Working Mothers in America: Having it All
Can working mothers “have it all”? Since the 1960s, the number of women in the American workforce has significantly increased, making the plight of the working mother an ever-growing issue (“Women in the Labor Force”). Despite the notion that women can have it all – a husband, kids, and career – the lived experiences of women have shown that the lifestyle of the working mother is not sustainable. Though working motherhood is not as explicit a form of captivity as prison or internment, the psychological burden of carrying out both domestic duties and one’s career has a devastating effect on women in America.
The proportion of women in the workforce first trended upward in the 1960s, following economic growth and an increasing prevalence of less physically demanding jobs. However, women’s careers were often cut short due to societal expectations and legal barriers. Journalist-turned-housewife Betty Freidan documented the dissatisfaction of American women who felt societal pressure to leave their workplaces “to find ultimate happiness as mother[s] and homemaker[s]” in her book, The Feminine Mystique (“Feminism: The Second Wave”). Published in 1963, it was credited as a major catalyst of the “second wave” feminist movement (“Feminism: The Second Wave”). Second wave feminism challenged the notion that women belonged in the home and advocated for employment rights, including equal pay, protection from employment discrimination, and support services for working mothers. In 1963, The Equal Pay Act was passed, guaranteeing equal pay for equal work, and in 1964, the Civil Rights Act was amended to ban sex-based discrimination in the workplace (Brunell and Burkett). The gains of second wave feminism, both in legislation and societal change, drove more women to enter and stay in the workforce through the late 20th century.
Women’s employment rates in the U.S have remained between 57 and 60 percent from the 1990s to current day (“Women in the Labor Force”). As of 2019, women made up 47 percent of the total workforce. Despite a slight decrease in their employment since the 1990s, women’s earnings as a percentage of men’s earnings and women’s educational attainment have significantly increased. In fact, a growing number of universities have a student body in which women outnumber men. Though women make up close to half of the workforce, they are not equally distributed across the workforce: women are overrepresented in certain sectors, two being education and healthcare, and underrepresented in others, such as law. Although they made up 74.3 percent of employees in education and healthcare in 2021, women continue to hold more of the typically low-earning positions (“Women in the Labor Force”). Elementary, middle school teachers, and nurses are predominantly women by a large margin, compared to similar proportions of men and women within the higher-earning professions of doctor and professor (“Women in the Labor Force”). This is especially surprising considering the rising educational attainment of women: in 2021, 49.7 percent of women held a bachelor’s degree or higher compared to 39.5 percent of men, indicating other factors are at work preventing them from becoming high earners (“Women in the Labor Force”). Arlie Hochschild, a sociology professor at UC-Berkeley, explains this phenomenon, stating, “One reason that half the lawyers, doctors, and business people are not women is because men do not share the raising of their children and the caring of their homes” (Kuttner). Hochschild aptly dubbed this phenomenon the Second Shift, describing it as the result of a “stalled revolution” in which women were afforded the privileges of entering the workforce, working the first shift, while still remaining captive to their domestic duties in full, the second shift.
Though much of the focus on working motherhood lies with married working mothers, specifically those in opposite-sex relationships, as examined in Hochschild’s work, many working mothers are unmarried, whether it be due to divorce, single motherhood, or some other form of domestic partnership. As of 2019, 78 percent of unmarried mothers were in the workforce, compared to 70 percent of married mothers (“Women in the Labor Force”). This difference is striking but unsurprising considering the financial differences between these demographics. Men are still the primary or sole breadwinners in 55 percent of opposite sex marriages and are egalitarian breadwinners in 29 percent of households (Fry). Thus, single mothers who make up a large proportion of the unmarried mother demographic must deal with providing for both themselves and their children, compared to the married mother with a husband who is either partially or fully contributing to household and child-rearing expenses. In this sense, single mothers are held captive by financial responsibilities: married mothers often have the financial freedom to stay at home with their children or work part-time. However, married mothers who choose to take advantage of this financial freedom in turn become captives of their husbands: they lack the financial capital necessary to leave their marriage with or without their children.
Furthermore, married mothers must carry out more domestic duties along with traditional wifely duties. More domestic duties imply more than just more laundry, cooking, and cleaning: married women are subject to both weaponized incompetence as well as “the mental load.” Weaponized incompetence refers to the situation in which husbands purposefully perform tasks badly or incorrectly to “get out” of domestic tasks (Brouillette). For example, in 2021, a woman posted what was intended as a funny TikTok in which made her husband a poster board with a photo grocery list (Dastagir). The comment section was filled with comments from other wives such as, “They only understand this way [face palm emoji],” and “I’d still get five phone calls,” a perfect example of the weaponized incompetence of husbands when they are required to perform traditionally domestic duties (Dastagir). Her situation is far from unique with many women making similar videos in which their husband asked multiple questions or returned with the wrong items despite the seemingly easy-to-follow list. This goes hand-in-hand with the concept of “the mental load” which describes the need to delegate tasks to husbands. This is a domestic duty in itself due to the planning and foresight required to constantly know what needs to be done for the house and the children while also still performing in the workplace. When women fail to ask for help, they are often hit with the rebuttal of “you should have asked,” rather than realizing “you should have asked.” Thus, even when women are in marriages with a husband who claims to try to help with housework, they often are still subject to the same duties, just with the additional emotional distress that comes with the failure of their husbands to share household responsibilities.
When husbands do successfully partake in domestic duties, they are “hailed as a uniquely great dad and a self-sacrificing hero” despite both the husband and wife sharing their home and their children (Brouillette). Kuttner elaborates on this idea, noting the use of the language of “helping out” when men perform domestic duties compared to wives who are just doing what is natural and normal. On one side, women are captive to the emotional and physical labor of husbands who fail to perform; on the other, women are captive to the societal expectations which punish them for delegating domestic duties while lauding men for taking on any at all.
In her book, Maxed Out: American Mother on the Brink, Katrina Alcorn details her experience as a working mother in an American dual-earning household. Alcorn and her husband both worked as freelance web designers with Alcorn eventually taking on a salaried position due to the greater financial stability. Alcorn had it all: “a loving husband, a great boss, healthy kids, great day care, [and] a good income” (2). Despite this, after her second child was born, she had a mental breakdown, resulting in her leaving her workplace for over a year and starting her blog, Working Moms Break, which served as the basis for her book. She still fell victim to the plight of the working mother, indicating a deeper societally ingrained problem which – for the most part – must be fixed on a broader societal level, not an individual one.
Alcorn describes the situation faced by working mothers as a uniquely American problem. It is true gender-based expectations and the Second Shift are present across the world. However, working mothers are pushed to an extreme degree in America, even when compared to other Western nations with high proportions of working mothers. Most high-earning careers in America require full-time work, at least until one is established in their field (Alcorn 38). This standard puts working mothers or potential mothers in a precarious position. The ideal childbearing years are the late twenties and early thirties both due to declines in fertility and the increase in potential complications for mother and child (Watson). For women in careers requiring extended schooling or time to work up to their desired position, this means they will be required to work full-time during their child’s early years, the formative stages in which a mother would ideally want to spend more time with their child. When Alcorn was offered her full-time salaried position, she was conflicted for this reason, asking herself, “She’s so little…how could I take this job now?” but ultimately taking it due to the financial security that came with one parent holding a salaried position (18). According to Alcorn, 62 percent of working moms in America would prefer to work part-time, but they cannot. In America, women working part-time “earn as little as 58 cents on the dollar” in addition to the “prorated cut in pay and benefits” compared to full-timers (Alcorn 13). Conversely, in the Netherlands, the majority of careers – including medicine, business, and engineering – have a stable –part-time job option with no penalty along with adequate health care. As a result, 75 percent of Dutch working moms are part-time compared to roughly 26 percent in America (Alcorn 38). Though taking time off during this formative period and returning to the workplace as full-time worker is possible, it has serious repercussions, even when disregarding the loss of income during the time off itself. Analysis of Census Bureau Current Population Survey data found women who took off just one year from work had annual earnings which were “39% lower than women who worked all 15 years between 2001 and 2015” (“Fast Facts: Mothers in the Workforce”). Therefore, without part-time options or the option to take off work, women are essentially faced with the binary choice of children versus a career.
This binary is further perpetuated by the American ideal that mothers should be the sole providers of childcare. Although it is true that the establishment of a strong relationship between mother and child is important for development, the idea that mothers must always be with their children is ”not…natural” (38). In truth, children simply need “high quality care (with low child-to-adult ratios) and warm, attentive caregivers” (38). This is not implying that the care must be from mothers. In fact, fathers and children are just as likely to develop secure emotional attachments as infants and young children, despite the widespread claim that the bond between mother and child is fundamentally different and irreplaceable. Alcorn explains this ideal as a result of Western industrialization since mothers serve as the exclusive caregivers only 3 percent of the time in nonindustrial societies (38). The African proverb, “it takes a village” exemplifies this statement. In America, childcare, unless paid, typically remains within the nuclear family and predominantly with the mother. There is shame associated with seeking help, paid or otherwise, and a feeling of inadequacy as a mother and wife.
This shame extends past childcare to other domestic responsibilities. When Alcorn’s husband brings up the prospect of hiring a cleaner, she reminds herself over and over that “it’s only money” (118). She feels inadequate for pawning off her responsibilities as a wife and mother and carries the emotional burden of doing so. Alcorn expresses that she is essentially “buying back her time” with her children in a tradeoff of domestic responsibilities (118). Interestingly, this view of time with children as a commodity is not unique: before Alcorn’s time, Hochschild speaks of many couples, especially where both parties are high earners, who “almost totally parceled out the role of mother into purchased services,” an indicator of the persistence of the working mother problem and how little has changed (Kuttner). Note that the prevalence of childcare seems at odds with the ideal of sole care from the mother; however, it underscores how unsustainable American working motherhood is. The mismatch between ideals and reality requires one responsibility or another to give. Whether the wife stays at home or works is often driven by finances, in essence, how much she makes and whether he makes enough, coupled with the whims of her husband. Very rarely is the man at this crossroads. For the wife, it is just a “job, compared to a man’s career” (Kuttner). Her life choices are made to sustain her family and promote her husband’s growth, not her own.
However, it is important to note the captor is often held captive. The societal expectations to which working mothers are held have negative implications for their husbands as well. Though men actively reinforce traditional gender roles via weaponized incompetence and other means, it is often in an effort to avoid the shame associated with being a stay-at-home father or the secondary breadwinner. One stay-at-home dad, Steven Lange, states, “I don’t think I would ever tell anyone that, or introduce myself [as a stay-at-home dad]” (Ruggeri). This seems in conflict with the “helping husband” tag mentioned earlier, but that label only applies to the father who works and occasionally helps at home, whereas the stay-at-home father is seen as “unusual” (Ruggeri). The husband can also fall into the role of the working mother. A father from the Midwest wrote into Alcorn’s blog, discussing his struggles “balancing a part-time freelance career with full-time parenting” which led to mental health struggles of his own. He both felt he was not the “traditional male breadwinner” but also was not appreciated by his wife for “how much he did at home and how his efforts made it possible for her to progress on her career path” (341). His experience reveals an important takeaway: domestic labor is often undervalued regardless of who is performing it. In part, this is because in America, “paid work is generally valued more than domestic endeavor,” diminishing the value of domestic contribution from either husband or wife (Kuttner). However, this can also be explained by its association with women; domestic labor is a gendered task.
Media in the form of entertainment plays a part in enforcing the traditional gender roles, further embedding the unreasonable expectations which women must attempt to uphold while simultaneously working. The short children’s book, Mommy Goes to Work, intends to “calm separation anxiety, ease mommy guilt,” and “celebrat[e] working mothers.” The book operates as a positive teaching tool by explaining to children that it is unrealistic to expect women to carry out the duties of a full-time mom while taking on a career, ideally preventing future resentment from children and working to alleviate the guilt and shame mothers feel for “failing” their children. However, its existence in itself reveals how early traditional societal norms began to have an impact. Before children reach school age, they already hold their mothers captive and must be reconditioned to accept them.
Forms of entertainment consumed later in life, notably televised sitcoms from the nineties and 2000s, have a tendency to normalize the dynamic of the messy, working husband and domestic, uptight wife who may also work. In the 90s sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, Ray repeatedly refuses or is reluctant to help his wife Debra with household chores as the laugh track plays in the background (Rosenthal). More recently, in the late 2000s sitcom Modern Family, the husband Phil Dunphy is incapable of caring for his children when his wife Claire, a stay-at-home mom of eighteen years, attempts to run for city council (Ko). In this episode, Claire is nervous that Phil will not be able to handle taking on additional responsibility with their kids, and she is proven correct. Phil gives Alex, their daughter, drowsy allergy medication instead of regular, resulting in her falling asleep when she has an important history test; he also accidentally elbows his son Luke in the face, giving him a black eye, while trying to open a Band-Aid (Ko). This rhetoric perpetuates the idea of the wife as “the old ball and chain,” a captor who limits his freedom to do and say what he wants. However, this captivity is often just contributing to the domestic shift or not hindering the wife’s attempts to carry out the domestic shift. These depictions further enforce the Second Shift as a woman’s responsibility, making women feel guilty and be seen as “bitchy” for asking for help while simultaneously victimizing men.
Though social media is not a significant enforcer of traditional values with its younger user base, it does play a role in perpetuating the notion that “having it all” is an attainable goal. In the 21st century, women are capable of perfectly curating their feeds, selectively filtering out what they find undesirable about themselves and fictionalizing positive traits. The average woman sees headlines about celebrities “losing the baby weight” weeks after giving birth, as well as posts from social media influencers in the hospital holding their newborns with a blow-out and a full face of makeup (Forrest). Forms of media that revolve around putting your best foot forward and creating an ideal image of yourself create unrealistic expectations for working mothers; they often are fabricated, but also fail to provide an important disclaimer. Celebrities have both financial capital as well as social capital which allows them flexibility in their careers, compared to the traditional working mother.
It is important to note that social media can do just the opposite, helping establish a sense of solidarity for working mothers. In Alcorn’s blog, Working Moms Break, she shared the intimate details of her mental breakdown and her feelings about her failures as a working mother. Her stark honesty, compared to the glorified social media depiction of working motherhood, encouraged other mothers to voice their feelings. The fact that fellow women could write into her blog anonymously provided a space in which women felt safe to share without the risk of damaging their reputation.
In Alcorn’s eyes, the liberation of working women from the Second Shift and the accompanying social and emotional punishments requires change in societal norms accompanied by infrastructural change. As mentioned prior, other Western nations have more part-time career options for women which would give women more leeway to participate in the workforce while also spending time with their children. In addition, these nations have more paid time off, longer maternity and paternity leave, and better healthcare: all of which make dual-earning households more sustainable. In America, there is “no federal law guaranteeing paid parental leave,” only the guarantee of 12 weeks of unpaid parental leave after birth under the Family Medical Leave Act (“Paternity Leave in the U.S. Leaves a Lot of Gaps”). Alcorn is right in that infrastructural and societal change would be ideal. However, the persistence of unrealistic norms and unsustainable infrastructure since the nineties, indicates these fixes are optimistic, especially considering the underrepresentation of women in politics where they could act as agents of change to increase federal protections.
Though this makes it sound as though there is no solution, Alcorn herself acknowledges, “If I couldn’t manage a career and a family, how were other working moms doing it, women who didn’t have those advantages?” (Alcorn). The answer lies in part with the social and cultural differences across class and ethno-racial lines. According to Kuttner, Hochschild expresses this sentiment, that the external culture – traditional American culture – has not changed nearly enough to sustain or reward fundamental changes in the family division of labor. In non-white demographics in America, the perspective that “it takes a village” is more prevalent, especially in immigrants and first-generation Americans.
“On a recent vacation to Louisville, I met a working mother who made up one of the few original families in her local Indian community after immigrating to the US in the late eighties. I recall her saying that the community was so close-knit that “no one on the outside knew whose kids were whose. They were always switching between aunties and in one another’s homes” (Srinivasan).
This dependence on the ethnic community and the extended family for support as culturally acceptable affords women more freedom, especially compared to the traditional nuclear support system. Thus, social change alone, even without infrastructural change, can be liberating for the working mother. The changing demographics of America in addition to globalization via social media such as Instagram and TikTok may allow for a shift away from traditional norms.
Still, social change is a lofty goal, and women often succumb to the binary, choosing between motherhood and work. For the most part, motherhood tends to come out on top with women leaving the workforce after having children. This phenomenon, referred to pejoratively as “the mommy track” and positively as “the Opt-Out Revolution,” often feels as if it is the only option (Molla). When the cost of childcare is not feasible, making the choice to stay in the workplace is quite literally abandonment. Even when it is feasible, completely outsourcing the task of “mothering” feels like abandonment, becoming a source of guilt and shame for a working mother. Furthermore, since the 1960s, women have been “spending an extra hour each day with their kids” compared to mothers before despite being more present in the workforce. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans shifted toward more conservative views on motherhood with it becoming “increasingly likely to say mothers should parent young children and stay at home” (Molla). Thus, women are pushed by both the binary and worsening societal conditions to leave the workforce to raise their children.
Other women seek out less reasonable escapes from the burden of working motherhood. Poet Sylvia Plath sought out divorce as an attempt to escape her abusive husband and domestic responsibilities. Her poem “The Applicant” describes the role of the wife in marriage as “a hand / To fill it and willing / To bring teacups and roll away headaches / And do whatever you tell it” (lines 10-13, Plath). In essence, she describes marriage as captivity; she is a slave to her husband. Her divorce was never finalized as she committed suicide, in a sense, another form of liberation from both her mental illness and her obligations as a working mother (“Sylvia Plath Relays the Highs and Lows”). Poet Anne Sexton expressed a similar sentiment to Plath. In the poem “Her Kind,” she describes the woman who wishes to work and not just to mother as “not a woman, quite” (Dowling 2). She felt as though she failed at the institutions of marriage and motherhood, the tenets of womanhood, only succeeding in her writing. Her respite was the psychiatric ward she was often in where she would “shuffl[e] between methods of escape – liquor, pills, and writing” without having to care for her children which served to “ease the burden of guilt she felt” in neglecting them for her work (5). Thus, like Alcorn and many others, alcohol and substances served as a tool to cope with her status as a working mother. However, she also quite literally abandoned the “mother” label from time-to-time by separating herself from her children by going to the ward, paradoxically both imprisoning herself physically while freeing herself from her children and her concerns with her inadequacy. Sexton felt the societal expectation of motherhood was unnatural, stating, “I do love my children but I am not feminine enough to be all lost in their care” (15). Like the modern working mother, Sexton felt work and motherhood were a binary, a mutually exclusive choice, and she made her choice. Though right at the advent of the Second Shift and the working mother boom with Plath committing suicide in 1963 and Sexton in 1974, their actions are reflective of many working mothers who see no other option for escape from their lives, turning to the ultimate and irreversible form of liberation.
In America, the working mother is held captive by both her family and herself due to persisting societal expectations which are incompatible with reality. As Alcorn puts it, “The American Dream tells us if we just work hard enough, we will get what we want. But…for working moms, hard work is not enough” (347). Working mothers are expected to both work the first shift at their job followed by the domestic Second Shift, an unsustainable lifestyle which leads to burnout or seeking another form of liberation, whether it be delegating motherly duties, leaving the workforce entirely, or turning to substances or self-harm. Though small changes can be made to make the lifestyle more livable, infrastructural and societal changes are both required for the working mother to thrive in America.
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