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196 10 THE ODD DISCONNECT Our Family-Hostile Public Policy Joan C. Williams Imagine two families, one in the United States and one in Sweden, both of which experience the birth of a child.1 In the first family, a working couple in Sweden has a newborn son in January. Both parents stay home during the first two weeks of the child’s life, because, since the 1970s, fathers have been granted ten days of paid leave after childbirth (Crittenden 2001). After that, the mother continues her paid leave and the father returns to work at 80 percent of his former schedule, taking advantage of the government’s policy that both parents can return to work on a reduced schedule until their youngest child is eight years old (ibid.). In August, the father takes a full month off at 80 percent of his pay—Sweden has guaranteed fathers an extra month off at 80 percent pay during the first year of their children’s lives since 1984 (ibid.). Swedish law also provides that new parents have fifteen months of paid leave to share as they choose (in addition to the “daddy days” described above) (Clearinghouse on International Developments in Child, Youth, and Family Politics at Columbia University [Clearinghouse] 2002; Crittenden 2001; European Union Online n.d.). The following January, the parents switch roles: The mother returns to work at 80 percent of her former schedule, while the father stays home to care for the child for six more months. The parents decide not to use the additional leave available to them: three months at a flat rate and three months unpaid leave (Clearinghouse 2002). Beginning in June, when the child turns one and a half, both parents stagger their schedules so each gets some one-on-one time with their son; for the remaining time they enroll their son in a government-subsidized childcare center. Although Sweden has not yet reached its goal of making quality childcare available to every child, it does ensure that lower-income families receive financial assistance for childcare (Crittenden 2001; Skolverket n.d.). THE ODD DISCONNECT 197 In the second family, a working couple in the United States has a daughter. The father takes no leave, since he has no right to paid leave and they cannot afford to lose any of his salary. They are fortunate: the mother’s employer is covered by the Family and Medical Leave Act, and, meeting the act’s requirements, they can afford to be without her salary for her twelve weeks of unpaid leave. During her pregnancy, the mother continues to hunt for quality childcare at an affordable price, with little success. Finally, shortly before the mother’s leave is up, they find a suitable daycare that takes infants and has an opening. It is not convenient to their home or either parent’s workplace, and knowing that over half of all infant care in the United States is fair to poor in quality (Gornick and Meyers 2003) makes them nervous. The mother returns to work, which given her hour-long daily commute, means she is away for fifty hours a week. Since she does the daycare drop-off and pick-up, the father has very little time with the child. Every time the mother asks for time off to take her daughter to the pediatrician, she feels the backlash: her employer sees her as less committed, and her co-workers feel that she is not pulling her own weight. After a year of this, feeling that her career is not advancing as she had hoped and worried about the scarcity of time with her child, the mother decides to work part-time. She finds that she is given mommy-track work: the stigma increases, her hourly pay decreases, and she loses most of her benefits and any chance for promotion (Glass 2004). Like many parents, she cannot find part-time childcare; accordingly, she continues to pay for expensive full-time care while working only part-time. After another year, this mother joins the one in four U.S. mothers who are out of the labor force. She and her husband have decided that, given her low salary, lack of career prospects, and high childcare costs, she does not earn enough to justify having her child “raised by strangers.” Once her salary is gone, her husband feels under increased pressure to work longer hours, and becomes one of the one-third of fathers who works forty-nine or...

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