After moving to France with her child and confronting a brutal job market for mothers, Claire Lundberg asks how “a country that is so outwardly progressive [is] still plagued with such basic workplace inequalities”:
While France has a wonderful safety net for women, much of it is designed to promote the growth of families as a way of boosting the birthrate. Indeed, families in France receive numerous supports and subsidies the more children they have. A family with two children is eligible for an automatic monthly stipend of 125 euros, regardless of income. With three children, a family is designated a “Famille Nombreuse,” which includes a raise in the automatic stipend, a possible further subsidy of up to 500 euros a month for the mother if she chooses not to return to work, and even reduced admission for transportation, museums, and amusement parks. And, at four children, a woman becomes eligible for the “medaille de la famille,” an honorary medal from the French government.
Douthat responds:
Family-friendly socialism, [scholar Kay Hymowitz] notes, does seem to encourage more women to stay in the workforce after they have children. But it also helps explain the persistence of “the glass ceilings, as well as stubbornly large wage gaps in more progressive countries,” because working women tend to be shunted more decisively onto a mommy track than they are in the United States. And it shunts them in other ways as well: To borrow an insight Neil Gilbert, the author of one of the must-read books on this topic, the social-democratic combination of high tax rates and a large state-run caregiving apparatus creates a strong economic incentive for mothers to leave their children with professional caregivers while taking a job … as a professional caregiver. This boosts workforce participation and G.D.P. — but whether it boosts actual female welfare seems at least somewhat debatable.
The Dish 