Graduation Year
2015
Document Type
Campus Only Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Philosophy, Politics and Economics
Reader 1
Eleanor Brown
Reader 2
Mark Golub
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2015 Sarah E. Hiller
Abstract
This thesis looks at how parental leave and early child care policies in the U.S. can reshape our understanding of the role of government, parental responsibility, and gender within paid labor in order to dismantle the systems of oppression and domination that lead to motherhood inequality. The United States is the only developed economy without mandated paid parental leave, and privatized child care costs can be greater than tuition at public universities. As a result, mothers, still overwhelmingly the primary caregivers in families, are forced to juggle the responsibilities of paid and domestic labor in a way that leads to employment discrimination. Because policies have a unique power to incentivize behavior and change socially ingrained biases, I propose that Congress institute paid parental leave through the FAMILY Act and revives the Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1971 to establish public child care.
Recommended Citation
Hiller, Sarah E., "The Parental Patriarchy: How U.S. Parental Leave and Child Care Policies Perpetuate Motherhood Inequality in the Workplace" (2015). Scripps Senior Theses. 665.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/665
This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.
