Eastern Standard kicks off series on working mothers

This week’s edition of Eastern Standard kicks off a series taking a deep dive into the lives of working mothers, hosted by EKU business professor Beth Polin.

The series will discuss what it means to be a working mother, and what it means to employ working mothers in our current time period.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says nearly 73 percent of American mothers are either working or looking for work. Labor force participation rates for women with children under 3 have nearly doubled, from 34 percent in 1975 to 64 percent in 2021.

Polin spoke with Cynthia Harter, Director of the Center for Economic Education at EKU. She says participation has continued to rise after the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There's more flexibility, there's more opportunities available, and so that's part of the increase in the participation in the labor market,” Harter said. “Now that we've seen that we can have remote jobs or hybrid jobs, or employers being more flexible, that has really helped mothers.”

Harter also says rising health and education costs have made dual incomes necessary for many families.

“We do have a more skewed distribution of income where we have a higher percentage at the top and the bottom than we did when compared with 1950,” Harter said. “And our middle class is not there like it was in the 1950s. And so this has put pressure on families to move more toward dual income.”

More with Polin and Harter can be heard on this week’s edition of Eastern Standard.

** WEKU is working hard to be a leading source for public service, and fact-based journalism. Monthly supporters are the top funding source for this growing nonprofit news organization. Please join others in your community who support WEKU by making your donation .