Monday, January 25, 2010
New report from WorkLife Law and CAP on work-family conflicts across class
Today the Center for WorkLife Law (WLL), in conjunction with the Center for American Progress (CAP), released a groundbreaking report on work-family conflicts across class.
The Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict: The Poor, the Professionals, and the Missing Middle is the first of its kind report to comprehensively document how work-family conflict affects poor and working class people, instead of focusing exclusively on professional women “opting out” of the paid workforce. It provides concrete demographic data on income changes over time from CAP Senior Economist and report co-author Heather Boushey. In addition, the report provides extensive research by WLL Director and report co-author Joan Williams on how work-family conflict affects families differently based on where they—and the type of jobs they have access to—fall on the income spectrum.
After painting a picture of working families in the United States today, the report sets out a policy agenda to tackle work-family conflict that is universal in its appeal, not only to working families of all classes, but that can work for employers while providing needed supports to their employees, too. Given President Obama’s commitment to addressing work-family conflict—including his plans to address new child care policy initiatives in his state of the union address—the report aims to identify a policy agenda that can help reduce work-family conflicts for employees in ways that are workable and help employers’ bottom lines.
Click here to read the full report: The Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict: The Poor, the Professionals, and the Missing Middle.
