Janet C. Gornick

Janet C. Gornick, assistant professor of political science at Baruch College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, will author a book on public policies that support the employment of mothers with young children. The United States lags behind the rest of the industrialized world in providing child care services, family leave schemes, employment protection for part-time workers, and public school schedules that suit working mothers. Mothers are thus forced into unstable working patterns that may contribute to the strikingly high rates of child poverty in this country. Gornick will provide up-to-date empirical findings from 14 industrialized nations, describing changes in public support for working mothers and their implications for women's employment and family poverty. Can the United States learn anything from the family policies of other countries, and would those lessons ever be acted upon?