In their powerful introductory chapter around which all other essays in this edited volume are organized, Janet C. Gornick and Marcia K. Meyers note that while American women have increasingly joined the ranks of the employed in the paid labor market, American men have not assumed an equal share of the home responsibilities, primarily in the area of child care. This disparity in responsibilities has led to an environment whereby the interests of men, women, and children seem to be in dire conflict. Women are overwhelmed in managing their work and family lives, men are tethered to their jobs, and children lack affordable, quality child care.
Gornick and Meyers have a way out, however. They propose a new vision of society—or what they call a modern-day utopia—whereby the needs of parental caregiving and market work are valued in an egalitarian way through what they call the “dual-earner/dual-caregiver model.” In this world, both men and women participate symmetrically in generating income as well as in taking care of their children. Fundamental to this approach is that individuals, supported by new social policies, would have new, meaningful options in organizing both their work and family lives.
Three core policies—drawn from the experiences of Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, and France—provide the blueprint for the dual-earner/dual-caregiver plan. The first component is paid family leave, which would grant parents the right to take time off to care for their children while being compensated during the period that they are away from their jobs. Policies would be designed so that fathers in particular would be incentivized to take this leave. The second component involves the regulation of allowable working time, which would function to redirect current hours spent on employment to caregiving time. The third and final component involves the provision of high-quality, publically funded childhood education and care.
Gornick and Meyers are to be credited with pointing out the limitations of their plan as well as the trade-offs that might be involved with the introduction of these policies. In fact, the rest of the volume is composed of carefully crafted critiques of their plan from top researchers in the various fields that address family policy. The first set of these response essays takes aim at the general principles of the dual-earner/dual-caregiver plan. Among these authors, Barbara R. Bergmann, for example, argues that paid-leave policies will further entrench gender inequalities as men will refuse to do more care work, and therefore the only solution is the complete commodification of day-care services through a transition from family-based systems to payment-based systems. On a global level, Shireen Hassim notes that the plan might have a negative impact on poorer countries, partly because they would be relied on to provide the imported, cheap labor necessary for child-care jobs in wealthy countries.
The second set of response essays focuses on the design of the dual-earner/dual-caregiver plan. Johanna Brenner, for example, argues that care work needs to be completely reenvisioned and that the dual-earner/dual-caregiver model does not go far enough. Brenner would instead favor a society that focused on caregiving in more communal settings, such as through collective housing arrangements. Kathrin Zippel, pursuing another line of inquiry, asserts that the Gornick and Meyers plan would do little for gender equity unless strong affirmative action and antidiscrimination laws are passed and enforced. Heidi Hartmann and Vicky Lovell add paid sick days as part of their restructuring of the plan.
The final set of response essays pursues the critical questions regarding the feasibility and plausibility of the dual-earner/dual-caregiver plan actually emerging in American society. Among the many viewpoints in this section, several essays stand out in the astuteness of their insights. Michael Shalev, for example, notes that it would be difficult to implement any type of new way to govern work and family life so long as women are divided by strong class differences; it is simply not in the privileged class's economic interests to support more governmental intervention in this area of policy. Myra Marx Ferree describes another formidable barrier—the presence of a strong American value system of governmental minimalism that would work against the establishment of such a plan. While Scott Coltrane is more optimistic regarding men's inclination to participate in this new utopia, Cameron Macdonald asserts that such progress is likely to be stymied not by men but, rather, by women who are attracted to strong notions of intensive mothering.
While these conversations between Gornick and Meyers and all of the other contributing authors are extremely informative and thought-provoking, no book, no matter how comprehensive, could treat all possible dimensions of the issues at stake. Gornick and Meyers rightly note that work/family choices might be constrained in new ways with the implementation of their plan. However, what needs to be more readily amplified is that every system of organizing work and family life, including our current institutional arrangements, circumscribes individuals' life choices. Changing from one form to another might be difficult, but that is an issue separate and apart from acknowledging that the current work/family infrastructure is socially constructed. A second critical challenge for the plan relates to the rise in single-parent families in the United States. Divorce, separation, and nonmarital parenting often lead to circumstances where the dual-earner/dual-caregiver model might not make sense. In these cases, geographical distance or allegations of domestic violence between former partners may force parents to specialize in either care work or paid employment.
A third issue involves the likelihood of male “buy-in” to the new system. While the book presents evidence that men might increase their care work over time under new sets of rules, it is not clear that the “intensive breadwinning” culture that defines masculinity can be so easily overcome. Moreover, while the literature on workplace flexibility demonstrates gains to employers in terms of worker satisfaction and productivity, change is difficult; the majority of companies in the Unites States would have to be persuaded as to why they should want to modify currently profitable modes of conducting business. Lastly, the dual-earner/dual-caregiver model needs to take seriously the preferences of religious conservatives in the United States, many of whom strongly believe in separate spheres between men and women as fundamentally part of their sacred dogma.
Overall, this volume is an exciting new piece of work that adds to the growing body of research concerning the management of work and family life. Its contribution is that it is a holistic rather than a piecemeal treatment of the issues that, through the incorporation of all of the contributing chapters, takes both itself and its critics seriously. As such, it promises to move the discussion on how best to advance the interests of all individuals in their roles as both family members and workers dramatically forward.
