Today's New York Times featured an interesting article discussing the problem of low fertility rates in several developed countries. It touches on an issue important to many of us: achieving work-life balance and juggling motherhood with a career. While it's no secret that women's employment is one of several key factors to declining birth rates in the developed countries, what is interesting is its discussion of efforts by a few of these countries (mostly Scandinavian) to increase their birthrates by making it easier for women to successfully manage the balancing act. I found this to be a refreshing change from many articles on the topic, as it highlights programs like free public child-care, mandatory wage parity between full and part-time workers, and generous maternity (and paternity) leave policies. The US, in comparison, lags far behind.

Law firms do a lot to hype their family-friendly policies to the female law students around here, and I assume at other law schools as well. Yet it seems that employer policy is only one side of the equation-society and the government must also promote both values to make the playing field truly even, if only because not all women are so lucky to have employer-provided paternity leave or day care. I like to think that women can "have it all," and shouldn't have to choose between a career and a family. However, if this were framed as a family issue instead of a women's issue, more might be done to help.

The NY Times does a good job of bringing attention to the greater societal effects of low birthrates, but maybe not enough on how this affects men and families as well as women. In many households today the woman's career is not secondary to her husband's-in many cases she is the primary bread winner even. This dramatic shift toward dual income-earners means we, too, need to reflect on how we frame the issue of work-life balance. If employers or the government or society do not encourage and support women's employment post-childbirth, it can hurt the entire family by either depriving it of the income and job security it needs and deserves, or by putting a family in the undesirable position (like many Europeans in the article) of having fewer children than they desire.

Below is the link to the NY Times article in full:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04wwlnidealab.t.h...