A List of Articles Detailing America's Family Un-Friendly Atmosphere

Since I started spouting off about MomsRising and making America more family friendly, lots of people have asked me what they can do, where they can get more information. I came across this great list of short reading pieces online and I thought I'd pass it along. The first three articles are widely recognized as catalysts for the current positive political atmosphere surrounding "the motherhood movement" or the family friendly agenda. Enjoy and get educated!

Mom's Mad. And She's Organized

Kara Jesella, New York Times, 22.Feb.07
(full text of article provided by Truthout.org)
"For years, mothers have been taking to the Internet to blog or post messages about the travails of motherhood, commiserating, fuming or laughing about their shared lives. But in the last year there has been a marked increase in those who are going beyond simply expressing their feelings. In a throwback to their mothers' - or was it their grandmothers'? - time, they are organizing about family and work issues."

The Opt Out Myth

EJ Graff, Columbia Journalism Review, March 2007
"The problem is that the moms-go-home storyline presents [work-life] issues as personal rather than public—and does so in misleading ways. The stories’ statistics are selective, their anecdotes about upper-echelon white women are misleading, and their “counterintuitive” narrative line parrots conventional ideas about gender roles. Thus they erase most American families’ real experiences and the resulting social policy needs from view."

The Care Crisis
Ruth Rosen, The Nation, 27.Feb.07
"For four decades, American women have entered the paid workforce--on men's terms, not their own--yet we have done precious little as a society to restructure the workplace or family life. The consequence of this "stalled revolution," a term coined by sociologist Arlie Hochschild, is a profound "care deficit." …Today the care crisis has replaced the feminine mystique as women's "problem that has no name." It is the elephant in the room--at home, at work and in national politics--gigantic but ignored."

American Prospect Special Report:
The Mother Load

Values Begin at Home, but Who's Home?
In the struggle to balance work and family, work is winning.
By Heather Boushey

The Architecture of Work and Family
To have a job and a life, we need to redesign the national household.
By Ellen Bravo

What Do Women and Men Want?
Many of the same things -- but our system contributes to gender conflicts over work, parenting, and marriage.
By Kathleen Gerson

The Opt-Out Revolution Revisited
Women aren't foresaking careers for domestic life. The ground rules just make it impossible to have both.
By Joan C. Williams

Responsive Workplaces
The business case for employment that values fairness and families
By Jodie Levin-Epstein

Atlantic Passages
How Europe supports working parents and their children.
By Janet C. Gornick

What About Fathers?
Marriage, work, and family in men's lives.
By Scott Coltrane

The Mother of All Issues
What it will take to put work and family on the national agenda.
By Tamara Draut

Related TAP Content:

Father Load
"Mother Load" authors respond to Linda Hirshman's bleak view of the role of fathers in shouldering their share of family responsibilities.
By Kathleen Gerson, Courtney E. Martin, and Brian Reid

What a Load
In the discussion about achieving work/life balance, men are getting a free pass. By Linda Hirshman

Fighting Apart for Time Together
Why is all the activism for work/life balance split along gender lines?
By Courtney E. Martin

Grade Inflation
Too many magazines and organizations set a low bar for honoring "family-friendly" companies.
By Ann Friedman

More stories on public policy and
reconciling work and family in America:

The Haves and the Have Lots
Christopher Howard, Democracy Journal, Spring 2007
The American welfare state is bigger than you think, and more unfair than you’d want. "A number of social policies make a mockery of the goal, enshrined in the Constitution, that government exists to 'promote the general welfare.' Our long-standing commitment to equal opportunity rings hollow when certain programs help people with good jobs and incomes to get health insurance, housing, parental leave, and retirement pensions, but offer little help to the poor and near-poor. We may disagree over how hard government should try to reduce poverty and inequality. Surely, however, when millions of Americans live in poverty and inequality has reached record levels, we can agree that public policies should not make these problems worse."

Small Steps for Big Problems of the Middle Class
David Nather, CQ Weekly, 12.mar.07
"The prescriptions Democrats are pursuing -- for the next two years at least -- aren't exactly the second coming of the Great Society… Instead the new majority is focused on bite-sized, narrowly targeted designed to address one part of a larger problem, or provide first steps that may lead to more ambitious initiatives down the road." Article available from Georgetown University Law Center Workplace Flexibility 2010.

How to Save the Middle Class from Extinction
Paul Krugman, AlterNet, 9.mar.07
Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman explains in simple terms how the American economy went from having the world's most dynamic middle class to being on the verge of a rich-poor state in only 30 years.