Scholarship@WashULaw

Document Type

Book Section

Language

English (en)

Publication Date

2012

Publication Title

Women Who Opt Out: The Debate over Working Mothers and Work-Family Balance

Abstract

When higher-income women “opt in” for full-time employment, they are in a position to contract out some share of their responsibilities in the home to lower-income women who then provide these services. This traditional model of redistributing care work frequently presumes that only child care responsibilities are at stake. However, the aging of the population has increasingly focused attention on workers’ needs for help caring for elderly family members. Indeed, care giving for the elderly may equal, if not surpass, child care as the work-family concern of the twenty-first century. Because elder care, similar to child care, is heavily gendered, its workplace consequences will fall disproportionately on working women. As with child care, working women who can afford to outsource the cost of elder care will turn to other women to help in the struggle to manage family responsibilities with workplace obligations. Because home is the preferred setting of most elderly Americans who require long-term care, outsourcing will commonly result in the hiring of home care workers to assist in the care of aging family members.

Keywords

Women, Income, Child Care, Elder Care, Caregiving, Family

Publication Citation

Peggie R. Smith, The Future of Family Caregiving: The Value of Work-Family Strategies That Benefit Both Care Consumers and Paid Care Workers, in Women Who Opt Out: The Debate over Working Mothers and Work-Family Balance 119-135 (Bernie D. Jones ed., 2012)

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