The Motherlode: Why Most US Mothers Will Find Themselves Financially Supporting Their Children

"The prognosis for American mothers looks poor. The United States is saddled with one of the largest financial penalties for part-time work in the world's developed economies. The Trump administration has systematically excluded some of the most prominent jobs available to working-class mothers such as home health aide and nursing assistant from labor protections enshrined in the Fair Labor Standards Act guaranteeing a forty-hour work week, overtime protections, and time for family. We have watched as health care costs have skyrocketed far ahead of wages and affordable health insurance for families backslides, while managed care organizations expect busy moms to provide more care for the sick and infirm. And the ideology surrounding these developments, and the lack of action to address them, continues to stem from the entrenched yet false premise that mothers' earnings and benefits are optional rather than crucial for American children. In this book, sociologist Jennifer Glass shows that no group of American mothers can escape the likelihood that at some point they will need to serve as the primary breadwinner for their family. She outlines the evidence of this dramatic shift in mothers' lives using information from the 2014-2017 Survey of Income and Program Participation, a panel of information on a random sample of US households conducted by the US Census Bureau that provides an unusually thorough glimpse into the finances of American families"-- Provided by publisher.