Mothers & More Clarifies Career/Family Issue:

Women waiting to have children not by choice but because of limited options

Monday, April 22, 2002 With the recent buzz around books and articles revealing that women who wait to have children face problems conceiving, one would think that infertility is the issue. Mothers & More, a non-profit organization for mothers, asks that we look beyond these reports to find the true cause of the problem - a lack of adequate options when it comes to combining paid employment and family care.

“This is not a woman problem or a mother problem. It’s not a symptom of the limitations of female biology - it’s a symptom of the limitation of our society to create workplaces that offer equitable opportunities for all employees,” says Judith Stadtman Tucker, Advocacy Manager of Mothers & More. “The work/family conflict is not going to be resolved by women making more timely reproductive decisions and reining in their professional ambition accordingly. Our entire society must recognize the value of caregiving to the wider community and we must restructure our workplaces and institutions to fully include women with family responsibilities.”

While the availability of flexible work options has increased in the last two decades, a September 2000 report from Lonnie Golden for the Economic Policy Institute shows that 3/4 of working women still lack the work-time flexibility necessary for successfully balancing the demands of work and family. Mothers & More asserts that women would not feel forced to put their careers on hold in order to have children if flexible work options - proportional pay, promotion and benefits for part-time work, for example - were widely available.

“Countries with few supports for family caregivers -- like the U.S. -- typically have rock-bottom fertility rates,” says Joan Williams, author of Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What To Do About It. “In sharp contrast, in countries with family friendly workplaces and public policies, educated women aren't faced with an either/or choice between work and family. It's the either/or that leads women to continually defer childbearing as a result of career pressures -- only to come face to face with infertility.”

Mothers & More is a non-profit organization that raises awareness of the social and economic value of all the work mothers do - both paid and unpaid. With 7500 members nationwide, it promotes respect and expanded options for combining caregiving and paid employment. 

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