Talk the Talk, but Walk the Walk: a Comment on Joan Williams's Reshaping the Work-family Debate

• Publication year: 2011
• Citation: Vol. 34 No. 03

UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND LAW REVIEWVolume 34, No. 3SPRING 2011

Talk the Talk, but Walk the Walk: A Comment on Joan Williams's Reshaping the Work-Family Debate

Jean Stefancic(fn*)

Every morning, newspapers bring reports of fresh disasters suffered by America's workers. Intractable unemployment,(fn1) outsourcing,(fn2) temporary work,(fn3) corporate bonuses and profit-taking,(fn4) a business-oriented Supreme Court(fn5)-all have taken a toll on workers of every class.

Joan Williams commendably wishes to change America's shabby treatment of parents in the workplace.(fn6) She believes that a new approach is in order, namely, that men of all classes, and middle- and working-class people in general, should join forces with professional-managerial-class women to change workplace leave policies.(fn7) In her recent book, Reshaping the Work-Family Debate: Why Men and Class Matter, Williams explains obstacles that lie in the way of such reform and offers many suggestions to address family-workplace stress.

In this Essay, I focus on some of the forces that exert a squeeze on the possibility for reform. From one direction, American capitalism's quest for higher profits creates hostile workplace structures for workers.(fn8) From another, the devaluation of children manifests itself as lack of sympathy for childbearing and child rearing.(fn9) And from yet another locus, the different hopes, dreams, and aspirations of professional and other classes dims the prospects for a lasting coalition between them.(fn10) These formidable obstacles, in turn, are a product of materialist economic factors at least as much as of cultural conflict and how people get along with or treat each other.(fn11)

My viewpoint combines my long-time interest in how money influences political thinking and the possibilities for reform(fn12) with my upbringing as a grandchild of immigrants and child of an immigrant father. Part I briefly outlines the intensification of U.S. corporate culture that has dominated the last four decades. Part II describes the United States as a child-unfriendly nation. Part III reflects on class differences. Part IV offers two suggestions-one broad, one narrow-for engaging in workplace reform. One could write a book, but this is not my book to write.(fn13)

I. Intensification of the Corporate State

What began as a laissez-faire market economy in the United States in the eighteenth century has become what some now name hypercapitalism.(fn14) Though the Declaration of Independence substituted the phrase "the pursuit of happiness" for "the pursuit of property,"(fn15) it has turned out that happiness for many rests on the pursuit of property no matter what the human cost.(fn16) The U.S. Constitution, unlike Canada's Charter, provides no balancing statement of values on which to ground a humane society.(fn17)

During the period bookended by Lewis Powell's admonition to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 1971 that "American busi-ness[es] . . . apply their great talents vigorously to the preservation of the system itself"(fn18) and the U.S. Supreme Court's holding in Citizens United,(fn19) lifting restrictions on corporations and unions to shower money on candidates in elections, the pursuit of wealth and profits has reigned su-preme.(fn20) A recent study shows that during the brief five-year term of the Roberts Court, business interests won 61% of their cases, a much higher percentage than in previous Court terms.(fn21) The law and economics movement in law schools legitimated the treatment of efficiency as a central norm in American law; today, almost every law school teaches a course in law and economics, undoubtedly a larger number than those that teach poverty law. Those who hold this view have cared more about efficiency, utility, and wealth maximization of markets than the hardships that afflict workers who create the profit.(fn22)

Profit-making outsources jobs.(fn23) Temporary work replaces full-time employment.(fn24) The loss of a job at age fifty-five turns into early forced retirement.(fn25) The government spends billions of dollars on wars the public does not support,(fn26) while public education continues to wait at the end of the line.(fn27) In the universities, tenure is on the wane and low-paid adjuncts take up the slack.(fn28) In such times of economic downturn, workers, whether professional, middle, or working class, are less likely to rock the boat.(fn29) These are, thus, not the best of times to campaign for workplace changes for full-time workers.(fn30)

II. Antipathy Toward Children

In recent years, parenthood is increasingly looked at as a private lifestyle choice.(fn31) Williams points out that a number of childless women in the workforce resent what they see as special consideration for women who are parents.(fn32) Indeed, many young couples, for a variety of reasons, do not plan to have children.(fn33)

The United States is not a child-friendly nation, nor has it been one historically. Children have become a devalued commodity because of the expense of raising them.(fn34) For their part, corporations look upon children as another category of consumer.(fn35) In the nineteenth century, slave owners sold black children separately from their parents.(fn36) The government set up boarding schools for Indian children that separated them not only from their parents, but also from their tribes, language, and culture.(fn37) Exclusion laws prevented Chinese women from emigrating to the United States to become wives of Chinese men who had already emigrated, thus creating a Chinese bachelor society, unable to reproduce, that lasted well into the twentieth century.(fn38) Mexican children in the Southwest who became field workers received little education.(fn39) When they did, schools discouraged bilingualism and punished those who spoke Spanish.(fn40) In recent years, undocumented Latino children who aspired to citizenship have been denied an opportunity to attend college or to join the military to achieve that goal.(fn41) Until Congress passed child-labor laws(fn42) and many states began mandating school attendance, many poor white children worked in the mills, factories, and mines of the Northeast and South.

Today, children of the poor are more likely to grow up in single-family households, with fathers often in prison.(fn43) Indeed, a recurring theme among certain radical ecologists is that wealthy nations like the United States tolerate too high a birth rate, thus depleting the earth's re-sources.(fn44) Anti-immigration forces have echoed this theme, noting with...