Legislation forbidding policies that discriminate against parents, as proposed by President Clinton in his 1999 State of the Union Address, would be important. While neither parent might progress so quickly, both would progress at a steady rate. With one in two marriages ending in divorce, Williams advocates a change in property law. Today's view that the earner owns the paycheck would be replaced by a system that divides equitably the money earned by a worker and the woman who shoulders the family work flow that freed him to earn it. While little else in American society today resembles practices of 200 years ago, the outmoded family-work model is still foisted upon workers, Williams says.
Women still specialize in family work-men specialize in market work.
But she asserts that domesticity arose at a particular historical period for particular reasons, and society can choose whether or not to change it.