Cities across the US are finally making big strides on paid-leave policy. Last month, New York State and San Francisco passed two ground-breaking parental leave laws: New York became the fourth state in the US to offer some form of paid parental leave (for up to 12 weeks), while San Francisco is now the first city in the country to require employers to give workers six weeks of fully paid leave.
While these policies are important progress, economist Heather Boushey argues that we need to go further to support working parents in her timely new book, Finding Time: The Economics of Work-Life Conflict. Through her research, Boushey shows that access to quality childcare, paid time off, and flexible work schedules are as important for the US economy as they are for workers’ well-being. Ever since the 1960s, when more women began entering the workforce, families have lost what Boushey refers to as a “silent partner”–the American Wife, who served as a stay-at-home caregiver–and US policy has yet to catch up. Today, 40 percent of families have female breadwinners, and 25 percent of women share earning responsibility with their partners. However, American families lack adequate support from government policies when it comes to handling childcare or elder care issues at home.
We caught up with Boushey, who is the Executive Director and Chief Economist at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, to discuss the book and the work-life policy changes that American families need.
[Editor’s note: This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.]
Is this a special moment for conversations about policies that positively affect work-life balance?
Yes… and I think it’s been building, and that’s what’s important here… In the early 1970s, you know as the feminist movement started to rise, you started to see women increase their labor force participation, and for a variety of reasons we didn’t make the kind of progress that many other countries made in implementing a more comprehensive set of policies that actually help families address work-life contact. And what you’ve seen, especially over the 2000s, is this wide range of advocates seeing remarkable successes all over the country in making these kinds of policy changes. You see a lot of firms do it as well, and you’ve heard a lot of talk about that, and you’ve seen these wins on the ground.
So the first new social insurance programs that we’ve seen in the US in decades have been around paid family leave in California and New Jersey and Rhode Island … you have over two dozen places, including now I believe five states…that have implemented paid sick days, giving workers the right to earn paid sick time from their employer. And, you’ve seen a lot of progress on childcare, and increased awareness around issues around elder care, so I think that the national policy attention is following on the heels of this success at the state and local level. And one of the remarkable things about that kind of success is that there have been a number of polls and studies at this point that have come out and shown that these issues are really, really popular. And they’re popular not just among women, and not just among people who are liberal or progressive…among Republicans, among men, because these are such bread-and-butter issues that affect every family at some point.
How are professional families being squeezed?
This is one of the things that really struck me as I was writing the book… as I realized I really wanted to focus on these three income groups, and I was struggling a lot with, ‘OK, professionals, they already get some of that stuff.’ But then as I had been looking more and more at the research on inequality—the center that I now run is focused on inequality… we’re learning more and more about what that means. And you listen to economists like Robert Frank [talk about] what he calls expenditure cascades, and the stress and the anxiety of [these] families. I think you see especially around access to education—‘We’ve got to buy this house that we can’t afford,’ or that ‘We can just barely afford in this good neighborhood, because we want to send our kids to the best schools and we can’t afford private school, so we’re going to spend an extra $50,000 or whatever… on this house, because that’s what’s going to help our kids become successful in life… So I think what’s really interesting is that these are issues that actually transcend class, and a lot of it is about economic anxiety and anxiety for the next generation.
How can we ensure that reforms support families across economic system/different classes?
How can we? It’s a good question and it requires, I think, a couple of things. First, an acknowledgment that there actually are solutions that [help everyone], which has not always been the case. I mean I think, even five years ago I was hearing a lot of people say: ‘Oh, we can’t do something that’s going to help everybody.’ …And we can implement policies that do that. And actually the Schedules that Work Act that has been introduced by Senator Warren and Congresswoman Delauro in the house actually does that. And it was so exciting because I had been working with this advocacy community and trying to encourage them for a really long time in subtle and unsubtle ways. Women at the top, and men at the top struggle with inflexible schedules that make them frustrated, and can’t address work-life conflict, and people at the bottom [also face this problem]. I think there’s got to be a way we can put both of those together in one piece of legislation, and talk about them.
But the second piece of it is that if you want to see the boots-on-the-ground mobilizing efforts that really have engaged people, you have to do something that isn’t just perceived as being about rich, white, women, I think. We live in a country that’s much more diverse, and where when we focus just on those at the top… it obviously doesn’t resonate for people up and down the income ladder. But you have seen [action] where it’s like we’re going to give everybody access to paid sick days, no matter where you are… Or paid family medical leave…it’s universal. You’ve seen a lot more support and those policies that have actually been put in place.
If you had to pick, what’s one area that the federal government should be focusing on?
I think it’s a multi-fronted battle here, and I think that’s actually really important to remember… So A) you need the battle to be fought on all fronts, and that’s difficult for Congress to do because, you know, these are single pieces of legislation. But I think weaving together that narrative [is important]. Again, as I outline in my book, I argue that we need policies for when people need to be here at home, when they need to be there at work, how best to address care, and we need to make sure it’s all fair….We need policies in all four areas, not just one. 
What Congress should do first I think is what they can do, so focus on whatever is the most expedient. I mean right now there’s a lot of energy around the Family Act, it has a lot of co-signers, it’s gotten attention at the level of the presidential campaigns…there is energy and attention to this, so that might be a good place to start, but it’s expensive. I think that childcare might be a good place to start, but that’s really expensive, but that would have far-reaching growth and positive economic contributions in a variety of ways. So I think it’s hard to pick one, I think you need a good story to have all of them, but I think you need to focus on what’s most expedient. I will add, though, that in other moments where we’ve addressed big problems like this, Congress has been able to put together packages that over one-three years or something, you do get this set of ideas through…
How has your personal experience inspired your work?
It’s funny how you have these motivating moments. When I applied to graduate school after college, my graduate school application essays were actually about how I grew up in Mukilteo, WA, which is just a mile down the road from the Everett Boeing company, where my dad worked. He was a machinist there. And in the 80s, during the recession, he and every other parent in my little cul de sac, every other kid at the bus stop, everyone had somebody, some mom or dad that was on layoff for Boeing, and that is what I have often looked back on at the moment where I was like. ‘What is going on here? Why does this one big building up the street…how does it have so much power over my whole world?’…And that made me really start thinking about the intersection between what policy is and what the economy is and how we all make our livings, which is what I’m really interested in… How do you have the safe and decent life that as a middle class family you want? So what’s the role of the economy in that?…
