The Work-Life Balance in Crisis: Leave taking among employed women in the United States

Abstract

In the United States today, many working parents struggle to balance their work and family responsibilities. No standard for success in maintaining this balance exists and many families struggle daily with the competing needs of work and family without any support from society at large. While women’s rates of labor force participation are gaining parity to men in the workforce, women still feel more acutely this work-life struggle. In her book, The Price of Motherhood, Ann Crittenden (2001) writes, “There is increasing evidence in the United States and worldwide that mothers’ differential responsibility for children, rather than classic sex discrimination, is the most important factor disposing women to poverty” (p. 88). Women’s greater responsibility in the private sphere of domestic work heightens their risk of economic insecurity and is shown to decrease their participation in civic and political activities, thereby reducing women’s individual and collective power (Gornick & Meyers 2003). Compounding the issue of a woman’s unequal burden of caretaking is the greater burden experienced by low-income women and women of color who have fewer resources to provide care, and less affordable time away from work to give to caretaking (Gerstel & McGonagle 1999).