Facts & Figures
Did you know:
- The price of motherhood is steep. Two out of three mothers work less than forty hours per week during the key years of career (and child) development and part-time workers face depressed wages, benefits, training, and advancement opportunities. The family gap between the wages of mothers and others has been increasing in recent decades.
- Responsibilities for care affect everyone. Though not everyone has children, everyone has parents, and 85 percent of elder care is delivered through informal networks (typically of family members).
- Work/family conflict hits lower-income families hardest. Lower-income families report they have the hardest time balancing work and family which is not surprising, given that they are the most likely to rely on family (as opposed to paid) care.
- Fathers as well as mothers may face a hostile work environment. Fathers who request time off from work for family reasons often face even more workplace hostility than do mothers
- High levels of overtime work threaten family time. Americans put in more overtime than workers in any other industrialized country. High-overtime workplaces virtually wipe mothers out of their labor pool and take many fathers away from daily involvement with family life (30% of fathers with children under 14 work 50 or more hours per week).
- Family friendly policies save employers money. It costs 75% to 300% of a worker's annual salary to replace her when she leaves; Deloitte, Touche, the Big Five accounting firm, calculated that it saved $13 million in a single year when it instituted effective flexible work arrangements. Employers of lower-wage workers also documented productivity and quality due to retention of trained workers.
- Part-time workers, many of whom work part time for family reasons, suffer from depressed wages, benefits, training and advancement opportunities. Overall, part-timers are more than twice as likely as full-timers to be poor despite their work, even when they bring similar "human capital" education, skills and experience to their jobs and even when they work in similar industries and occupations. Only 17% of part-timers, compared to 73% of full-time workers, have health insurance through their employer. And only 21% of part-time workers, compared to 64% of full-time workers, are included in employers' pension plan.
