Before the 1960s in the United States, women were expected to follow one path in life: They were expected to marry young, create a family and devote their lives to homemaking and child rearing. According to the Bureau Labor Statistics, 38 percent of women who worked during the 1960s were limited to low-paying jobs as teachers, secretaries or nurses.

Even though the feminist movement encouraged women who didn’t want this life to choose their own path, modern feminism has created new values, undermining the inherent roles of mothers and fathers within the workforce.

As a result of the feminist movement in the United States, women have equal access to education, increased participation in politics and the workplace, and resources when they have been the victims of violence, to name a few. But women still face limitations.

It has become increasingly hard to be a caregiver and working mom as a result of limited maternity leave, the new demand for women in the workforce, new views on family in American society, and constraints tied to middle-class women.

American society has transformed since the 1960s as companies have increased their labor supply — particularly among wives and mothers. Because of these new demands, many corporations take advantage of women labor and do not offer enough paid maternity leave.

Currently, the only federal regulation for family leave in the United States is the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, which requires employers to provide unpaid maternity leave for qualified medical and family reasons.

However, this federal regulation does not apply to everyone. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, approximately 41 percent of American workers are not eligible for FMLA. As a result, mothers and fathers are not encouraged to stay home with their babies; society expects them to simultaneously work and raise children, and they can’t afford to stay home.

Mothers who have paid maternity leave can better monitor their children. Without maternity leave, many mothers no longer breastfeed their babies, which compromises the health of the child.

Studies conducted by the World Health Organization have shown that breastfeeding yields health improvements in many areas, such as immune system build-up, disease prevention and brain development. However, in America, paid maternity leave is limited, and mothers are often forced to leave their infants for work.

Values on marriage are also changing in America, which influences child rearing. Divorce rates have increased, partially because women no longer need to be in marriages due to their newfound independence. However, as a result, many people who have kids raise them in single-parent households or through shared custody, which encourages both parents to work and find new methods to raise children. Working parents now rely on daycare centers and schools to watch their children.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2015, out of approximately 12 million single-parent families in America, over 80 percent were led by single moms. With limited or no paid maternity leave, this means that as mothers work to support their families, they must leave their children at young ages.

For millennia, children were raised at home by their mothers who, if they did work, usually only worked part-time. Now, working moms and dads rely on new methods of childcare such as aftercares, nannies, daycares, and preschools. Does not being raised by one’s parents have an affect on the child? Do these new forms of childcare provide the proper attention and care for children? What effect does this care have later on?

A study done by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in 2014, looked into the effects of daycare on children. At birth, 1,364 children were enrolled for the study in ten locations across the United States and were monitored throughout elementary school. They were observed and monitored in either center-based daycare,, at-home daycare, grandparent, or father care.

The results of this study have confirmed that daycare is associated with negative effects on child behavior. It found that a child’s sixth-grade teacher was more likely to report that the child “gets in fights,” is “disobedient in school” and “argues a lot” when they spent more time in center-based daycare before kindergarten.

This correlation between misbehavior and center-based daycares may be due to the quality of childcare. The researchers from this study emphasizes that 60 percent of the children stated that the caregiving was neither sensitive nor responsive to their needs. In addition, the study suggests that this problem may be the result of lack of training and time to address behavior problems in pre- kindergarten daycares.
The feminist movement has had some extremely wonderful results by allowing women to choose their own path in life. However, America needs to support working mothers and fathers by providing paid maternity leave and more financial support for single parents. In addition, daycare providers need better training.