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This chapter addresses two closely woven issues: that of harmonizing (making compatible) the dual aims of careers and motherhood that most European women now pursue; and that of achieving full gender neutrality (equality) in the allocation of opportunities, life chances, and welfare outcomes. The main aspects addressed in investigating the multi‐dimensional compatibility problem are: the heterogeneity of women's preference sets (family centred, career centred, or dual role), public support for working mothers, the job supply, the role of wages, and motherhood. The main aspects addressed in investigating gender equality across the life course are: gender segregation in the labour markets, gender differences in pay, female life choices, and the extra costs and risks of employing women. It is argued that neither social nor labour‐market policy will solve these gender inequality issues, and the possibility of a domestic solution is discussed.

The case of Leah Nadel is a good example for showing some of the ways the day nurseries operated as a charity during the 1910s and 1920s. Even though she received charity from day nurseries, Leah still had to struggle to keep up an image of being a respectable mother by working hard and supporting the different needs of her children. This chapter discusses the different problems and solutions faced by single mothers during that time, especially after the efforts of reformers and professional social workers made against working mothers.

The increasing participation of women in the labor force has created new strains in the realm of childrearing, as young mothers seek to balance the demands of work and family life. While these strains are experienced by almost all working mothers, they vary and have different implications for college women seeking high-powered professional careers that require extended periods of training and other women with less demanding educational and occupational aspirations. This chapter analyzes the life-long tensions in balancing work and family life encountered by young women on track to professional careers in law, medicine, business, science, and academia from the student/apprentice years (18-30), to the make or break years (30-40), and to the period when they encounter the glass ceiling (40+). Alternatives career patterns are examined, such as moving of the fast-track onto the second tier or “mommy track” of their profession, as an adaptation to the demands of childrearing and professional life.

Initially day care centers, which were called day nurseries during the 1890s, were only popular among jobless mothers. However, even then there were conflicting views about day nurseries: some mothers were grateful, while other mothers fought with the nursery workers for control of their children. This chapter discusses the different situations of working mothers during from the 1890s until the 1930s and how being a working mother affected them.

As more mothers entered the paid workforce, and as the women's movement mobilized, members of Congress proposed building a nationwide system of universally available child care services. Although the 1971 child care bill initially had broad support, proponents battled over who would control programs, and conservative opposition to the idea of government‐funded child‐care centers mounted. Ultimately, President Nixon vetoed the bill, slamming shut the window of opportunity for creating a unified public system for child care and early education. The implications of this bill's failure would be far‐reaching, making it politically difficult to act on the issue for years to come. As the demand for child care grew through the 1970s, therefore, it was met largely through the private market. Child care continued to be seen as a responsibility of individual families, not of society as a whole.

In the past (1890s to 1920s), working mothers were viewed as “evil”. After 1930 however, changes made in both women's wage work and social welfare began to challenge these assumptions, gradually altering the meaning of day care. This chapter discusses the different transformations in the meaning and practice of day care due to the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. The chapter also looks at the responses of all these various actors to the economic crisis of the depression.

This chapter examines how the child welfare system has adapted to the changing conditions of American families. After World War II mothers began a long steady entry back into the labor force that would continue for the next half century. Increasingly, women with preschool children were expected to work outside the home. Although education (and thus child care) was provided for children ages six to eighteen, very little was available for children under six. The failure to provide universal day care placed increasing demands on the mothers of these children.

This chapter explains workplace flexibility as a unifying concept for bringing all mothers together. Exploring across groups and the work-for-pay/stay-at-home dichotomy, it addresses the question of whether or not mothers tend to support various workplace flexibility initiatives. It also examines the levels of support that exist for governmental policies promoting workplace flexibility—ranging from educating firms about the benefits of such options, to tax breaks for companies that offer such plans, to mandatory requirements that organizations offer employees processes through which they can receive such arrangements. In doing so, the chapter offers possible parameters for policy makers as they develop reforms to generate the widest levels of public support.

This chapter examines the contradictory forces shaping the lives of working mothers or employers of nannies. The findings suggest that working mothers experience what is called blanket accountability or the sense that they are responsible for everything that happens in their children's daily lives, regardless of who provides the actual care. The result also indicates that they are consequently torn between hiring an at-home mother to support them as they pursue their demanding careers and the desire to be at-home mother for their children, and this conflict feeds the mother-employers' deep ambivalence and guides their strategies for managing their child-care workers.

This chapter explores the intersections between the breastfeeding movement, environmentalism, and second-wave feminism from the 1950s through the 1980s. Concern over environmental toxins was one of the first issues to draw breastfeeding supporters out of the domestic sphere and into the political realm as they advocated publicly and through their daily life-choices as consumers and household managers for a more “natural” life free from the destructive consequences of technological interventions upon the family. As this chapter also shows, however, the widening appeal of this natural ideology by the early 1970s not only helped expose more mothers to the breastfeeding movement, it also led to a polarization in the interests and political leanings of the community. As breastfeeding rates began to noticeably increase by the 1970s, the ideological connection between natural motherhood and breastfeeding became a point of contention as lower-income and working mothers increasingly sought the same kind of maternal experience as their wealthier, stay-at-home peers.

Reconciling the rights and demands of women's productive and reproductive roles poses an increasing challenge to policy formulation. This chapter reviews existing evidence on the benefits of breast-feeding for mothers and infants, global breast-feeding prevalence and trends, and the associations between breast-feeding and maternal employment. It presents a study of the experiences of working mothers in Thailand, with a focus on the effects of employment on breast-feeding and women's perceptions of themselves as they attempt to balance their roles. It concludes with a discussion of the implications of the study for current international discourse and public policy relating women's dual employment and child-rearing responsibilities.

This chapter presents data drawn from interviews with lone and partnered mothers in non-professional, non-managerial occupations. This project was funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation as part of a programme of research on work and family life. Findings reported in the chapter illuminate the range of negotiations and tensions that mothers in paid work outside the home report. Family responsibilities were a top priority for these women as they sought to keep the spheres of home and work separate. This boundary could be maintained as long as a crisis situation or important activities did not suddenly emerge and become imperative. Nevertheless women were keen to be seen as reliable workers who did not need time off. However, there was a clear conclusion that work should not take precedence over mothering.

This chapter discusses whether the supposedly deeply held divisions between stay-at-home mothers and working mothers exist. The media has repeatedly highlighted such divisions under the label “the Mommy Wars.” Despite widespread coverage of the issue, in most cases, mothers do not judge other mothers. Instead, they empathize with each mother's unique situation. However, in a minority of cases, stereotypes of each group still exist, thus making mutual understanding a top priority of any modern motherhood movement. The chapter examines if Mommy War attitudes may be preventing mothers' groups from promoting a more visible workplace flexibility agenda, or if it is a much overblown problem that group leaders should cast aside in favor of moving forward with their workplace flexibility goals.

In the past, feeding newborn mammals with breast milk was never a choice but rather a natural way of feeding. Without the influence of culture and beliefs, babies would naturally continue to breastfeed until the age of 2.5 to 7 years. As breast milk is recognized as the natural way to feed infants, it is no longer appropriate to talk about the “benefits of breastfeeding.” The chapter presents an overview of the health risks of not breastfeeding taken from five recent reviews regarding short- and long-term risks for preterm infants, term infants, and mothers. The chapter addresses three levels: individual-, group-, and society-level factors. Maternal prenatal intention to breastfeed is a stronger predictor than the combination of other factors in determining the initiation and duration of breastfeeding. Working by itself may not be a barrier to breastfeeding, but working conditions and long inflexible working hours are barriers to mothers maintaining breastfeeding.

This chapter examines how the daughters felt about having grown up with a mother mainly working full-time or close to full-time hours. In most cases the daughters felt well mothered. The daughters demonstrated this view by recalling far fewer events when they felt compromised by the trade-offs their mothers were making than did their mothers. Most revealing was the five key ways many of the daughters offered to explain how their mothers managed the compromises involved in combining work and family life. The chapter discusses five themes: being there for the events where parents (especially mothers) were expected to be, being able to predict their mother's routine, their mother being emotionally present when at home, being cared for at home after school and being taught to be independent.

Families have changed substantially over the last half-century in the United States, and family policy has evolved in response. Many kinds of policies have emerged over the years that affect families. Policies in their early stages tend to be directed at specific problems. There are policies relating to marriage and divorce, others concerned with child care, some with work by mothers, and others with income support for families. These policies initially tended to be specialised, each concerned with its own aspect of family behavior. But family behavior itself is not compartmentalised. One aspect of behaviour is interrelated with others. To illustrate the interdependencies in both behaviour and policy as well as the disagreements, single parenting, a behavior in the family structure domain, may increase the risk to family income and the likelihood of poverty. This chapter examines the evolution of family policy in the United States after World War II.

This chapter demonstrates that mothers in high-status career roles are, in most cases, the primary influence over their daughters' career expectations. The mothers with careers in the study often acted in ways that fitted the description of mentoring and many were said by their daughters to be role models. Ways in which the daughters' attitudes to work were guided and shaped by their mothers with successful careers included a substantial number of this sample following their mothers into the same or similar careers, having the same work values, and having doors opened to their careers by their mothers. This suggests that the daughters have absorbed from their mothers that work can be interesting, enjoyable and satisfying, and that they should aim for a career that delivers them these qualities.

This chapter discusses the problems of producing and presenting the employment status of those parents who take advantage of any kind of statutory family leave. It also describes the way in which definitions of employment, unemployment and opting out of employment have been criticised from the gender perspective. The current definitions of how people on family leave are supposed to be classified in labour force statistics, and what practical problems there are in different countries, are explained. Moreover, the chapter shows the similarities and differences in present leave schemes and that classifications between activity or inactivity vary across the European Union member states. The conclusion drawn from the problems presented is that more ‘visible’ take-up rates of different kinds of family leave would give more accurate information of the labour market situation of mothers and fathers than the currently available statistics.

This chapter examines the downward trend in the fertility rate, and provides an overview of recent studies on married women's labor force participation. Second, it considers mothers' working patterns, especially on the continuation of work before and after the first childbirth in Japan. Third, it compares mothers' work in Japan with that in other industrial nations, focusing on the extent of their contribution to the household economy. It shows how the wife's income affects the number of children in Japan and elsewhere.