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563 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 8 (1999)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0563 and id is 1 raw text is: PREFACE In the twentieth century, we have witnessed the massive movement of women and young mothers into paid employment in the United States and other industrialized countries. By 1995, 64 percent of married mothers with a preschool child were in the labor force, compared to 30 percent only 25 years earlier (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1997). Commodification of goods previ- ously produced at home and the invention of home appliances, along with declining birthrates and increasing levels of education, have made it increas- ingly expensive for women to stay at home. Given the reduced demands of housework, they can make a greater contribution to family income and well- being through paid work. Other structural changes have made mothers' income from paid employ- ment increasingly important to family finances. Rising divorce rates and the increasing percentage of female-headed households make more families de- pendent on the mother's earnings; 21 percent of all children lived in these families in 1988, compared to only 8 percent in 1960 (Hofferth 1996). The relative decline in manufacturing has reduced job opportunities and contrib- uted to wage stagnation in blue-collar male occupations, while the expansion of service industries that has increased employment opportunities for women makes working-class families more dependent on the mother's earnings. These structural shifts, along with women's growing aspirations for careers and more independence, have changed social norms. Employers have come to depend on the pool of female workers to fill jobs in low-wage female- dominated occupations and in high-skilled occupations where gender-based wage differentials make female employees a good buy. Clearly, some child- rearing responsibilities must be carried out by others than mothers, and we have come to accept children in child care as normal. In 1995, 60 percent of children aged 1 to 5 years, or 13 million children, were in nonparental child care or early education programs (Hofferth 1996). Families make less use of arrangements for the out-of-school time of school-age children, though there is increasing public interest in creating programs for them. In 1991, of the 36 million children in the United States between the ages of 5 and 14, about two-thirds lived in families with working parents, but fewer than 2 million were enrolled in formal before- or after-school programs. About a third were latchkey children (Seppanen, deVries, and Seligson 1993). Families increasingly depend on formally provided child care. Working parents are losing their neighborhood support network as more women go to work. Geographic mobility breaks down dependence on kin. The smaller size of families limits the availability of sibling care. Transformations in residen- tial areas have destroyed the neighborliness of neighborhoods and made them less inviting, sometimes dangerous places for children to play on their own. Furthermore, with the growing emphasis on education as the key to 8

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