work/life

I had a blast at the Council on Contemporary Families conference this past weekend. Many of the members of that group — now celebrating its 10th year – are personal heroes. True models of engaged scholarship. And incredibly nice people to boot. Kudos to Stephanie Coontz, Steve Mintz, Josh Coleman, Waldo Johnson, Virginia Rutter, Ashton Applewhite, Barbara Risman, Phil and Carolyn Cowan, and others for making it all come true. (Coverage of the conference – well, sort of – here: in The Washington Times.)

At the conference, CCF released a great new “product”, called “Unconventional Wisdom: New Data, Trends, and Clinical Observations about American Families”. Look past the lengthy title and delve into over 75 well-delivered, highly relevant findings that provide a snapshot of what some of the nation’s leading authorities are thinking about how marriages, families, parenting, and intimate relationships succeed or fail. To wit:

AND BABY MAKES THREE
In a study of 130 couples from wedding until their first babies were three years old, John and Julie Gottman found that 67% of couples had a big drop in relationship happiness and a big increase in hostility in the first 3 years of the baby’s life. In addition, the parents’ hostility during pregnancy was associated with baby’s responsiveness at three months. Based on this, they designed and tested an intervention to help new parents: the workshop reversed the drop in couple happiness and the increasing hostility. They also found a reduction in postpartum depression. At three years old, the babies whose parents had been to a workshop were more advanced in terms of emotional and language development. Part of this was due to father’s involvement: the workshops improved father’s involvement.

John Gottman and Julie Gottman, Co-Directors, The Gottman Institute (Seattle, WA). Contact: johng@gottman.com

WHEN COUPLES DISSOLVE: HOW THEY FARE
What happens when couples dissolve their relationship? Both men and women experience income losses, but women experience a sharper drop. Married men whose relationships dissolve see an average decline of 22.3 percent in their household incomes, while married women see an average decline of 58.3 percent. The income loss for men and women in cohabiting relationships is less — 10 percent for men and 33.1 percent for women. But because cohabitors have lower incomes in the first place, their income losses are especially likely to leave them in precarious economic circumstances. Only 9 percent of formerly married men are poor after dissolution, while nearly 20% of cohabiting men are living in poverty after their break-ups. And most vulnerable of all are cohabiting African-American and Hispanic women whose relationships dissolve.

Pamela J. Smock, Associate Vice President for Research – Social Sciences & Humanities, Professor of Sociology & Women’s Studies, and Research Professor, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan. pjsmock@umich.edu; Phone: 734.763.2264

GOOD REASONS FOR MEN TO DO HOUSEWORK: HAPPIER MARRIAGES, BETTER KIDS
Numerous studies reveal the benefits to a relationship and family when a father participates in housework. Women are more prone to depression and to fantasize about divorce when they do a disproportionate share of the housework. Wives are more sexually interested in husbands who do more housework. And children appear to be better socially adjusted when they regularly participate in doing chores with Dad. In my clinical experience, men do more in homes when they have stronger egalitarian attitudes, and when their wives are willing to negotiate standards, act assertively, prioritize the marital friendship, and avoid gatekeeping.

Joshua Coleman, Author, Psychologist, Training Faculty San Francisco Psychotherapy Research Group. www.drjoshuacoleman.com; 510-547-6500

DO MOTHERS STAY HOME WHEN THEIR HUSBANDS EARN GOOD MONEY?
People often think that women whose husbands make “good money” stay home when they have children. But it takes being married to men in the top 5th percentile (men earning more than $120,000 a year) to seriously reduce women’s employment — only 54 percent of mothers with husbands with these top earnings worked for pay. Among married women whose husbands were in the top 25 to 5 percent of all earners (making salaries ranging from about $60,000 to $120,000), 72 percent of mothers worked outside the home, almost identical to the 71 percent work participation figures among married moms whose husbands’ earnings were in the lowest 25 percent of men’s wages. Women’s own education has a much bigger effect on her likelihood of working than her husband’s earnings; highly-educated women who can earn a lot typically don’t become stay-at-home mothers.

Paula England, Professor of Sociology, StanfordUniversity. 650-723-4912; pengland@stanford.edu

RAUNCH CULTURE ENTERS THE THERAPY OFFICE
Since 2000, my clinical practice has seen a dramatic rise in the number of girls and young women (aged 13 to 21) who’ve found themselves in the midst of some kind of overwhelming sexual experience, usually involving some kind of exhibitionism or trading sex for favors/social standing. The transition in this country towards “porn sex” as normative sexuality is causing intense confusion among many middle-and high-school girls about whether sexiness and sexual pleasure have anything to do with each other, or with the notion of personal choice.

Michael Simon, MFT, Director of Counseling & Student Support, BentleySchool, Lafayette, California. 510-433-295; Michael@PracticalHelpForParents.com

DOES DIVORCE MAKE YOU HAPPY?
Our research shows that it can make you less depressed—if you are in a distressed marriage. When we compare men and women in distressed marriages with men and women who have divorced and left their distressed marriages, it turns out that the people who stay are more likely to be depressed than those who leave in the short run. Over time, some of the relief from divorcing from a distressed marriage wears off, perhaps due to the challenges of being single and taking care of a family. Still, even after the passage of time, people who leave are a little less likely to be depressed than people who stay in a distressed marriage.

Virginia Rutter, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Framingham State College.
vrutter@gmail.com; 508-626-4863

And, of course,

THE ONLY CHILD DISCONNECT
Single-child families are the fastest-growing families in this country and in most industrialized Western European countries as well. Over the past 20 years, the percentage of women nationwide who have one child has more than doubled, from 10% to 23%. In 2003, single-child families in the U.S. outnumbered two-child families – 20% vs. 18%.

Still, according to a 2004 Gallup poll, only 3% of Americans think a single-child family is the ideal family size. There’s a real disconnect between the perception of the ideal and the reality of what people are doing.

Deborah Siegel, Ph.D., Author / Consultant, Fellow, Woodhull Institute.
www.deborahsiegel.net

Not sure how I missed this one but Katha Pollitt did a nice piece on Alternet after Sharon Lerner’s “The Motherhood Experiment” ran last month in the New York Times, linking low fertility rates (more only children!) to governments waking up and smelling work/life conflict as a cause.
Writes Katha, invoking Lerner,

[F]ertility rates — the average number of children per woman — have fallen below replacement level in ninety countries, including such Catholic stalwarts as Ireland (1.9), Spain (1.3), Italy (1.3) and Portugal (1.4). Even the much-trumpeted increasing US population is mostly a product of immigration (the actual fertility rate is 2.0). While politicians in Japan (1.3) seem fatally drawn to chastising women as recalcitrant “baby-making machines,” European governments have started asking if making life easier for working mothers might do the trick….[It wouldn’t] be the first time a government has done the right thing for the wrong reason.

Population implosion leading to paid parental leave? Hey, we’ll take it. Happy Mother’s Day, all you (paid and unpaid) Moms!

Yesterday I went to a panel on working across generations, sponsored by the National Council for Research on Women’s Corporate Circle. Entering Weil Gotshal’s shiny headquarters at the bottom of Central Park, I had one of those many moments where I wonder why I went academic instead of corporate. Oh those lunches (seared tuna and roasted vegetables).  And oh the fact that some of these firms are really talking about generational differences and have programs like “Reverse Mentoring”. (That would be Merrill Lynch.) There are those here who are genuinely trying to reframe workplace flexibility from employee benefit to something that managers can’t afford not to have. If all of corporate America looked like this particular panel, I’d jump ship in a heartbeat and come join their team. In fact, hmmm…But I digress.

Ellen Galinsky of Families & Work Institute was on the panel and served up a number of interesting tidbits from an earlier study called Generation and Gender in the Workplace, such as:

-Boomers are more likely to be work-centric than other generations, and Gens X and Y more dual-centric (meaning, they place the same priority on their job and family) or family-centric
-younger men are spending more time with their children
-men report more work/life conflict than in the past
-dual-centric and family-centric workers are actually LESS stressed than work-centric worker bees

And my personal favorite:

-if there are tensions in the workplace, they’re NOT primarily between women with kids and women without, as the media loves to overblow; the REAL tensions are between people in high-status jobs vs. those in low-status jobs – which means, I take it, that the real collisions have to do class and generation

And speaking of, I came across an interesting book the other day: When Generations Collide: Who They Are, Why They Clash, and How to Solve the Generational Puzzle at Work. Along with Kara Jesella’s Sassy book, this should be great airplane reading for tomorrow. I’m off to sweet home Chicago for the Council on Contemporary Families Anniversary conference, where I’m on a panel with the divine Miss Virginia Rutter. We’ll be talking to researchers and clinicians about pitching and translating research. Off to make my handouts…

A new study from the American Association of University Women finds that just a year after graduating from college, women earn just 80 percent of what men make. Ten years down the line, women make 69 percent of what men earn.

The finding comes at an interesting moment, given the popular argument that women earn less simply because of their lifestyle choices. Check out Broadsheet’s trademark savvy reporting on the study for more.

And while we’re on it, a few excerpts from a “pop quiz” I’m developing in conjunction with my book – because I’m always surprised at how often women ourselves overestimate how we, as a sex, are doing. Go on, take the little test. No one’s looking. I’ll post answers tomorrow.

In 2007, for every dollar a man earns, a woman earns:

A. the same
B. 84 cents
C. 77 cents
D. 56 cents

In 2007, women make up what percent of the U.S. Senate?

A. 3%
B. 14%
C. 33%
D. 50%

In 2007, what percent of women are tenured professors?

A. 7%
B. 16%
C. 20%
D. 50%

In 2007, what percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women?

A. 8%
B. 15%
C. 26%
D. 50%

(Answers posted tomorrow!)

Two quick updates from the reading/s front:

Courtney Martin’s Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters goes on sale today! Check out Courtney’s report from the front, on her blog. Great review by Holly Brubach in Sunday’s Style magazine. Courtney’s is one you don’t want to miss.

Second, mea culpa – and to my relief. In spite of an effectively provocative but somewhat misleading title (The Feminine Mistake) that SAHMs have taken offense too, perhaps missing the Friedan reference, Leslie Bennetts is very GOOD on structure in numerous places. Check out, for starters, the chapters titled “Opting Out” and “Opting Back In,” where she cites my new favorite sociologist, Pamela Stone, among others, extensively. And she incorporates some great structural zingers, like this one, from Sylvia Law: “This line about how women have to pick between having a family and having real work is sexist…When you say to women, and only women, ‘You have to pick,’ it’s a way of keeping women in their place by saying, ‘This is the way it is.’ The Times likes to tell the story as if the structures are immovable and you have to accept them.” Yeah, well, so do a lot of these books claiming to assuage women’s angst. But I digress.

The question remains: In an era (and in a blogosphere) in which savvy authors KNOW people have no qualms voicing an opinion without reading the book, is it fair — or disingenuous — for us to rail against those who judge our books by their covers when our titles are, for better or worse, intended to provoke?

So I’m doing research for some magazine articles I’m writing about cutting-edge couples in a (supposed) new era of equality and came across the following:

Based on a study of 120 in-depth interviews with young adults conducted between 1998-2003, NYU sociologist Kathleen Gerson reports that 3/4 of women said they plan to build a non-negotiable base of self-reliance and an independent identity in the world of paid work.

And according to other studies, there are fewer households with highly unequal divisions of family labor and more households with equal divisions than ever before — both in the US and across Europe. Turns out, if egalitarian divisions aren’t possible, what a husband wants and what a wife wants are often at odds. According to Gerson, “If a supportive, equal partnership is not possible, most women prefer individual autonomy over becoming dependent on a husband in a traditional marriage. Most men, however, if they can’t have an equal balance between work and parenting, fall back on a neo-traditional arrangement that allows them to put their own work prospects first and rely on a partner for most caregiving.”

So, um, what might this say about who’s really calling shots in those couples featured by Leslie Bennetts where the wives are staying home? Just a thought…

(All info drawn from the special Council on Contemporary Families issue of The American Prospect last month)

There’s a savvy read of Leslie Bennett’s NYPL LIVE event this week on Gawker, by the way, for those who missed it. (Thanks to Rachel Kramer Bussell for hipping me to it.)

I’m taking the liberty of pasting Heather Boushey’s comment on my previous post up here, in case folks don’t venture into the comments down there. It is as I thought: evidence, not interpretation. Thank you, Heather, for inserting the nuance. Why doesn’t this reality seem to get through the din???

Heather Boushey’s comment:

Sure, I’ll comment … I’ve run hundreds of regressions by now trying to sort out whether there is or is not a trend of declining women’s employment *because of children.* I haven’t found any real evidence that points to women being more likely to leave employment today, compared to 25 years ago or 5 years ago, because they have children at home.

What we know is that employment rates for men and women (moms and non-moms) declined after 2000, and while women’s employment rates have almost recovered to their 2000 levels, men’s have not.

We also know that women lost more jobs during the recession of 2001 than they had in the prior two recessions. They did not lose more jobs than men, but compared to women in prior recessions, the 2001 recession was hard on women workers. I tend to think of this as women moving closer to equality to men in their vulnerability to the business cycle. (Typically, in prior recessions, men have seen greater employment losses than women during recessions.)

When we isolate the effect of children on women’s employment, there is no increase. Does this mean that women are not leaving the workforce? No, but it does mean that we cannot identify children as the cause.

There is some evidence that husband’s income may be having a slightly — very slightly — larger downward pull on women’s employment in recent years. But, that’s not about motherhood.

As a researcher whose training is of the lit crit/historical persuasion (I am NOT nor have I ever been a social scientist, though there are times when I really wish I were!), I have a question for my friends of the economist/social scientist persuasion:

For those picking up this thread today, I’ve been blogging this week about Leslie Bennett’s book, The Feminine Mistake, as I read it. Much as I may disagree on certain (key) points, Leslie Bennetts is GOOD. Every time I silently voice an objection, she addresses it on the next page. But I have a more general question about journalists interpreting data when it comes to research on women/girls/families — and maybe experts from the Council on Contemporary Families crew can help us out here and set it straight.

Bennetts writes that “some feminists have challenged the very existence of a back-to-the-home trend on the grounds that more than two-thirds of all American mothers still participate in the labor force” (7) and that “[o]ther analysts have challenged the idea that we’re witnessing a resurgence of stay-at-home motherhood by attacking the news stories describing this phenomenon” (8). She calls analyses like those put forth by Heather Boushey “arguments.” I thought they were evidence. She calls them “denials” and invokes (critically, perhaps, but I think not) Linda Hirshman who refers to it all as the “it’s not happening” defense.

Which is it? Is it happening? Or not? Is the reading of the early 2000s recession as the reason for women’s labor-force dip interpretation — or fact?

Last night’s host at the New York Public Library event primed the audience for a fight. There was none, just good ‘n lively convo. So I settled in and found myself listening to the exchange between Leslie Bennetts and Elissa Schappell with an ear for marketing. (I’m working on talking points for my own book and am obsessed with framing – can you tell?) Leslie Bennetts is a master, a natural — I say that with genuine admiration.

Some highlights from the sound bite frontlines:

-ES on mommy wars: “It’s mom-on-mom violence!”
-LB on SAHMs being left and being unable to reenter the workforce: “It’s carnage out there.”
-LB laughing at her own poor paraphrasing of an expert she talked to: “He who brings home the bacon controls the bacon.”
-LB on structure: “What’s keeping women from reentering the workforce is that no one is taking them back in.”
-LB going counterintuitive: “Staying at home is high-risk behavior. I wouldn’t put my child’s welfare at risk that way.” “Working women aren’t validated as good mothers. No one ever says working women are being good moms, taking care of their kids, by working.”
-LB on motive: “I did not think this was a book about mommy wars or feminism. Boy was I dumb.” ES: “Dumb, dumb, dumb!”

It’s interesting data to learn that many people seem not to be fully understanding “The Feminine Mistake” as a pun on “The Feminine Mystique,” and instead think that Bennetts is calling SAHMs mistakes. (Jury’s still out over here on that one – still on Chapter 1…)

Be sure to check out Rebecca Mead’s New Yorker review of Bennetts. Good stuff, and balanced. (Thanks, Helaine, for that heads up!) Mead is generally laudatory (and man, talk about a gorgeously written review). Based on what I heard last night, I sense I’m going to agree with her critiques:

[Bennetts] is short on answers for women whose budgets do not stretch to hiring a well-chosen private surrogate. And she seems impatient with anyone who has failed to find, as she has, the thrill of work, particularly work that grants a certain degree of child-friendly flexibility.

Mead does a great historical tour of the title and offers a smart compare/contrast with Friedan. When I grow up, I want to be Rebecca Mead. (Don’t we all?!).