The Motherlode: Why Most US Mothers Will Find Themselves Financially Supporting Their Children
Autor Jennifer L. Glassen Limba Engleză Paperback – 5 aug 2026 – vârsta ani
Glass finds the swift rise of fiscal responsibility for children by their mothers is occurring in households of all racial backgrounds and across the educational spectrum. This rise is not due to increases in divorce or relationship dissolution. In fact, the most rapid growth in mothers’ financial responsibility for the household has come from married mothers, not single mothers, and about half of contemporary mom-breadwinners have spouses or romantic partners living in the home. Nor is it due to a narrowing of the gender pay gap or mothers’ ability to out earn their partners—the bulk of breadwinning mothers see large financial losses or are better off financially but still living in poverty when they become the primary earner. Instead, this rise is due to broader, long-term changes in the economy, which have made jobs less secure and have caused fathers’ wages to stagnate.
The increase of mothers’ financial obligations to their children has occurred at the same time that nonfinancial responsibilities for children has increased—more time is dedicated to identifying, evaluating, and obtaining goods and services for children, including healthcare and schooling. There has not been a corresponding increase in support for mothers by their employers, the government, or fathers. This leaves mothers with greater burdens of both financial support and nonmonetary care for their children, which increases the number of children that are vulnerable to dependency on their mothers’ earnings and intermittent poverty. While this rise in maternal breadwinning is not likely to reverse anytime soon, Glass suggests policies that could provide mothers with more support, such as enacting labor protections for care occupations dominated by women and federal paid family and medical leave and providing federally funded, wraparound, non-means-tested systems of childcare.
The Motherlode is an illuminating and in-depth examination of the surprisingly pervasive phenomenon of maternal breadwinning in American society.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780871540188
ISBN-10: 0871540185
Pagini: 196
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 18 mm
Greutate: 0.37 kg
Editura: Russell Sage Foundation
Colecția Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN-10: 0871540185
Pagini: 196
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 18 mm
Greutate: 0.37 kg
Editura: Russell Sage Foundation
Colecția Russell Sage Foundation
Recenzii
“In this sweeping overview, The Motherlode breaks new ground by focusing careful attention on the important, but poorly understood rise of breadwinning mothers. Jennifer Glass’s comprehensive and insightful examination tells us the reasons for this shift, the forms it is taking, and the consequences for women, their families, and the social fabric of contemporary America. The breadth and depth of her analysis make it irrefutably clear that mothers’ increasing responsibility for their children’s economic welfare constitutes nothing less than a revolutionary demographic transformation that we ignore at our peril.”
—KATHLEEN GERSON, professor of sociology and collegiate professorof arts and science, New York University
“In her sharp, well-argued, and surprising new book, Jennifer Glass lays out with precision just why a majority of mothers in the United States have assumed the impossible role of primary breadwinner for their families while at the same time shouldering the bulk of the unpaid work of care and home. The Motherlode is essential reading for anyone hoping to understand our modern, unequal, high-stress, and overwhelming age, and the actions the government and business leaders most responsible for getting us here need to take to get us out.
—BRIGID SCHULTE, award-winning journalist and director, Better Life Lab at New America
“Jennifer Glass, one of the country’s leading scholars of women and work, presents a fresh portrait of the extent to which mothers in the United States support their children, via both labor market earnings and nonmonetary provisions. Relying on careful data analysis, she covers a remarkable amount of terrain—analyzing pathways through which mothers become financial providers, historical patterns and structural drivers of change, contemporary disparities by race/ethnicity and class, and an array of social and economic consequences for mothers and their families. Glass’s impressive volume makes a valuable contribution to empirical scholarship on the persistently gendered nature of work, both paid and unpaid.”
—JANET C. GORNICK, professor of political science and sociology, and, director, Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality, Graduate Center, City University of New York
—KATHLEEN GERSON, professor of sociology and collegiate professorof arts and science, New York University
“In her sharp, well-argued, and surprising new book, Jennifer Glass lays out with precision just why a majority of mothers in the United States have assumed the impossible role of primary breadwinner for their families while at the same time shouldering the bulk of the unpaid work of care and home. The Motherlode is essential reading for anyone hoping to understand our modern, unequal, high-stress, and overwhelming age, and the actions the government and business leaders most responsible for getting us here need to take to get us out.
—BRIGID SCHULTE, award-winning journalist and director, Better Life Lab at New America
“Jennifer Glass, one of the country’s leading scholars of women and work, presents a fresh portrait of the extent to which mothers in the United States support their children, via both labor market earnings and nonmonetary provisions. Relying on careful data analysis, she covers a remarkable amount of terrain—analyzing pathways through which mothers become financial providers, historical patterns and structural drivers of change, contemporary disparities by race/ethnicity and class, and an array of social and economic consequences for mothers and their families. Glass’s impressive volume makes a valuable contribution to empirical scholarship on the persistently gendered nature of work, both paid and unpaid.”
—JANET C. GORNICK, professor of political science and sociology, and, director, Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality, Graduate Center, City University of New York
Notă biografică
JENNIFER L. GLASS is the Centennial Commission Professor of Liberal Arts, University of Texas, Austin
Textul de pe ultima copertă
There has been a rapid and dramatic intensification of mothers’ financial responsibility for their children. Despite cultural scripts that see fathers as the primary breadwinners in their families, there has been a striking escalation of mothers’ assumption of that role. Over the last twenty years, the rate at which mothers become the primary breadwinner has increased by almost 50-percent and more than an astonishing 70-percent of American mothers can expect to become the primary earner for their household for at least a year before their first child turns eighteen. In The Motherlode, sociologist Jennifer L. Glass traces the rise of mothers as the primary financial providers for their children, investigates the causes of this increase, and evaluates the consequences of this shift for mothers and families.
Glass finds the swift rise of fiscal responsibility for children by their mothers is occurring in households of all racial backgrounds and across the educational spectrum. This rise is not due to increases in divorce or relationship dissolution. In fact, the most rapid growth in mothers’ financial responsibility for the household has come from married mothers, not single mothers, and about half of contemporary mom-breadwinners have spouses or romantic partners living in the home. Nor is it due to a narrowing of the gender pay gap or mothers’ ability to out earn their partners—the bulk of breadwinning mothers see large financial losses or are better off financially but still living in poverty when they become the primary earner. Instead, this rise is due to broader, long-term changes in the economy, which have made jobs less secure and have caused fathers’ wages to stagnate.
The increase of mothers’ financial obligations to their children has occurred at the same time that nonfinancial responsibilities for children has increased—more time is dedicated to identifying, evaluating, and obtaining goods and services for children, including healthcare and schooling. There has not been a corresponding increase in support for mothers by their employers, the government, or fathers. This leaves mothers with greater burdens of both financial support and nonmonetary care for their children, which increases the number of children that are vulnerable to dependency on their mothers’ earnings and intermittent poverty. While this rise in maternal breadwinning is not likely to reverse anytime soon, Glass suggests policies that could provide mothers with more support, such as enacting labor protections for care occupations dominated by women and federal paid family and medical leave and providing federally funded, wraparound, non-means-tested systems of childcare.
The Motherlode is an illuminating and in-depth examination of the surprisingly pervasive phenomenon of maternal breadwinning in American society.
Glass finds the swift rise of fiscal responsibility for children by their mothers is occurring in households of all racial backgrounds and across the educational spectrum. This rise is not due to increases in divorce or relationship dissolution. In fact, the most rapid growth in mothers’ financial responsibility for the household has come from married mothers, not single mothers, and about half of contemporary mom-breadwinners have spouses or romantic partners living in the home. Nor is it due to a narrowing of the gender pay gap or mothers’ ability to out earn their partners—the bulk of breadwinning mothers see large financial losses or are better off financially but still living in poverty when they become the primary earner. Instead, this rise is due to broader, long-term changes in the economy, which have made jobs less secure and have caused fathers’ wages to stagnate.
The increase of mothers’ financial obligations to their children has occurred at the same time that nonfinancial responsibilities for children has increased—more time is dedicated to identifying, evaluating, and obtaining goods and services for children, including healthcare and schooling. There has not been a corresponding increase in support for mothers by their employers, the government, or fathers. This leaves mothers with greater burdens of both financial support and nonmonetary care for their children, which increases the number of children that are vulnerable to dependency on their mothers’ earnings and intermittent poverty. While this rise in maternal breadwinning is not likely to reverse anytime soon, Glass suggests policies that could provide mothers with more support, such as enacting labor protections for care occupations dominated by women and federal paid family and medical leave and providing federally funded, wraparound, non-means-tested systems of childcare.
The Motherlode is an illuminating and in-depth examination of the surprisingly pervasive phenomenon of maternal breadwinning in American society.