You might have heard about a study discussed this week on The New York Times Economix blog that says the motherhood payment gap is worse for low-income women in low-paying jobs than for women who earn more. In some respects, this is unsurprising: High-paying jobs also come with good benefits, like maternal leave and sick leave, that mitigate (but don't completely erase) the effects of missing work. A cruel irony of all that is, of course, women in those high-benefit jobs are less likely to have kids.
Which brings me to another interesting part of the post: The tightening of restrictions on welfare in 1996 did not reduce birth rates, but the bad economy has. That's because women depend on jobs more than they depend on public assistance, though stereotyping about why poor and single women (or weighing in on whether they should at all), isn't likely to end. All this means that more workplace regulations, like forcing all employers to provide paid sick leave and better child care for working parents could do a lot to help low-income women. But paid sick leave bills aren't going anywhere, even in New York City.
The author of the Economix post, Nancy Folbre, criticizes the Republican women running for office around the country this year for not taking up these issues, but it's not clear, even if they did, that it would make a difference. The problems facing single mothers are long-standing, and the potential solutions, like free child care and paid sick leave, have been discussed for a long time. We just haven't done them, no matter who's in office.
-- Monica Potts
