Families That Work: Policies for Reconciling Parenthood and Employment

3. The United States in Cross-National Perspective: Are Parents and Children Doing Better Elsewhere?

58 Chapter 3 The United States in Cross-National Perspective: Are Parents and Children Doing Better Elsewhere? AMERICAN FAMILIES ARE not alone in the demands they encounter on their time and energy. In all industrialized and industrializing countries, working families are at the epicenter of tensions arising from changing gender norms, social supports, and labor market opportunities. However, cross-national comparisons suggest that American families face heavier demands and receive less external support than do families in other equally rich industrialized countries. The characteristically American approach of expecting private forces to solve social problems has created especially pressing burdens in this country. On many indicators of family and child well-being, the problems confronting American families are more acute than elsewhere . American working parents are squeezed for time and pay a comparatively higher penalty for working reduced hours than do parents in our comparison countries.1 Relative to these other rich, high-employment countries, the United States has achieved only moderate levels of gender equality, especially among parents . And our families and children fare much worse than their counterparts in other countries on several other dimensions of well-being. The United States in Cross-National Perspective 59 THE TIME SQUEEZE American parents have good reason to feel that they are squeezed for time. Nearly all fathers and a substantial share of mothers in the United States are employed. Those who are employed are averaging long weekly hours in the workplace; and compared with their counterparts in other countries, many of them are spending extremely long hours at work.2 Among married and cohabiting American parents aged twentyfive to fifty years old, 93 percent of fathers and 69 percent of mothers are employed either full-time or part-time (figure 3.1); workers on paid leave are generally counted as employed.3 The employment rates for fathers actually vary little across our twelve countries, ranging from 88 to 97 percent, with most of that variation explained by variability in the unemployment rate for this age group (during the mid-1990s). Mothers’ employment rates vary enormously, from as low as 40 percent in Luxembourg to as high as 85 percent in Sweden. Relative to this group of countries, the employment rates of American parents—both fathers and mothers— are just about equal to the cross-country average. The employment rate for American mothers lags behind those reported in all of the Nordic countries, but it exceeds mothers’ rates in all of the Continental countries.4 The United States is exceptional, in comparative terms, with respect to the number of hours worked among those who are employed. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO 1999), the American workforce reports the longest annual hours of any in the industrialized world. American workers spend an average of 1,966 hours a year at work. Average annual work hours in the United States exceed those reported all across Europe ; Americans “outwork” workers in Sweden (1,552), France (1,656), Germany (1,560), and the United Kingdom (1,731 hours). American workers log nearly six more weeks of work a year than their Canadian counterparts (at 1,732 hours), and their hours exceed even those of the notoriously work-intensive Japanese (1,889 hours) (ILO 1999). Moreover, annual work hours continue to rise in the United States, while they have been declining in nearly every other country in the industrialized world (ILO 2001). 60 Families That Work FIGURE 3.1 Employment Rates Among Married or Cohabiting Mothers and Fathers, Mid-1990s 0 20 40 60 80 100 Percentage Employed NW95 DK92 SW95 FI91 LX94 GE94 NL94 UK95 CN97 US97 FR94 BE97 Mothers Fathers 95 76 81 94 82 91 85 92 40 97 53 93 56 94 65 93 65 92 66 88 70 89 69 93 Source: Data from LIS. Note: Employment comprises both part-time and full-time work. As described earlier, the time crunch for many families results from the combination of moderately high levels of parental employment and long hours at the workplace. To compare the severity of the time squeeze among working parents, it is useful to examine the joint work hours of dual-earner couples with children and to consider weekly hours—rather than annual hours, which conflate work hours with vacation time.5 The results, displayed in figures 3.2 and 3.3, are clear: American working parents spend exceptionally long hours each week in market work.6...