Overworked and Burnt Out - Better childcare is the Answer for Working Moms

In the last decade, scholars and feminists have insisted that more women should participate in the paid workforce in order to give women more financial security and boost the GDP of the United States. However, working moms struggle with burnout and often find it more convenient or financially sensible to stay at home under current childcare conditions. As many countries develop social programs to better support working mothers, the United States still does not have a universal, nationwide, child-care program. Recently, President Biden has proposed the American Families Plan, which will guarantee the government’s provision of subsidized child care. In the wake of Biden’s new proposal, American politicians and journalists debate whether or not universal childcare is a good policy for the United States based on the experience of the countries that have already implemented it.

The reason why working mothers in the U.S. are burnt out and need support is that they work a “second shift” after their paid job. A term coined in Arlie Hochschild’s 1989 book, the “second shift” is the unpaid housework and caretaking mothers do in the domestic setting. While American men may struggle to attain an ideal work-life balance, they often do not have to contend with the second shift women deal with. According to Oxfam and the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, women in the U.S. “spend 37 percent more time on unpaid household and care work than men” in the average day. Thus, even though the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated feelings of stress and fatigue for male and female employees alike, working moms have been dealing with burnout since before the pandemic started. In 2011, 56% of working mothers said it was very/somewhat difficult to balance the responsibilities of their job and their family, which only intensified under the strain of COVID-19. In 2021, 42% of working women reported feeling burnt out, an increase of 10% from 2020. While most children in the United States studied from home during COVID-19, parents were now forced to work their 9-to-5 jobs and take care of their kids simultaneously. Unfortunately, childcare remained either unavailable or too expensive, costing nearly $16,000 per year on average for one child. Since mothers traditionally handle the majority of the childcare responsibilities and make less than their husbands, many American moms felt the need to quit their job, causing the female workforce participation to drop to 57% –the lowest level since 1988. The decrease in women’s participation in the American workforce is incredibly worrisome since their unemployment has historically lasted longer than average and women have taken longer to reenter the workforce after past recessions. This decline in participation will only exacerbate the wage gap and contribute to a loss of talent and workers in the American economy. To find potential solutions, American scholars and politicians are looking to other places that have maintained female participation in the workforce and done a better job supporting working moms.

Sweden’s child care program, also known as Educare, is “often cited internationally as the gold standard in early learning.” Passed in 1998, Educare provides subsidized preschools across the country that ensure that children of working parents, aged one and above, are provided childcare and education. Educare aims to give children stimulating, educational activities and protect good living conditions, allowing parents to combine parenthood with work or studies by providing child care centers in their own neighborhoods. Educare teachers and support staff are well-educated and trained, operating under a well-structured national curriculum that guarantees high standards across the board. The price of Educare is proportional to parental income and parents will receive 525 hours of Educare per year for free for children above the age of three, ensuring affordability for those who need it most. Today, very much due to the success of Educare, Sweden boasts one of the highest female workforce participation in the world. Additionally, Swedish children consistently show evidence of high educational standards, scoring higher than average in reading and mathematics on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Despite Sweden’s success, some Americans contest that the United States cannot mimic Scandinavian policies due to the vast cultural and political differences between the two regions.

Therefore, many American journalists and policy analysts critically examine the subsidized child care system in Quebec instead. Quebec is the only place in North America to have a universal child care system (known as politique familiale or the family policy), which makes it an important case study for implementing subsidized child care due to its geographic and cultural proximity to the U.S. Unlike Sweden, Quebec’s universal child care system is delivered through both private and public care centers, which are annually subsidized by  approximately $2 billion in public funding to provide a full-day, year-round child-care program for all children under five at a price of $8.50 per day Some of Quebec’s for-profit child care centers receive direct funding and provide their services with controlled fees, while other private providers do so with unregulated fees In some ways, Quebec’s child care model is successful especially in how it is able to address issues related to gender: Quebec’s female participation in the paid labor force was 81% and fertility rates were higher than those in Ontario in 2016. On the other hand, critics point out that Quebec’s child care is not very accessible, since there are not enough subsidized spots for the children who need them. Specifically, there are 51,000 children on waiting lists for a spot at a federally funded child care center. Furthermore, they counter that some of Quebec’s child care centers are low-quality and may cause behavioral problems in kids. While the Quebec model does make improvements to the lifestyle of some working moms and young children, it fails to meet the needs of its entire population.  as some working moms in Quebec still struggle with the burden of child care.

In sharp contrast to both Sweden and Quebec, the majority of American parents still struggle to find and afford high-quality child care and many Americans argue that working mothers need better support in order to be less burnt out while remaining in the workforce. For at least 50 years, Americans have struggled with a lack of affordable child care. In 1970, Congress almost passed legislation that would create universal, federally subsidized child care, however, conservatives like Pat Buchanan cast universal child care as “Sovietization of American children”, and President Nixon vetoed the bill. Today, the majority of American parents still struggle to find and afford high-quality child care. Recently, President Joe Biden proposed spending $225 billion on child care to achieve three major goals: making child care affordable, providing high-quality child care, and investing in the child care workforce. In his American Families Plan, President Biden and his team insist that high-quality child care and early education give children a strong base that allows them to flourish later as working adults. Moreover, he claims affordable child care allows “roughly one million parents, primarily mothers, to enter the labor force, and significantly bolsters inclusive and equitable economic growth.” 

Despite the growing support for federal child care, conservative sentiment by the likes of Paul Buchanan continues to persist in policy debates on whether child care is the best solution to aid working parents in the United States. In particular, they disagree on whether subsidized child care provided by the government is what working mothers truly need. One of their biggest concerns with subsidized child care is that it will pressure parents to put their kids in child care, which will be a worse situation for the parents and the children. Thus, opponents of universal child care promote a child tax credit instead, giving parents extra money to help raise their kids and letting them decide how to use it. In reality, neither side of the universal child care debate in the United States knows with 100% certainty what the effects of federally subsidized child care will be in the U.S.

Based on the most successful implementation of childcare in Sweden and Quebec, the United States should implement national, subsidized high-quality childcare to enable American women to be both mothers and participants in the paid workforce. Although the COVID-19 brought challenges upon many people, the pandemic highlighted how important good childcare is for working moms in the U.S. and the general welfare of the United States. Not only will American working moms feel less overworked and burnt out, but national, subsidized child care will also improve the birth rate and female participation in the labor force of the U.S. 

Tatiana MerhebComment