Help Wanted

more time with the kids. I work from home, so my family responsibilities and never really stop. I have been able to balance my workload by scheduling things like confidence calls, trainings, or presentations around my daughter's naptimes to have a lot of flexibility to handle work responsibilities. Um but fortunately my husband also works evenings and weekends, so he has daytimes to kind of pick up after school and do doctor's

appointments and dentists visits and things of that nature. I actually really left my full time job to start my own business so I could create more flexibility with my kids. So the way we made it work well. First of all, we moved to London because the firm asked me to take out a business, so my wife quit her job, so we actually made it work, basically replicating a straight

couple's life. These women told me all the ways they were coping with the demands of work and parenting, but the more they talked, the more you could hear that despite all of these strategies, it's still not really working. I just want to add the sheer exhaustion that both of us feel, and I think this isn't unique to being a mom, and I think my husband also feel this feels this way at the end of the day, You've spent all day working and then you come home

and you have to run around after a toddler. I wish I was able to do my entire job at work and then come home and be a parent, but actually I work every night. I think that's what surprised me the most, that I need to be really present with my kids, but that the work doesn't stop. And find myself incredibly emotionally drained just from the work that I do, and then to have to come home and not really be able to recharge in the same way is a challenge. Just to put it that way, it's

a challenge. You don't really think about all that you do as a mom because you have this surviving mentality of I gotta do what I gotta do and it just has to be done. Everything we've been hearing from parents is backed up by data. There was this Pew survey that came out a few years ago that gave a portrait of the modern American family. In more households than ever, both parents work, a huge change from the way families looked less than half a century ago. That's

been good economically for families. Two income families make more than twice as much as single income ones. But in those two income households, both moms and dad's said they feel stressed, hired, and like they lack quality time with their children, friends, and partners. Right now, we're asking people in two income to parent households to do three jobs, one of which does not pay. In single parents, they're doing two jobs for the price of one. The stress

of that is wearing on everyone. But even if you don't have kids, this is your problem too. For those who want to keep working at the same level, getting pregnant and having a child often deals them an involuntary setback. We are failing mama's and daddy's all across this country, and we are failing our kids as will. You should never say I'm ready to the baby. Am I ready to lose my job? There was no single industry where women aren't punished for appropriating. When men have children, they

experience a pay bump. When women have children, the opposite happens. Bloomberg cruns to the numbers and found that Wall Street is the worst when it comes to gender pay gaps. Gender is no longer the factor creating the greatest wage discrepancy in this country. Motherhood is welcome to the paycheck. I'm Rebecca Greenfield when I say the current system isn't working. It's not just the emotional and mental toll it's taking on people with kids. It's a bad deal for all

of us. We started the series talking about the gender pay gap and why women on average in the US make around less than men. We know motherhood is one of the biggest contributing factors. Women with kids aren't able to live the lives they want and make as much money as they could be making. And we know that dads are also penalized in their careers when they try to help out at home. But the gender pay gap and the motherhood penalty aren't just problems for women or

even parents. Right now, the rest of us we're benefiting from women taking on the unpaid work of raising kids. That may seem like a great deal, but as we've explained this season, holding women back from fully participating in the workforce hurts the economy. Making it financially untenable to have kids also hurts the economy, and a weekend economy

is everybody's problem. Once we see this as everyone's problem, it becomes easier to see that everyone is responsible for the solutions, and societies can make huge changes when they commit to supporting the needs of working women. How do I know that, because there was one time in the history of the United States when that happened. Everyone chipped in to make the lives of working women easier, and it was better not just for these women, but for

their children and the economy. Me During World War Two, women went to work in greater numbers than ever before because the country needed them to. That mean figuring out what to do with their children while they spent their

days working. Susan Burfield looks at the brief moment when the US government provided high qualities, subsidized childcare for working women of Richmond ship Builders were women seven workers with small children, inspired the founding of thirty five nursery school units and ten extended day care centers, which mothered over fourteen hundred youngsters at a time. World War two was a national emergency. Because of that, a lot of previously

unthinkable things became necessary. Women were recruited to work in the very busy, very understaffed factories and shipyards. Rosie the Riveter became a cultural icon, but what about Rosie's kids. During the whole course of the war, the women start to play more and more of a role in actual production, and then we get to the point where, well, what does it take for women to come into the into the workforce? One of these conditions, the last element of

all this is childcare. Lincoln Cushing is the archivist at Kaiser Permanente, a company that during the war was building ships for the Merchant Marines using this new influx of women workers. When millions of women rushed into the workforce, many moved to the coast for jobs, and that meant they didn't have family to look after their kids. They

had to scramble to come up with solutions. Newspapers published shocking accounts of mothers leaving their kids in their cars, near factories or outside schools until their shifts were over. Some movie theaters were filled with children waiting for their moms. It was obvious that something had to be done to care for all these children, So, with some government funding, Kaiser began to build daycare centers right there in the shipyards.

What persuaded companies and the government to solve the problem wasn't just the tales of neglected kids. The widespread lack of childcare was affecting their bottom line. Women with kids often had to miss shifts, and that meant factories could miss type production deadlines. America was at war and every worker needed to be on duty. Still, having a company watch over your kids and the government pay for it

wasn't popular At first. This was a new thing. The idea that the government would be involved in childcare was a was a pretty radical concept, and it was not It was not an easy sell. There was a lot of reason to believe that having industry or government take care of your kid was a problematic situation. Up to then, Americans generally thought of day care's custodial welfare, sometimes cruel. It was used only by the poor and those who

didn't have family around. Most people still believed that children should be cared for by a mother who stayed home full time in order for them to grow up safe, happy, and well adjusted. The war effort intensified, production ramped up, and eventually the need for women to show up to work on schedule became more and more obvious. Public opposition

to the child care centers began to fade. Having these facilities was seen as a patriotic act, and that that undercut a lot of the resistance to it as well. Famous architects designed the centers for Kaiser in Oregon and California right near the shipyards. Teachers ran them, nurses oversaw medical clinics in the centers. The shipyards operated seven days a week around the clock, so the centers did too.

The day started with a health inspection. There's first aid facilities there, so if your kid is sick, your kid is taking care of your kid. Kids inoculations, They had art classes. They had people coming in to teach all sorts of wonderful things. There were outdoor recreational activities. They had nutritionists, on staff so that your child was getting a well balanced meal. The children ate a baked apple, scrambled eggs, holy toasted milk for breakfast. They got a

daily dose of cod liver oil. And when it was time to go home, there was even more help for mothers. For a small fee, a mother would be able to pick up a meal at the end of her shift and picking up her child so that you don't have to just pick up your kid, go home and make dinner. And it was all affordable for women. They were earning union wages and the centers were subsidized by the government. Mothers paid about fifty cents a day, the equivalent of

seven dollars today. The government ran similar child care centers for other mothers involved in the war effort that weren't connected to specific companies as the Kaiser centers were. What made these centers possible, and the government subsidized ones like Kaiser's was a piece of legislation that passed to nineteen forty called the Landom Act. The initial intent of this piece of legislation actually was not to provide or or

fund childcare programs. It was initially intended to fund the construction and maintenance of big infrastructure projects that were necessary to prepare the nation to go to war. That's Chris Herbst. He's an associate professor at Arizona State University and an expert on childcare. The inclusion of money for childcare in the Landom Act has been called an inspired afterthought because the money was essentially snuck in, there was no congressional debate,

and the program could get going quickly. It was the first time in the nation's history that public money was spent on daycare for kids who weren't poor. It wasn't universal, and it didn't meet all the demand, but at the peak in July, there were more than three thousands nurse serving a hundred and thirty kids in communities involved in the war effort. The total cost was about hundred million dollars,

the equivalent of a billion dollars today. The centers provided one teacher for every ten kids, and they adjusted their schedules and services depending on the community. This coincided with women's shifts within factories. If you were a school aged child, you generally attended these childcare programs for a fewer hours, usually before school and after school. Uh these school aged children received help with homework with music lessons. The primary

takeaway is that these programs were really flexible. They were implemented in service of women's employment. But what about that idea lots of people had that daycare was bad for children, that it would damage the mother child relationship and harm kids. Researchers interviewed mothers and looked at the center's records. Teachers observed that of the kids made notice both social progress. Every single one of the five mothers interviewed by the

researchers reported that their kids enjoyed nursery school. Many said they became better mothers they were more patient at home. One, a welder named Wilma Thatcher, called the center the best thing that could happen for working mothers. Other research showed that childcare helped kids become social beings and it reduced friction, nagging, and quarreling between mothers and kids at home. Chris calls them the high water mark of childcare in the US,

but they wouldn't last. The war ended, factories slowed production for the military and began to prepare for the soldiers to return. The government announced it would cut the funding for the Landam Act centers Kaiser closed its own child service centers, women protested. Eleanor Roosevelt wanted the centers to remain open. Here's an excerpt from her syndicated column My Day. The closing of child care centers throughout the country certainly is bringing to light the fact that these centers were

a real need. Many thought they were purely a war emergency measure. A few of us had an inkling that perhaps they were in need, which was constantly with us, but one that we had neglected to face in the past. Now mothers have had the opportunity of going to work and leaving their children in a center where they felt secure. They knew that the children would be properly fed, given

supervised recreation and occupation, and medical care if necessary. They were able to work better, and they were less exhausted physically. But the men were coming back. The experiment was over. The daycares existed for just a couple of years, but they radically changed the way Americans thought about childcare. Mothers could see and research confirmed that the kids thrived in the group setting. The educational activities and healthcare gave them

a head start. The services, the meals, the mending, the infirmary all reduced working women's stress. All of this helped change the perception that childcare was bad for kids, and Chris found that women whose kids were in the Landamax centers tended to remain in the workforce after the war. They probably became uh sort of fairly firmly entrenched in

the labor force uh. And so when the war ended and men came home, they continued to to enjoy employments, seek the benefits from employment, and likely worked throughout the rest of their lives. Women continued working, but now they had to manage without the subsidized childcare, without the medical

attention for the kids, and without the hot meals. The women were left on their own to find affordable ways to care for their kids while they went to work, and it left women wondering if they would ever get that much help again. High quality, government subsidized childcare didn't last, but its legacy did. Over the next two decades, more women entered the workforce and more women sent their kids

to daycare. Public attitude started to shift. It was no longer considered fringe or negligent for mothers to leave their kids with someone else. By seventy almost of kids between the ages of three and five were in some sort of daycare or preschool program. By then, the conversation about childcare was very different than it was before the war. It wasn't if women should go to work and leave their kids, It was what to do about the needs

of working parents. In one Congress passed a bipartisan bill that would have created a national system of federally funded childcare centers. Tuition would be subsidized depending on a family's income. The cost was about two billion dollars, which would be around twelve point six billion dollars today. Congress sent the bill to President Richard Nixon. Here's Chris herpst again. So President Nixon had essentially on his desk a bill that

would have provided universal, publicly provided childcare. He was reportedly in favor of this bill was set to sign it, but was ultimately dissuaded by some members of his senior staff. The reason the same ideas that had initially made daycare unpopular, that was bad for children and bad for mothers to have the government helped them raise their kids, even though the research had found otherwise. Pat Buchanan, the arch conservative, was advising Nixon in the White House. Philish Laughlely was

railing against feminism on TV. They want this to be a right of all women, of all mothers to park their children in a daycare center at the taxpayers expense, So the women and be out fulfilling themselves somewhere. And this flows from their their rationale, their dogma that is so unfair that that mothers are expected to take care of their babies. The Republican right argued that child raising should be the sole prerogative and responsibility of families, or,

as Shlapley would say, mothers. When Nixon vetoed the legislation, he said that it would weaken families. This was also during the Cold War, when state sponsored programs raised alarms about America descending into communism. Nixon said that communal approaches to child rearing went against the family centered approach. It was the closest we'd gotten to government subsidized childcare since the land Am Act, and after this veto it was dead.

That didn't mean women stopped working or seeking out help from others for child care. Over the next forty years, even more women went to work and even more people sent their kids to daycare. Now almost seven percent of kids between the ages of three and five are enrolled in a preschool or daycare program, and that's where we

are today. Of women with kids work, but we're still telling women that it's their job and their job alone to figure all of this out, that this is all on their shoulders, so they're forced to make impossible choices about work and family. Many of them tell us it's not working, and we see that in the data. That's the gender pay gap. Women's earnings suffer when they have kids. But things don't have to be this way. It's not that subsidized childcare is the be all and all solution

for working parents or for closing the pay gap. But I think a lot of people on the left and the right agree there's a problem here. On the right, some are proposing tax credits for parents who stay home. Elizabeth Warren is trying to resurrect subsidized childcare, and politicians on the left and right have proposed new ways of paying for parental leave. I don't know exactly what the answer is, but when we take the needs of working women seriously, like we did back in World War Two,

we see progress. And until we stop viewing this as a woman's problem. Women will keep internalizing that they're on their own, and then they blame themselves when they inevitably can't meet the unrealistic standards we've put on them. We heard that from so many of the women we spoke to. But then it also feels like this weight, It feels like this terrible way to that I feel horribly guilty that I leave her. I feel like I can't be doing my best at both at the same point in time,

and that weighs on me. The main thing is just feeling like I am not doing a good job at either thing, like that I am failing simultaneously both the gift and the coast. For me, honestly, would be the balance. I love my children, obviously, and I also love my career.

Um So, while I am very appreciative of the hours that I have, which are very very flexible, you know, sometimes I am saying when I have to miss, you know, certain events during the day, I find that I have this guilt that I'm not yet really making enough money to justify the cost of childcare. And so you think the logical solution would be, well, then why don't you stay home with the kids and not pay for childcare. But at the same time, I don't want to do that.

I can't do that. I don't have the patience. I've tried on at different times or on different days to do part time daycare, and I actually find myself unable to spend ten hours alone, twelve hours alone with the kids by myself on any given day. It's just a lot of work and it's exhausting. One word keeps coming up in these women's stories. Guilt. They feel guilty when they have to leave their kids to go to work. They feel guilty when they're not doing enough at work.

These women are doing so much and yet they still feel inadequate. Part of it is that they have expectations that are self imposed, meaning they feel like they have to be perfect at work, and they have to be perfect as a parent, and they have to be perfect as a partner, and it's just impossible. That was Laurie Gottlieb. She's a therapist, a calumnist for The Atlantic, where she's written about parenting extensively, and the author of Maybe You

Should Talk To Someone. Asked her about how women can manage these feelings, and she says that parents can start to feel better as soon as they realize it's impossible

to do it all. People aren't talking enough about what what you really have to do to make all of those pieces of the puzzle fit together, and they're not always going to fit perfectly, and they're going to be times when you have to let something go at home or you have to let something go at work, and it's not like you can do all of them at once. And I think if you if you go in with that orientation, you're gonna feel much better about the situation.

Laurie says, it's not just that people need to realize that they're gonna miss things at work and at home. The research shows that kids do best with what Laurie calls the good enough parent. Most kids want the good enough mother, the helicopter mother, the mother who's always there that's bad for your kids, and so is the neglectful mother. But most of us are the good enough mother. And I think that you can also be the good enough worker,

which means that you do your job really well. But they're going to be times when you know something gets in the way, and you can be the good enough partner as well. It all comes back to women feeling like it's their obligation to do everything on their own. They're trying to do everything at a level that you can't do all of those things at once. At that level, I think you have to be clear about what your needs are, clear about what your time constraints are, and

ask for help. So many of us are so afraid to ask for help because we think that it implies that we're not competent, or we're weak, or something's wrong with us. We all need help. At the beginning of this season, I talked about my own mixed feelings about whether to have kids or not. After months of digging into the way motherhood affects careers and hearing from lots of working parents and other people who don't have or

want kids, I'm no less ambivalent. One thing I am certain about is what it would take for me to feel satisfied as a parent and in my career. Lots of help and I wanted to be okay to admit that and also demand it, to demand it from institutions, companies, and our government because they're getting something out of it too. This is the last episode of season two of The Paycheck. If any of the stories resonated with you, or if you have a story of your own, we'd love to

hear from you. Leave us a voicemail at two on to six seven zero one six and thank you for listening. If you like the show, please head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to rate, review, and subscribe to get updates in your feed. Hey, I'm Janet Paskin,

an editor on the Paycheck. This was the final episode of the season, but next week we'll be back with an encore, a special show taped at the Bloomberg Equality Summit in London, where Rebecca is talking women's soccer, the World Cup and whether we'll ever see anything close to pay parity for female athletes. Watch your feeds, it's gonna be great. This show was hosted and reported by me Rebecca Greenfield and reported by Susan Burfield. This episode was

edited by franchisea Levi and produced by Samantha Gadzick. We also had production help from Liz Smith, Jillian Goodman, Janet Haskin, and Laura Carlson. Special thanks to Magnus Hendrickson Toefer for has, Brian Bremner, Laura Zelango, Sharon Chen, Brendan Scott, and our calleaus in Singapore and Hong Kong. Our original music is by Leo Sidrin. Catherine Virginia did the illustrations on our show page, which you can find at bloomberg dot com.

Slash the paycheck, and thanks to all the women and men who spoke to us for this episode and the entire series. Francesca Levi is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts