldercare. Fatherhood. Telecommuting. Pay equity. Employee productivity and retention. Feminism. Child care and childcare development. Youth violence. Welfare. Nontraditional families and family values. This extensive overview of this burgeoning field includes everything from a detailed history and statistics comparing trends in the United States and abroad to key legislation and legal cases. It gives biographical sketches of well-known activists like Betty Friedan, Arle Hothschild, and Rosabeth Moss Kanter. Lesser-known advocates like James A. Levine, director of the Fatherhood Project at the Family and Work Institute and MIT professor Lotte Bailyn, who believes work should be organized around tasks, not time, are also included.

Download or read book Family Leave Policy written by Steven K. Wisensale and published by M.E. Sharpe. This book was released on 2001-02-27 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in an accessible, case study format, this groundbreaking work explores the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of family leave policy in the United States,from its beginnings at the state level in the early 1980s, through the adoption of the federal Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, and beyond to the present day. With a political economy perspective, the book identifies the major economic and social forces affecting both the family and the workplace. And drawing on original primary research, it examines how the political system has responded to this evolving issue with various policy initiatives.

Download or read book Reshaping the Work Family Debate written by Joan C. Williams and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States has the most family-hostile public policy in the developed world. Despite what is often reported, new mothers don’t “opt out” of work. They are pushed out by discriminating and inflexible workplaces. Today’s workplaces continue to idealize the worker who has someone other than parents caring for their children. Conventional wisdom attributes women’s decision to leave work to their maternal traits and desires. In this thought-provoking book, Joan Williams shows why that view is misguided and how workplace practice disadvantages men—both those who seek to avoid the breadwinner role and those who embrace it—as well as women. Faced with masculine norms that define the workplace, women must play the tomboy or the femme. Both paths result in a gender bias that is exacerbated when the two groups end up pitted against each other. And although work-family issues long have been seen strictly through a gender lens, we ignore class at our peril. The dysfunctional relationship between the professional-managerial class and the white working class must be addressed before real reform can take root. Contesting the idea that women need to negotiate better within the family, and redefining the notion of success in the workplace, Williams reinvigorates the work-family debate and offers the first steps to making life manageable for all American families.

Download or read book Working Families written by Rosanna Hertz and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2001-09-30 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Working Families is a pioneering study by scholars of great capability and insight. This book is a gold mine of observations and information about new approaches to the study of work and family."—Arlene Daniels, co-editor of The Most Difficult Revolution "Hertz and Marshall have pulled together an impressive collection. The range of well-known authors provide a broad perspective by looking at both women and men across class, work site, and race. Working Families provides cutting edge and original contributions that go well beyond previous research on work and families."—Naomi Gerstel, author of Families and Work "The information age is transforming family life and the relationships between families, the workplace, and larger society. Working Families moves the discussion of work and family beyond the simplistic notion of 'balancing' by examining the complexity and diversity of everyday family life, as well as the wider economic and political contexts of our current dilemmas."—Arlene Skolnick, author of Embattled Paradise: The American Family in an Age of Uncertainty "The worlds of work and family in which we live our lives are ever more complex. This important volume sheds lights on the issues faced by working families at home, at work, and in their community."—Kathleen Christensen, Director, Program on Working Families, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Download or read book Restoring the American Dream written by thomas A. Kochan and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2006-09-08 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How to give working families the tools and opportunities to prosper in the new economy: a call to action for families, business, labor, and government. Many American families have not prospered in the new "knowledge economy." The layoffs, restructurings, and wage and benefit cuts that have followed the short-lived boom of the 1990s threaten our deeply held values of justice, fairness, family, and work. These values—and not those superficial ones political pollsters ask about—are the foundation of the American dream of good jobs, fair pay, and opportunities for all. In this call to action for families, business, labor, and government, Thomas Kochan outlines ways in which we can empower working families to earn a good living by doing satisfying work while still having time for family and community life. We cannot make the transition to a knowledge economy, writes Kochan, with a workforce that is stressed, frustrated, and insecure. Businesses need to rebuild relationships with their employees based on trust. And working families need to take control of their own destinies. First, we can take action that goes beyond the workplace buzzwords flexible and family friendly to design systems that support productive work and healthy family life. We can invest in better basic education and life-long learning, and we can work toward strategies for creating and sustaining good jobs with portable benefits. We need organizations that value investors of human capital—their employees—as highly as they do investors of financial capital, and we need a renewed labor movement to give workers a stronger voice. Kochan lays out an agenda for working families in the twenty-first century that calls for business, labor, government, and workers to come together to make the changes that will allow us all to benefit from the new economy. The solution to our problems, he points out, is too important to be left to "the market."

Download or read book Economic Restructuring and Family Well being in Rural America written by Kristin E. Smith and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A compilation of policy-relevant research by a multidisciplinary group of scholars on the state of families in rural America in the twenty-first century. Examines the impact of economic restructuring on rural Americans and provides policy recommendations for addressing the challenges they face"--Provided by publisher.

Download or read book Dreams of the Overworked written by Christine M. Beckman and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-09 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting look at the real reasons Americans feel inadequate in the face of their dreams, and a call to celebrate how we support one another in the service of family and work in our daily life. Jay's days are filled with back-to-back meetings, but he always leaves work in time to pick his daughter up from swimming at 7pm, knowing he'll be back on his laptop later that night. Linda thinks wistfully of the treadmill in her garage as she finishes folding the laundry that's been in the dryer for the last week. Rebecca sits with one child in front of a packet of math homework, while three others clamor for her attention. In Dreams of the Overworked, Christine M. Beckman and Melissa Mazmanian offer vivid sketches of daily life for nine families, capturing what it means to live, work, and parent in a world of impossible expectations, now amplified unlike ever before by smart devices. We are invited into homes and offices, where we recognize the crushing pressure of unraveling plans, and the healing warmth of being together. Moreover, we witness the constant planning that goes into a "good" day, often with the aid of phones and apps. Yet, as technologies empower us to do more, they also promise limitless availability and connection. Checking email on the weekend, monitoring screen time, and counting steps are all part of the daily routine. The stories in this book challenge the seductive myth of the phone-clad individual, by showing that beneath the plastic veneer of technology is a complex, hidden system of support—our dreams being scaffolded by retired in-laws, friendly neighbors, spouses, and paid help. This book makes a compelling case for celebrating the structures that allow us to strive for our dreams, by supporting public policies and community organizations, challenging workplace norms, reimagining family, and valuing the joy of human connection.

Download or read book The Widening Gap written by Jody Heymann and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2001-11-08 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This hard-hitting book draws on the first systematic national research on how the need to meet family obligations is affecting working Americans of all social classes and ethnic groups. What happens when kids get sick? When an elderly parent is hospitalized? How do poor families cope with work-family demands? Jody Heymann's research points to a widening gap between working families and the health and development of children. Outdated labor policy and practice must be brought into the twenty-first century, argues Heymann. To do less is to abandon the precepts of equal opportunity on which America is founded.

Download or read book Family Leave Policy The Political Economy of Work and Family in America written by Steven K. Wisensale and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-05-15 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in an accessible, case study format, this groundbreaking work explores the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of family leave policy in the United States, from its beginnings at the state level in the early 1980s, through the adoption of the federal Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, and beyond to the present day. With a political economy perspective, the book identifies the major economic and social forces affecting both the family and the workplace. And drawing on original primary research, it examines how the political system has responded to this evolving issue with various policy initiatives.

Download or read book Family Leave Policy written by Steven K. Wisensale and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2001 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focuses on family leave policy in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. Includes a brief historical overview of the American family.

Download or read book Families Caring for an Aging America written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2016-11-08 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Family caregiving affects millions of Americans every day, in all walks of life. At least 17.7 million individuals in the United States are caregivers of an older adult with a health or functional limitation. The nation's family caregivers provide the lion's share of long-term care for our older adult population. They are also central to older adults' access to and receipt of health care and community-based social services. Yet the need to recognize and support caregivers is among the least appreciated challenges facing the aging U.S. population. Families Caring for an Aging America examines the prevalence and nature of family caregiving of older adults and the available evidence on the effectiveness of programs, supports, and other interventions designed to support family caregivers. This report also assesses and recommends policies to address the needs of family caregivers and to minimize the barriers that they encounter in trying to meet the needs of older adults.