In today's economy American women must work and, in order to ensure the well-being of the country's children, large companies and government must provide childcare (and, sometimes, elder-care) programs to allow working parents to perform their jobs without being forced to neglect their family responsibilities. In the United States today 60 percent of all women and 75 percent of all men are in the workforce. This is a change in the society that has taken place over the last 30 years. Many women no longer have the choice of remaining at home until their children have grown and so parents are forced to find child-care options. Daycare for pre-school children, after-school services for older children, summer programs for older children, and care for elderly dependents of working men and women are often very expensive, good programs are rare, and, in many cases, they simply do not exist. Young children's development can be harmed by poor care, children who are left on their own are more likely to get into trouble, and the economic and emotional pressures on parents have many adverse effects on worker productivity and health and on family life.
Some social conservatives claim that the rise in the number of working mothers in America is the result of feminist ideology that supposedly promotes "a utopianism that envisions a cost-free end to all the encumbrances and limitations of domestic life" (Adelson 54). But while the rise in the number of middle- and upper-middle class mothers who work may be partially tied to feminist thinking, the numbers of women who work is too great, and the change is too sudden, to be accounted for in this way. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics more than 50 percent of mothers with children under one year old work, almost 66 percent of mothers of 3-5 year-olds work, and 75 percent of mother with children ages 6-13 are employed (Reynolds 1). This is not a middle-class trend based on feminist ideo...