EJ Graff and Ruth Rosen argue that eliminating barriers to integrating paid work and caregiving is more that a "woman's issue" -- and they're right. Implementing new worker- and family-friendly policies in the U.S. could relieve some of our most pressing social problems, from high rates of child poverty to the dwindling well-being of middle-income families. Which is a good thing -- because even if the U.S. adopts a full slate of effective work-life reconciliation policies, it may not lead to gender equality.

In her recent post on America's care crisis, EJ Graff asks which public policies are most urgently needed to promote the welfare of working families. The short answer is: universal health care, paid family and medical leave, a minimum number of paid sick days for all workers, and raising the minimum wage to something closer to a living wage. The realistic answer is that complex problems call for comprehensive solutions.

When social researchers look at systemic factors contributing to work-life incompatibility in the U.S. -- including how employment practices and cultural norms reinforce gender and class inequality -- they end up recommending an array of policy remedies that can be sorted into three broad categories: caregiver supports, working time regulations, and job and earnings protections. Typically, proposed policies include everything from expanding access to excellent affordable child- and elder-care, to imposing limits on involuntary overtime for all classes of workers. (More on my personal laundry list of necessary reforms may be found here.)

Based on the various combinations of social insurance and labor policies found in Western Europe, it's clear this three-tiered approach promotes maternal employment, improves infant and child outcomes, narrows the gender wage gap, and reduces maternal and child poverty -- and in countries where gender equity is a social goal, work-life reconciliation policies tend to promote men's greater involvement in family life.

But even in the best case scenario -- which happens to be the Nordic countries -- model work-life policies have not been successful in eliminating gender inequality (although by standard measures, Denmark and Finland come close.) In counties with less generous policies (but which are still light-years ahead of the U.S. in adapting to the realities of the 21st century workforce), women continue to experience high levels of occupational segregation, wage penalties for "working while female," and provide fewer hours of paid labor and more hours of unpaid family labor than men do. For example, a recent report from the UK Commission for Equality and Human Rights found that in Britain, mothers of young children are more likely to encounter workplace discrimination than people with disabilities and ethnic minorities.

While Coffeehouse readers have called for "degenderizing" the work and family debate, what Ruth Rosen has named "the care crisis" overlaps with what I call "the motherhood problem" -- the belief that mothers' involvement is more predictive of children's social outcomes than all other factors combined. In this day and age, no one really doubts that fathers can be sensitive and attentive caregivers, and as Kathleen Gerson reports in the current issue of The American Prospect, younger men and women favor egalitarian partnerships. Yet a 2002 survey by the Families and Work Institute found that 42 percent of male workers -- and 37 percent of women workers -- agreed that “men should earn the money and women should stay home minding the house and children."

This actually represents progress, since thirty years ago only 26 percent of male workers “felt it was OK for women to enter the workforce and contribute to the family income rather than stay home." But let’s be honest. The climate of the American workplace is far from ideal for women, and is even less hospitable to women with young children. Guaranteeing paid leave and workplace flexibility will not instantly transform recalcitrant attitudes about gender and family -- just as outlawing sexual harassment and sex and race discrimination has not yet rid our society of sexism and racism.

What is certain is that work-life reconciliation policies are a baseline requirement for the advancement of women, as well as a critical step toward increasing the social inclusion of lower-income workers. When today's lower- and middle-income parents are struggling to find enough time and money to meet their families' basic needs, the fact that the gender wage gap will cost these households between $700,000 and $1.2 million in lost earnings over a lifetime is clearly more than a "women's issue." The finding that longer, paid childbirth leaves reduce infant mortality -- whereas shorter, unpaid leaves do not -- might be construed as a women's issue, if it were not such a pressing public health concern (U.S. rates of infant mortality are unconscionably high, especially for African American babies). It's not a "women's issue" that three-quarters of low-income workers lack a single day of paid sick leave to use for their own health needs or to care for a sick child -- although women are disproportionately represented in the low-wage workforce. In other words, work-life reconciliation is social issue, not just a women's issue. But it's a bigger problem for women, and gender bias is the reason why.

The heart of the "opt-out myth" is that women choose inequality by making a series of self-defeating decisions about education, employment, and family formation. Women are even held accountable for allowing men to get away with doing less than their fair share around the house. (If a critical mass of nagging is all it would take to close the wage gap and end the over-representation of men in positions of power, I'm guessing those problems would be solved by now.)

I'm all for men doing more caregiving and housework, and for removing structural and cultural barriers that prevent them from doing so. But legislative reform is only the beginning. What we really need is a new social paradigm.