That Other Demon Working Women Must Face
By: Julie Kay
Tags: Parenting, Women, 2016 Election, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton

That Other Demon Working Women Must Face

Donald Trump accomplished what the women’s rights movement struggled to do for decades: focused a national election on sexual harassment in the workplace. And for that, we thank him. But the acrimony of the debate has left little air time to discuss that other workplace demon women face: balancing work life and family caretaking.

When I graduated from college in 1990 with my shiny new Women’s Studies degree, my first job was as an assistant at an organization that pushed for better child care. I was crushed. At the time I cared more about contraception than child care. Here I was working on kids’ issues when I had vowed to work on women’s issues.

I quickly came to see, however, that dependable, affordable child care is a lifesaver for women workers and for family stability. A decade later, it all became real and personal when the needs of a newborn baby, a young child, and a mother diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease were battling against my legal career for my time. Forget “having it all,” all my family needed was good child care and elder care. Each day brought new and innovative forms of crises that demonstrated how vital reliable caregivers were to keeping my family’s life fabric from unraveling. Most days we were one case of head lice or one middle-of-the-night wandering episode away from (yet another) missed client meeting or deadline.

In this election the conversation has been all about acrimony and accusations around sexual harassment in the workplace — and Billy Bush’s bus was clearly an office, regardless of the locker room stench it left.

But equally revolutionary is that in this election we see both candidates (two parties!) jumping on board to propose paid leave policies.

Donald Trump, after repeatedly espousing a 1950’s Leave-It-To-Beaver view of parenting, apparently had begun to see the light through his daughter’s parenting experience. During the first presidential debate Trump claimed to differ little from Hillary Clinton on the issue of child care despite the Ms. Universe of difference between the candidates’ positions and experience on family issues. While the candidates’ divergent views of gender roles overall cannot be more stark, on family friendly workplace positions the devil is in the policy details.

Trump certainly is not the first new grandfather to suddenly embrace the idea of paid maternal leave once his own kin confront the work life dilemma that millions of American families face every day, and at every income level. Indeed Trump’s tepid support for 6-weeks of paid parental leave would be welcome if it were a feasible or even an equitable starting point. But the meager amount it offers is laughably skimpy and underfinanced. More egregiously, it unfairly excludes all fathers.

Excluding fathers from family leave policies sends negative ripple effects across the parenting pool. It belittles those men who do care and who are caregivers, broadcasting the outdated belief that caretaking belongs in the ladies’ room. It disdains the growing number of gay male couples who are parenting in two-father families. Ultimately it harms men and women by continuing to perpetuate the gender stereotype that only women can take care of babies. This sexist stereotype around caregiving also provides a real incentive for employers not to hire women who are pregnant, or possibly pregnant, or even those someday-to-be pregnant. And by failing to value caregiving, the work of professional caregivers remains underpaid and unprotected.

In contrast, Hillary Clinton proposes a boatload of policies to buoy caretakers, particularly working women who frequently find themselves in the deep end of caretaking. She proposes giving workers 2/3 of a paycheck for as long as 12 weeks of leave for a new child or for caretaking during a serious family illness and aims to double the Child Tax Credits while reforming the program to include more low income families.

On the other end of the caretaking spectrum, as the number of elderly people in the US increases dramatically (this means you baby boomers), Clinton’s platform includes investments in family caregivers and home care workers combined with funding for research on Alzheimer’s and other disease prevention. Moreover, it acknowledges how much working families rely upon professional caregivers — those nannies, housekeepers and other in home caregivers who often work without basic labor protections and a living wage, all while balancing their own family responsibilities.

The First Lady of Arkansas — Hillary Rodham Clinton — sat on the board of directors of the child care organization that gave me my first real job in the go-go ‘90’s. Clinton’s nickname among us junior staffers was “the Smart One.” Her experience and her commitment to the economic effects of family responsibilities go back to well before those headbands I eagerly embraced on those bad-hair days.

Working women’s issues are lighting up the campaign and on-line conversations now. But we need to look beyond the campaign sparkles to follow through with policies that create a reliable, and well-paid workforce of paid caregivers, that facilitate workplace flexibility and usher in affordable care. Maybe working families still can’t “have it all” but they shouldn’t fear losing it all when family responsibilities come knocking at the office door.