Modern Parenthood: Roles of Moms and Dads Converge as They Balance Work and Family

A lot has changed for women and men in the 50 years since Betty Friedan wrote "The Feminine Mystique". Women have made major strides in education and employment, and the American workplace has been transformed. But with these changes have come the added pressures of balancing work and family life, for mothers and fathers alike. Trends in time use going back to 1965 clearly show how the increased participation of women in the workforce has affected the amount of time mothers devote to paid work. In 2011, mothers spent, on average, 21 hours per week on paid work, up from eight hours in 1965. Over the same period, the total amount of time mothers spend in non-paid work has gone down somewhat. For their part, fathers now spend more time engaged in housework and child care than they did half a century ago. And the amount of time they devote to paid work has decreased slightly over that period. Fathers have by no means caught up to mothers in terms of time spent caring for children and doing household chores, but there has been some gender convergence in the way they divide their time between work and home.The report is divided into two main sections. Section I, Public Opinion Survey Findings, is based mainly on the new Pew Research survey and includes three chapters. Chapter 1 looks at women's growing presence in the labor market and explores changing attitudes about work. Chapter 2 looks at the challenges mothers and fathers face in attempting to balance work and family life. Chapter 3 explores how these challenges are affecting parents -- both in terms of their overall happiness and in how they evaluate the job they are doing raising their children. Section II of the report, Time Use Findings, primarily draws from time use surveys and includes public opinion questions related to time use when available. Chapter 4 provides an overview of how mothers and fathers spend their time in the workplace and at home and how they feel about their time. Chapter 5 goes into detail about the long-term trend in time use among men and women -- and fathers and mothers -- over the past five decades. Chapter 6 looks at current time use patterns among parents of different family types and living arrangements

Women See Value and Benefits of College; Men Lag on Both Fronts, Survey Finds

Presents survey findings about views on the value of higher education, the necessity of a college degree to men and women, financing and affordability of college, and gender composition of college graduates by gender, race/ethnicity, and education

Recognizing Discrimination: Lessons from White Plaintiffs

The Supreme Court has developed a robust equal protection jurisprudence to recognize the rights of whites complaining of race conscious governmental activity. This was particularly reflected in the Court’s opinion in Parents Involved, where the Roberts Court radically repositioned the meaning of Brown v. Board of Education. That opinion all but guarantees that eventually Abigail Noel Fisher will win her case against the University of Texas. In the meantime, however, the case also holds promise for minority plaintiffs. While many have lamented Parents Involved and its use of Brown, we have missed the promise of the Roberts Court’s “process-only discrimination” for minority plaintiffs. This Article argues that the Roberts Court adopted a version of color-blind jurisprudence so unconditional and absolute that it unintentionally, but unmistakably, offers great promise to nonwhite plaintiffs. By making unlawful any different treatment of an individual by race, regardless of whether it has substantive consequences, the Roberts Court expanded what is actionable under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, not just for white plaintiffs but also for minority plaintiffs. This Article unpacks that promise, and attempts to hold Chief Justice John Roberts accountable for all the consequences of his absolute commitment to color-blind jurisprudence

Desegregating Teachers

Our public schools are more segregated than is commonly recognized. Through an original empirical study of 157 school districts, this Article uncovers that teachers are resegregating, just as students are. Many educators, policymakers, and legal scholars would find no fault with this resegregation because they disconnect integration from quality of education. The consequences of teacher segregation, however, remain uncharted territory in this debate over the value of school integration. The resegregation of teachers exposes the truth of school segregation — it continues to impede structural equality and helps to perpetuate white supremacy. Segregated teaching staffs, which generally mean inexperienced white teachers in minority schools, are but one aspect of the inequality of segregation. Yet, this past term, the Supreme Court legitimated the current segregation in our public schools in its landmark opinion, Parents Involved. Our society\u27s refusal to recognize the transformative potential of integration is, however, more of an obstacle to equality than the Supreme Court. That is, until society identifies integration with quality of education, the Supreme Court\u27s refusal to do so is unimportant

Recognizing Discrimination: Lessons from White Plaintiffs

The Supreme Court has developed a robust equal protection jurisprudence to recognize the rights of whites complaining of race conscious governmental activity. This was particularly reflected in the Court’s opinion in Parents Involved, where the Roberts Court radically repositioned the meaning of Brown v. Board of Education. That opinion all but guarantees that eventually Abigail Noel Fisher will win her case against the University of Texas. In the meantime, however, the case also holds promise for minority plaintiffs. While many have lamented Parents Involved and its use of Brown, we have missed the promise of the Roberts Court’s “process-only discrimination” for minority plaintiffs. This Article argues that the Roberts Court adopted a version of color-blind jurisprudence so unconditional and absolute that it unintentionally, but unmistakably, offers great promise to nonwhite plaintiffs. By making unlawful any different treatment of an individual by race, regardless of whether it has substantive consequences, the Roberts Court expanded what is actionable under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, not just for white plaintiffs but also for minority plaintiffs. This Article unpacks that promise, and attempts to hold Chief Justice John Roberts accountable for all the consequences of his absolute commitment to color-blind jurisprudence

The Legal Cost of the Split Double Header of Gratz and Grutter

In this article, Professor Parker examines Justice Scalia\u27s prediction that the split double header of Gratz and Grutter - which seemingly contradict one another - will result in a dramatically increased amount of litigation and become a never-ending aggravation for both students and educators because of uncertainty in distinguishing between constitutional racial activity and unconstitutional kind racial activity. Justice Scalia further predicts that post-Gratz/Grutter litigation will draw all racial groups - the majority group, underrepresented minority groups, and overrepresented minority groups - as plaintiffs, and he proposes an all-or-nothing approach: Outlaw all racial preferences in the public education setting or uphold one such activity as a general matter. Professor Parker takes as a given the value of legal certainty and challenges the positivist aspect of Justice Scalia\u27s claim that Gratz and Grutter will produce legal uncertainty, and posits that, in fact, Justice Scalia wrongly characterizes Gratz and Grutter as producing mountains of litigation to mark the line between permissible and impermissible racial conscious activity. Thus, what we\u27ll likely see in the aftermath of Gratz and Grutter is limited litigation to define more precisely how and when schools can consider race, and an answer from the courts that defers to educators. But after this, litigation will have only limited impact on education today. Litigators will quickly learn - just as many of their school desegregation counterparts have - that litigation is not the way to effectuate social change in America, and the filing of litigation will end. In the end, Gratz and Grutter will shift the site of the affirmative action debate to the local and state government level, contrary to Justice Scalia\u27s prediction

Values and uncertainties in climate prediction, revisited

Philosophers continue to debate both the actual and the ideal roles of values in science. Recently, Eric Winsberg has offered a novel, model-based challenge to those who argue that the internal workings of science can and should be kept free from the influence of social values. He contends that model-based assignments of probability to hypotheses about future climate change are unavoidably influenced by social values. I raise two objections to Winsberg’s argument, neither of which can wholly undermine its conclusion but each of which suggests that his argument exaggerates the influence of social values on estimates of uncertainty in climate prediction. I then show how a more traditional challenge to the value-free ideal seems tailor-made for the climate context