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Title: The Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict: The Poor, the Professionals, and the Missing Middle

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2010

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Abstract: Work-family conflict is much higher in the United States than elsewhere in the developedworld.6 One reason is that Americans work longer hours than workers in most other developedcountries, including Japan, where there is a word, karoshi, for death by overwork.7The typical American middle-income family put in an average of 11 more hours a week in2006 than it did in 1979.8Not only do American families work longer hours; they do so with fewer laws to supportworking families. Only the United States lacks paid maternity-leave laws amongthe 30 industrialized democracies in the Organization for Economic Co-operation andDevelopment.9 The only family leave available to Americans is unpaid, limited to threemonths, and covers only about half the labor force.10 Discrimination against workerswith family responsibilities, illegal throughout Europe,11 is forbidden only indirectly here.Americans also lack paid sick days, limits on mandatory overtime, the right to requestwork-time flexibility without retaliation, and proportional wages for part-time work. Allexist elsewhere in the developed world.12So it should come as no surprise that Americans report sharply higher levels of workfamilyconflict than do citizens of other industrialized countries.13 Fully 90 percent ofAmerican mothers and 95 percent of American fathers report work-family conflict.14 Andyet our public policymakers in Congress continue to sit on their hands when it comes toenacting laws to help Americans reconcile their family responsibilities with those at work.

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Authors: Williams, Joan C.; Boushey, Heather

Publisher: Center for American Progress

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Family and Marriage, Labor Force and Occupational Structure

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