Meanwhile, quality day care is both scarce and expensive. Childcare care workers are among the lowest paid of any occupational group, leading to frequent turnover and minimal selectivity. Even at its best, full time institutional care can not provide the individual attention, intimacy, flexibility and opportunity for solitude that young children need to realize their potential. Many of the above cultural experiments were initiated by women desperate to overcome second class status in a male-dominated culture. In that regard we have been modestly successful.
Women are no longer a rarity in business, government, professions and skilled trades.
Sexual harassment and affirmative action regulations have had an impact on the workplace. There's a long way to go, but the gap between men's and women's earnings is slowly closing. With women struggling for equality largely by conforming to the priorities and strategies of the authoritarian dominator culture, children have been left in a lurch. This is not to criticize women for neglecting their duty as mothers. In many cases women have sought power outside the home precisely because they were concerned with the fate of our children.