SSRN-id2300431

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY Developing family-friendly policies in the public sector in wake of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

Sarah E Towne, Ph.D. Student

Department of Public Administration and Policy

School of Public Affairs

American University

8/1/2013

Paper presented as part of the panel “Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: Moving Forward or Backward?” at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL August 29-September 1, 2013.

Developing family-friendly policies in the public sector in wake of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Family-friendly workplace policies and programs have garnered increased research interest in the past 20 years (Mesmer-Magnus & Viswesvaran, 2006), but much of this literature neglects the historical context in which programs have developed. Research on family-friendly workplace policies focus heavily on the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 and Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, which are important pieces of but by no means the whole story. This paper seeks to contribute to the literature by exploring in detail the development of federal family-friendly employment policies post-passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Using federal court cases, legislative and executive documents, and discourse analysis from the past 50 years, this paper offers a comprehensive history of family-friendly employment policies and programs in the U.S. public sector. It also assesses the progress of these policies and implementation of comprehensive employment policies and programs.

While the term “family-friendly” wasn’t coined until the late 1970’s to describe workplace policies responsive to the needs of employed parents (Kamerman & Kahn, 1997), the events of t he Civil Rights Movement, Women’s Liberation, and President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society Programs, provided foundation on which family-friendly employment policies could develop. Prior to the rise of these political and social movements, work and family for much of post-industrial middle-class social life constituted “separate spheres”—men in the public/ work sphere, women in the private/family sphere (Kerber, 1988). Stivers (2002) notes however that this was rather a “political ideology than economic reality” for many women, particularly lower-income women who had long been in the workforce. Nevertheless, the events of the 1960’s, mainly the Civil Rights Act of 1964, led to the increased employment of minorities and women at unprecedented rates (Romzek, 1991). The share of married-couple

families with children where both parents worked was 34 percent in March 1975, compared to 59.0 percent in 2012. The labor force participation rate for all mothers with children under age 18 was 47 percent in 1975, compared to 70.5 percent in 2012 (BLS, 2013). Much of this dramatic shift in the workforce is a result of three eras of public employment policies and programs, which sought to 1) eliminate discrimination, 2) extend benefits, and 3) restructure work or negotiate roles. Table 1. describes a brief synopsis of these eras and outlines the historical analysis portion of this paper.

Table 1. Three Eras of Public Employment Policies and Programs

Eliminating Discrimination- 1960’s-1970’s

The United States does not have an explicit national, comprehensive family-friendly employment policy, but the earliest discussions of these policies that led to significant legislative agendas can be traced back to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its subsequent amendments during the 1970’s. The political and social movements to end discriminatory employment practices, particularly those against women and minorities, characterize much of this era. From the family-friendly perspective, these initial legal provisions paved the way for sex-plus discrimination and pregnancy discrimination in their inclusion as forms of gender discrimination. The legal protections for working mothers would be further advanced with the establishment of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission1 and the extension of Title VII protections to federal, state, and local government employees and workers in educational institutions.

The most well known of all the federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination is The Civil Rights Act of 1964. Specifically Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employers with 15 or more employees from discriminating against employees in hiring, promotion, and termination decisions, based on their race, color, religion, national origin, or gender. Condrey (2005) notes that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 fundamentally changed the way human resource practices occurred in the public sector. For the first time in U.S. history, government agencies had to reevaluate their traditional staffing practices and make significant changes with their recruitment and selection criteria. The inclusion of sex discrimination is a key provision for the civil rights of women that remains a source of debate among historians as to why it was added to the bill in the first place (Riccucci, 2002; Osterman, 2008). Regardless of its

1 See the EEOC 35th Anniversary website for history of the development of the agency.

https://www.sodocs.net/doc/0d15007134.html,/eeoc/history/35th/pre1965/index.html

origin, it is a significant moment in the history of family-friendly policy development because with out adding “sex” to Title VII, the subsequent amendments of “sex-plus” discrimination and pregnancy discrimination may have never happened.

One year after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, the federal program, Head Start was launched and intense debate about the federal role in expanding child care services continued throughout the 1960’s. However, the national conversation was halted when in 1971 the National Comprehensive Child Development (NCCD) Act was enacted by Congress but later vetoed by President Nixon (Nixon, 1971). The NCCD Act was built upon the success of Head Start, but extended services to children from families above the poverty level (92nd Congress, 1971). President Nixon and other critics of the bill argued that the bill was proposing a "Big Brother" intrusion in the family and providing a government substitute for parents (Mondale, 2010). It would be another 35 years before the federal government expanded child care benefits for working families, but the di scussion of the federal government’s role in providing these types of benefits to its employees continues.

Also in 1971, the first sex discrimination case under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 reached the Supreme Court. The Martin Marietta Corporation had a policy, which did not allow the hiring of mothers with pre-school aged children because they were assumed unreliable. Ida Phillips applied for a job at the company and was denied because she was as a mother. Phillips sued under Title VII claiming that the policy was discriminatory (Kuersten, 2003). In, Phillips v. Martin Marietta Corp. (1971) the Supreme Court unanimously voted in favor of Phillips and held that under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, an employer may not refuse to hire women with pre-school-age children while hiring men with children of a similar age, without showing business necessity for doing so. The importance of this landmark Supreme

Court ruling in the development of family-friendly policies is not only that it explicitly upheld protections for working mothers, but also it established the “sex-plus” discrimination provision.

"Sex-plus" discrimination exists when a person is subjected to disparate treatment based not only on her sex, but also on her sex considered in conjunction with a second characteristic. In such a case, an employer does not discriminate against the whole class of women, but treats differently a specific sub-class of women (for example, women with preschool-age children, women over 40 years of age, or African-American women). This key extension of Title VII meant that not only did employers protect women from discrimination when compared to men, but when compared to each other as well. Since 1971, sex-plus discrimination continues to uphold in court even as recently as 2009 in Chadwick v. Wellpoint, Inc. when a mother was passed over for a promotion even though she was the more qualified candidate. According to her employer, as a mother of young children, she simply had “too much on her plate” and, if promoted, she would have neglected her job responsibilities (First Circuit Court, 2009). The First Circuit Court ruled in favor of Chadwick and upheld that women have the right to work, receive promotions and compensations earned without the burden of stereotypes regarding whether or not they can fulfill their responsibilities.

Another amendment to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 occurred in 1978 with The Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA), which prohibits workplace discrimination because of pregnancy. Previously in 1976 the Supreme Court decision in General Electric v. Gilbert held that denial of benefits for pregnancy-related disability was not discrimination based on sex, nor sex-plus discrimination. By 1977, women made up more than 45 percent of the labor force (Finch, 1983). Married women faced job discrimination and pregnant women were routinely fired. However, reaction to the Gilbert decision was quick. The National Partnership for Women

and Families (NPWF), then called the Women’s Legal Defense Fund formed a coalition known as the Campaign to End Discrimination Against Pregnant Workers to build momentum towards overturning the Gilbert decision (NPWF, 2013). Legislation to amend Title VII and overturn Gilbert was introduced in Congress in 1977 and passed, as the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the year after.

After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its subsequent amendments to extend Title VII provisions, the discussion of family-friendly policies in the workplace seemed to pale in comparison to other national discussions of economy, war, and the role of the federal government. Progress of family-friendly workplace policies slowed. A watershed event in the development of family-friendly policies’ formative years, the 1980 White House Conference on Families, was instrumental in putting families on the political agenda (Bogenschnieder, 2002), but it proved so politically contentious that it hindered any federal development for almost a decade.

Extending Benefits- 1980s-early 2000’s

When family-friendly policies made a return to the national stage in the mid-1980’s the conversation centered on extending benefits to working families as opposed to the eliminating discriminating employment practices of decades prior. Family leave and child care assistance were explicit policies and programs that targeted the needs of working parents and caregivers. While the policies aimed to be more comprehensive, work and family were still separate entities echoing the “separate spheres” doctrine of the early 20th century. Employees would not have adverse effects such as demotion or termination from tending to their care giving responsibilities, but they did have to leave their work and most would not be compensated in their absence.

A strong push for legislation for a comprehensive family leave policy did not begin until the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Family Employment Security Act (FESA) of 1984 was the first introduction to a national family-leave provision and the first to provide job security for working parents. It addressed concerns tha t family leave policies provided “special treatment” for female employees by expanding the language to include “equal treatment” for all employees (Wisensale, 2001). By the time it was drafted into law in 1987, it had been renamed the Family and Medical Leave Act to be more inclusive of needs to care for aging parents. One of the main organizations who helped shape the final bill was the American Association for Retired Persons (AARP). The elderly have the best voting record of any age group and the largest lobbying group in the world represents them (Wisensale, 2001). With the rise in an aging population, the AARP lobbied to include extended families and multigenerational care in the final version of the FMLA. On two occasions, a Family and Medical Leave Act passed the Congress but were vetoed by President George H. W. Bush in June 1990 (Breidenbach, 2003). Much like in previous administrations, President Bush did not think government should be deciding matters of a personal, familial nature and valued the discretion of the individual employer.

Family values became an overwhelming national issue and a political agenda in the 1992 presidential election. With a strong campaign for family values and promising to sign the Family and Medical Leave Act, Bill Clinton became the first Democrat to be elected president in twelve years (Wisensale, 2001). In 1993, the first piece of legislation signed by President Clinton was the final version of the Family Medical Leave Act. Under the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA), most Federal employees are entitled to a total of up to 12 work weeks of unpaid leave during any 12-month period. Upon return from FMLA leave, an employee must be returned to the same position or to an "equivalent position with equivalent benefits, pay, status,

and other terms and conditions of employment." An employee who takes FMLA leave is entitled to maintain health benefits coverage (OPM, 2013). Employers were strongly opposed to the law worried that it would cost more to employ women and parents (Waldfogel, 1999). While the Family and Medical Leave Act has been utilized by many working parents, men and women alike, the law is far from comprehensive.

Several limitations of the Family and Medical Leave Act leave room for more progress to be made. First, more than 89 percent of U.S. establishments are not covered by FMLA based on estimates from the 2000 Survey of Establishments, while some 33.6 million employees work for non-covered establishments (Department of Labor, 2000). Second, the United States falls woefully short in offering comprehensive family leave when compared to the international market. Heymann and her colleagues (2004) found that out of nearly 200 countries, 180 now offer guaranteed paid leave to new mothers, and 81 offer paid leave to fathers. They found that 175 mandate paid annual leave for workers, and 162 limit the maximum length of the workweek. The United States offers none of these protections. Finally, scholarship that is more recent has pressed for more integration of work and family stating the Family and Medical Leave Act does nothing to address the day-to-day challenges of balancing work and family (Bhushan, 2011).

Using momentum from the passage of FMLA, the Federal Employees Family Friendly Leave Act, Public Law 103-388 was passed on October 22, 1994. The Act required the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to submit a report to Congress to evaluate the use of sick leave for family care or bereavement purposes and to make recommendations as to whether the entitlements under the Act should continue. The report showed that more women than men and more employees in general used sick leave for family care or bereavement purposes between 1995 and 1996. The average number of days of sick leave used for all purposes has increased by

about 8 percent since 1994, the year the Federal Employees Family Friendly Leave Act was enacted (OPM, 1997). Unfortunately, only 17 percent of employees were eligible to use sick leave for these purposes. Nevertheless, the program received overwhelming support by federal employees and OPM recommended making it permanent (OPM, 1997).

There are a number of factors to which the recent increase in the use of sick leave may be attributed. For example, in addition to the enactment of the Federal Employees Family Friendly Leave Act, Congress enacted separate legislation in 1994 to permit employees to use sick leave for any purpose related to the adoption of a child and to substitute sick leave retroactively for any annual leave used for adoption-related purposes between September 30, 1991, and September 30, 1994. The changing demographics of the Federal workforce--i.e., more working mothers, single parents, and adult children caring for an aging population--may be responsible for increases in the use of sick leave (OPM, 1997). Employees can donate leave time to another employee under a number of federal programs: voluntary leave transfer program, leave without pay, and credit hours under flexible work schedules. So if a person becomes ill, takes time off work to care for someone who is sick including a parent, spouse/ domestic partner, or child, or wishes to take time off for the birth or adoption of a child, other employees can donate their accrued leave time (OPM, 2013).

The welfare reform efforts during the Clinton Administration were crucial for bringing about early child development and child care to national attention. In1997, The White House Conference on Early Child Development and Child Care highlighted the Administration’s efforts to raise funding for Head Start and participation in the WIC Supplemental Nutrition Program, providing low-income children and their families with comprehensive education, health services, and nutrition (Clinton Administration ECDC, 2013). In 1998, during a White House Ceremony,

President Clinton released Meeting the Needs of Today’s Workforce: Child Care Best Practices, a publication by the Department of Labor Women’s Bureau that highlighted 40 innovative child care programs initiated by employers across the country to address the needs of working parents (Herman, 1998). Finally, in 1999, the Office of Personnel Management hosted the first Federal Child Care Summit in Kansas City, Missouri, which brought together experts and professionals from the private and public sectors to provide solutions for quality, affordable child care. Much of these efforts were met with opposition from the business sector concerned about the cost of such programs or those who feared governmental intrusion of families. Even though it would be another couple of years before any legislative action was taken to address the child care needs of federal employees, the progressive welfare reformists were successful is launching the Federal Child Care Subsidy Program.

Established in 2001, The Federal Child Care Subsidy Program (FCCSP) allows agencies to use appropriated and revolving funds to help lower income Federal employees pay for child care (if they enroll their child in a licensed family child care homes or child care center). Federal agencies choose whether or not they wish to participate, based on considerations such as budget, mission priorities, and the demographics and needs of their employee population. So not all agencies choose to participate in the child care subsidy program and there is not current record of which agencies do or do not participate (OPM, 2013). According to the General Services Administration (GSA), parents must pay fees to cover tuition costs of care in the centers (GSA, 2013). Tuition rates vary according to geographic location, services offered, hours of care, size of the center, and other criteria. Childcare subsidy programs continue to be the most widely researched and debated of the family friendly policies, with varying conclusions drawn on their effectiveness and fairness (Adams, Snyder, and Sandfort, 2002; Ertas and Shields, 2012; Herbst,

2010; Moodie-Dyer, 2011; Ryan, et. al., 2011; Shlay, et. al., 2004; Tekin, 2005 and 2007). The public sector continues to develop different types of support to assist working parents with their family needs to varying degrees of success.

The Extending Benefits era of family-friendly policy development brought attention to the needs of working families, particularly with regard to family leave and child care assistance. However, unlike the mass political and social movements of the previous era, advocates did have as much momentum and legislators had less incentive to press for progressive family-friendly employment policies.

Restructuring or role negotiation- 2000’s to Present Day

This era is marked with the rise in work-family balance rhetoric, executive memorandums to increase workplace flexibility, incremental changes to equal pay, and policies or programs that were smaller pieces of a much bigger reform. These policies and programs are designed to change job conditions and the structure of work, namely job design, work hours, location, and terms and conditions of employment. Research on family-friendly workplace policies focus heavily on the workplace characteristics or individual social roles. Scholars attempted to provide theory to the concepts of work-life balance by delving into concepts like work-family conflict (Friedman & Greenhaus, 2000), work-family spillover (Grzywacz & Marks, 2000), work-life boundaries (Clark, 2000; Kreiner, Hollensbe, & Sheep, 2009), work-family culture (Thompson, Beauvais, & Lyness, 1999), domestic division of household labor (Bianchi, et.al, 2000; Warren, 2003) and social role negotiation (Milkie & Peltola, 1999). The result is unclear definitions and little theory development, but what remains is an integration of family and personal characteristics into human resource planning and practices.

Expanding family-friendly policies with the promotion of flexible work arrangements was ongoing in the 1990s with Presidential Memorandums by President Clinton in 1994 and again in 1996. However, with a new administration in 2000 and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, national attention diverted to other issues, it was not until 2004 with the passage of the Federal Workforce Flexibility Act of 2004, where flexible work arrangements were finally adopted. The Federal Workforce Flexibility Act of 2004 provided reform for federal employment with regard to training and development of employees, established comprehensive management succession planning, and “further improve the Federal government’s ability to recruit and retain a world-class 21st century workforce.” This legislation, designed to address globalization and technological advances, has come to redefine the traditional workplace over the past decade by radically changing when, where, and how work is organized (Library of Congress, 2013). Public employees can now utilize flexible working hours beyond the traditional 9-5 workday, work compressed week schedules, work from home, or remotely, participate in

job-sharing and phased retirement. By changing the workplace, employees were assumed to better attend to their responsibilities at home, a vital step towards progress for working families.

The national elections of 2008, was the first Presidential Election with platforms on workplace flexibility from both parties. Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain announced that he would create a National Commission on Workplace Flexibility and Choice and support Head Start. Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama pledged to expand access to flexible work arrangements, paid sick days and leave, and make the federal government a model employer by allowing employees to request flexible arrangements. From the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to 44 years later with the election of the first African American President in the United States, many believed that significant change and progress was going to happen.

Women today are paid, on average, only 77 cents for every dollar paid to men. The gap is even worse for women of color - African American women earn only 64 cents and Latina women earn only 55 cents for each dollar earned by males (BLS, 2011). Gender wage gap studies have shown that a “mother’s wage penalty” reduces the pay of moms by about 7 percent per child. Slightly less than a third of the gap is based on taking leave to care for a child (Budig and England, 2001). When women leave the workforce to care for a child, their opportunities for promotion are limited and their lifetime earnings are impacted, which reduce their retirement benefits.

To help address this unfair and unacceptable wage gap, President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act on January 29, 2009 (White House Press Release, 2009). The Act reinstates prior law and makes clear that pay discrimination claims on the basis of sex, race, national origin, age, religion and disability “accrue” whenever an employee receives a discriminatory paycheck, as well as when a discriminatory pay decision or practice is adopted, when a person becomes subject to the decision or practice, or when a person is otherwise affected by the decision or practice (National Women’s Law Center, 2013). President Obama stated in his remarks at the bill signing that equal pay was not simply a “women’s issue” but a “family issue” demonstrating very different rhetoric than President John F. Kennedy’s rema rks on the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (Kennedy Presidential Library, 2013). The Lilly Ledbetter Act addressed pay discrimination, extended protections, and provisions, and acknowledged the dual-demands women face as both breadwinners and caregivers.

The lines between work and family become even more blurred when legislation fails to address the needs of working families. Instead progressive employment policies are tacked on or hidden in larger pieces of legislation, as is the case with Section 4207 of the Affordable Care

Act. The U.S. Congress passed, and President Obama signed, the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA), which provides for nursing breaks and a private, sanitary place for most mothers employed on an hourly basis to express breast milk (Library of Congress, 2013). Section 4207 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) revises the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) by requiring employers to provide nursing mothers with 1) reasonable break time to express milk for one year after her child’s birth each time such employee has need to express breast milk; and 2) a private space, other than a bathroom, that is shielded from view and free from intrusion of others, to express breast milk (OPM, 2013). Advocates for the provision provide the “business case” for breastfeeding support stating that employers who support nursing mothers are successful at retaining talented employees after the birth of a child (Garvin et. al., 2013). The ACA is just one example of the many times scholars and advocates have had to make the “business-case” for progressive family-friendly policies.

Following up the progression of workplace flexibility, in early November 2007, the House Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, Postal Service, and the District of Columbia held a hearing on how to break new ground in telework. The advocates of telework stressed that the workforce dynamics are rapidly shifting and the government must adapt (O’Keeffe, 2008). During the 2010 February blizzards in the Washington, DC area, the government projected a loss of $100 million worth of productivity for each day it remained closed, but that estimate was reduced to $71 million since roughly 30 percent of federal workers in the Washington area teleworked during the storm, according to the Office of Personnel Management (Losey, 2010). It was these “cost-savings” The Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 was signed into law on December 9, 2010. The passage and signing of this legislation (Public Law 111-292) was a significant milestone in the history of Federal telework. The Act is a key factor in the Federal

Government's ability to achieve greater flexibility in managing its workforce with telework. Telework can be attractive especially to those who have children or elders at home, or those who have some disability that makes travel difficult (Baker, Moon, & Ward, 2006).

The development of family-friendly employment policies during the restructuring or role negotiation era seems to be fragmented with no cohesive message. This is due in part because of the intense gridlock of Congress that legislation rarely unequivocally addresses family-friendly employment initiatives. Instead policies are broad sweeping to compete on the global scale as is the case with flexible work arrangements and teleworking or they are cleverly hidden in large legislative reforms like the Affordable Care Act’s breastfeeding provisions. While research and scholarly work continues a growing interest in work-life balance, the boundaries between work and family are even more unclear. The remained of this paper will address the future of these policies and programs.

The Future of Family-Friendly Employment Policies

In the 50 years since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, women and minorities have become generally overrepresented in state government employment relative to their civilian labor force representation within a state (Lloren, Wenger, and Kellough, 2008). According to active representative bureaucracy literature and theory, these groups of employees are more likely to request progressive policies, such as family-friendly workforce policies, that represent their interests. Family-friendly policies continue to be an important political, social, and academic research agenda. What does the future hold for these policies and programs? Looking at some of the demographic trends, social and political changes, and the following topics may provide some answers: changing workforce, changing workplace, work-life balance needs for

men and women, the “business-case” versus social equity case for family-friendly policies, and future research agendas.

Changing Workforce

Balancing work with family responsibilities has become a struggle for working adults, both males and females alike. Roughly, 60 percent of two-parent households with children under age 18 have two working parents (Pew Research Study, 2013). According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, workers who currently provide care for an aging parent of family member are 35 percent of the total U.S. population and the proportion of workers providing eldercare will likely increase (Bond, et. al., 1998). In 2011, the labor force participation rate of mothers with children under 18 years of age was 70.9 percent, for a total of 25.7 million working women (BLS, 2013). For mothers with infants under 3 years old their employment rate was 64.2 percent. Despite the dip in the employment rates over the past couple of years, the long-term trend towards greater labor force participation of parents with young children, dual-income households, elder caregivers, and single parents will heavily influence future family-friendly employment policies and programs.

Changing Workplace

The days of the traditional workplace are numbered as globalization (O’Connor, 2005), technology (Watson-Manheim, Chudoba, & Crowston, 2002), and a new generation of workers (Ng, Schweitzer, & Lyons, 2010) require more flexible work arrangements and adaptable organizations. Contemporary employees desire different types of flexibility including time, space, evaluation, and compensation (Cowan & Hoffman, 2007). There is a large gap between parents and non-parents in the value each place on having a flexible work schedule. Among

working women with no children under age 18, only 43 percent say having a flexible work schedule is extremely important to them (vs. 70 percent of working mothers). Among working men with no minor children, 36 percent say this is extremely important (vs. 48 percent of working fathers). Flexible workplaces, alternative work arrangements, and teleworking are human resource practices growing at an exponential rate (Telework Exchange, 2013) and understanding how these policies and programs assist working parents in meeting their dual obligations of work and family and how employers evaluate their employees performance in these arrangements has yet to be fully explored.

Work-Life Balance

A recent Pew Research nationally-representative study (2013) which surveyed 2,511 adults and analyzed comparative American Time Use Survey (ATUS) data, showed that men are doing more child care and housework than in previous generations. In both surveys, men and women are equally likely to say they wish they could stay home full-time with the

kids. However, for those working full-time, American fathers with children under age 18 are twice as likely as mothers to say they do not spend enough time with their children, which may be some indication that men want to do more at home and with their children. The sexes have not completely equalized or swapped roles. Women still do more housework than men do, and men still do more paid work. In the realm of child care, women do about twice as much as men as of 2011, clocking in at 14 hours a week versus 7 hours respectively. The Pew Research survey (2013) found that about half (53 percent) of all working parents with children under age 18 say it is difficult for them to balance the responsibilities of their job with the responsibilities of their family. There is no significant gap in attitudes between mothers and fathers: 56 percent of mothers and 50 percent of fathers say juggling work and family life is difficult for them. Still, the

concepts of work-life balance and family-friendly are commonly left ill defined by researchers and policymakers alike (Felstead, et al., 2002). This is due in part to the measures and data they have relied on to help understand the issue. Work-life balance is not just a “woman’s issue” but a significant challenge affecting all workers, men and women alike.

Business-case for Family-Friendly Policies

Much of the discussion revolving around employers adopting flexible workplace policies that help employees achieve a satisfactory work-life balance briefly mentions the protection it provides parents against unlawful discrimination and jumps right into the “business-case” or economic benefits to employers for adopting such policies2. The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was not hinged on the fact that by not discriminating against racial, ethnic, national and religious minorities, and women was beneficial to employers, but simply a civil right. Using the “business-case” approa ch in order to convince employers that they should adopt family-friendly policies and practices has left the progress of family-friendly employment policies at a standstill. Putting federal provisions in place to protect working families does not place parents at an advantage nor does it put non-parents at a disadvantage, it simply protects working families from unlawful employment discrimination. The heavy focus on an employers’ desire to maximize productivity and minimize organizational costs leaves social equity and democratic principles out of the conversation (Dickens, 2006). Regardless of whether or not implementing family-friendly policies would benefit the employer, working parents, particularly lower-income families should not have to choose between meaningful employment opportunities and their family responsibilities.

2 For examples of the business-case discussion of family-friendly employment policies see Galinsky &Johnson, 1998, Garvin, et. al., 2013, Kelly, 1999, and Kossek & Friede, 2006.

Research agendas

Part of what drives the “business-case” for family-friendly policies is the continued research endeavors that use advanced statistical models and dollar signs to show employers that they should adopt these practices (Bianchi & Milkie, 2010). At what point did scholarship become a numbers game as opposed to reasoned argument? While quantitative methods, statistical models, and even cost-benefit analysis have their place in public administration research, the lack of historical analysis, theory development, and public values understanding is inhibiting the progress of public policies.

Academics and advocates need to rid themselves of the "separate spheres mentality" partly because due to tech, globalization, and changing dynamics of the workforce, the gap between work and family is narrowing and more importantly, this separation of work and family inhibits our progress as a nation. Our family-friendly employment policies rank us at the bottom of developed nations (Hall & Spurlock, 2013), which may not be a problem now, but could present problems in the future when our workforce and workplace fails to progress with the rest of the world. We can no longer wait for the research to keep up with the workplace trends. Telework and flexible work arrangements are already growing at an exponential rate compared to what researchers can tell us about the costs and benefits of such practices. The conversation of family-friendly policies needs to change.

Conclusion

By exploring in detail the development of federal family-friendly employment policies since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and creating three eras of development, a once disjointed narrative of family-friendly employment policies becomes clearer. Understanding the