American Women Are at a Breaking Point

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Parenting in modern America is a high-wire act. For many parents, the experience is shaped by the dominant expectation of intensive, hands-on involvement; stressful competition for scarce slots in child-care and summer-camp programs; and a seemingly endless parade of breakdowns in areas as varied as infant-formula supply and college financial-aid forms. In the past few years, something of a cottage industry has sprung up for books detailing how difficult it is to be a parent, and particularly a mother, in modern America. Titles such as Jessica Grose’s Screaming on the Inside: The Unsustainability of American Motherhood and Tim Carney’s Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be come to mind.

In her new book, , the sociologist Jessica Calarco joins this conversation, and also pulls it in a new direction. She argues that America intentionally dumps onto women the burden of caring for all those who need it, whether children, the elderly,