Most Americans say it’s not ideal for a child to be raised by two working parents. Yet in two-thirds of American families, both parents work.
This disconnect between ideals and reality helps explain why the United States has been so resistant to universal public child care. Even as child care is setting up to be an issue in the presidential campaign, a more basic question has recently resurfaced: whether mothers should work in the first place. …
The debate persists because in the United States, the resistance to public child care has never been mainly about economics. It has been rooted in a moral argument — that the proper place for mothers (at least certain ones) is at home with their children.
“In the United States, child care is still at the political level viewed symbolically and not economically,” said Leah Ruppanner, a sociologist at the University of Melbourne. “All of the discussions are around the sanctity of motherhood, preserving the traditional family. Women and families are living very different lives from that.” CONT.
Claire Cain Miller, New York Times