Abstract
This is a terrifyingly ambitious book, based on 1,000 in depth interviews and survey data from more than 55,000 families spanning five continents and 180 countries over a forty year period it sets out to examine how the changing conditions of work affects parents, their children and older relatives. What will determine whether there is a ‘race to the bottom’ or a ‘climb to the top’ in terms of living and working conditions for these families?
The book is divided into examining the ‘Dramatic Transformations’ of employment, urbanisation and globalisation, who cares for pre-school and school aged children; it looks at parent's working conditions and children's health, gender inequalities, living with crises such as war, natural disasters and epidemics and what kinds of policy solutions can be identified to address the needs of working caregivers. Heymann's work is an important contribution to making us look at these issues beyond the US and Europe. Heymann develops a very personal and immediate style interweaving graphically grim cameos of the lives of parents in Honduras, Vietnam, Russia, Botswana and the US with results from their vast survey data.
The unspoken reality about who cares for the children while their parents are working is: no one. They have to care for themselves, or are cared for by their older brothers and sisters who are taken out of school. Keeping children in school is essential. Heymann graphically presents the dilemmas parents feel when faced with the need to take time off work to care for sick children under the threat of losing their job. While she argues that employment is clearly a step out of poverty, it is the long hours and poor conditions and pay which ravage the families they have studied.
She clearly places the blame for these developments on ‘corrosive effects of a tremendously costly version of “free” trade’ (p. 188). The movement of jobs around the globe has ‘spurred a downward spiral in working conditions’ (p. 189). Workers have less ability to secure decent working conditions and public services to support them have been cut back.
In her final chapter she sets out to challenge a series of myths about how to deal with these problems. Her recommendations are that children should not be left alone, paid parental leave and good educational provision are required. Who could not agree with this? But who will bring this about and who will pay for it? She criticises the fallacies that companies will or cannot pay for these, and that consumers will not put up with the extra costs, or that countries cannot act on their own. Expanding public education and enacting basic job protection are essential to bring about change, and there is evidence she cites of attempts to move in this direction. But there is also a need for global governance structures to be more democratic and effective. Her work is about offering evidence and a vision for changing public debate. Written within the discipline of Health and Social Policy her achievements in this field are considerable in assembling this mammoth research project into a very readable account with direct policy relevance. This is bound to become an important resource to those working on these issues if only because of the wealth of data that it includes and the strong polemic arguments it makes about the need to address these inequalities and their consequences.
What will determine whether there is a ‘race to the bottom’ or a ‘climb to the top’? Heymann's answer is one of political awareness to change and more democratic international forums. Easier said than done, but at least this book is an attempt to provide a battery of empirical evidence for that battle.