The U.S. lags behind most countries across the globe in terms of supporting working women and families. Most countries guarantee workers paid family leave and offer generous support for child care. Not the United States. But that soon may change.
President Biden’s Build Back Better Act (BBBA) offers us a chance to begin catching up with the rest of the world by strengthening support for employed caregivers, who are predominantly women. Not since the Affordable Care Act of 2010 — which prohibited sex discrimination in health insurance pricing and benefits and required insurance to cover maternity care and contraception without co-pays — has legislation offered so much promise for strengthening women’s rights and well-being.
BBBA would fund programs to support working parents and others caring for ill, disabled and elderly relatives. The bill extends the child tax credit, requires employers to offer 12 weeks of paid family leave, and funds subsidies for child care, two years of universal pre-K, and expanded long-term care options for the elderly and disabled.
Right now, most workers are not eligible for paid family leave, forcing them back to their jobs just days or weeks after childbirth. Fewer than one in six U.S. workers have access to paid leave for the birth or adoption of a child, or to care for a sick family member.
When parents return to work after the birth of a child, they face a severe lack of affordable, high-quality child care options. A new report by the Center for American Progress shows that the average cost of child care in the U.S. is just over $1,300 per month. Families with infants pay nearly $16,000 per child per year for day care — 21% of the U.S. median income for a family of three. Center-based child care for infants can cost single-parent families an average of 36% of household income.
Federal and state governments have provided very limited support for programs to address the vast need for high-quality, low-cost child care. The primary public funding source for child care — the Childcare and Development Fund — reaches only 1 in 7 eligible children. Our government’s underinvestment in child care has led to “child care deserts” where parents cannot meaningfully access child care for their children. Meanwhile, the average child care worker in the United States earns around $10 an hour and rarely receives benefits, leading to a high turnover and demoralized workers.
Our nation’s lack of policies to support families, working parents and child care workers falls most harshly on women, who still do a disproportionate share of unpaid household labor and caregiving in the United States. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the strong connections between access to child care and women’s employment. When the pandemic hit, women struggled to continue paid work while child care centers closed and schools went remote. Parents nearly doubled the time they spent on kids’ education and household tasks compared to before the coronavirus outbreak, but mothers spent significantly more time than fathers — an average of 15 hours more, one study found. According to another study, mothers with young children reduced their work hours four to five times more than fathers during the first few months of the shutdown.
For too long, governments and businesses have taken for granted women’s unpaid labor in the home, all the while benefiting from the adults we raise.
The lack of family policies causes women tremendous stress, holds them back in the workplace and contributes to the persistent wage gap between men and women. This lack falls particularly harshly on low-income women and women of color, and fuels our country’s appalling child poverty rate. Today, 12.5 million children in the U.S. live in poverty, including 27.3% of Latinx children and 29.2% of Black children — a shameful rate in one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
Biden and Harris have pledged to make “substantial investments in the infrastructure of care in our country.” They are demanding for the U.S. what most other advanced economies already have — a comprehensive national program for child care and paid parental leave.
Not one Senate Republican supports the Build Back Better Act. They pay lip service to motherhood and apple pie — loudly touting their “pro-life” beliefs with anti-abortion policies forcing women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term — yet they refuse to support policies that would help mothers care for babies once they are born. Meanwhile, West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin condemns BBBA as creating an “entitlement society.” These misogynist attitudes have got to go.
It’s long past time the U.S. steps up and guarantees all workers the support we need to participate fully in the labor force with assurances that our children are safe and well-cared for. Women’s rights and well-being depend on it.
Carrie N. Baker is the Sylvia Dlugasch Bauman Chair of American Studies and a professor in the Program for the Study of Women and Gender at Smith College .