Despite the dramatic increase in women's labor market participation in recent decades, women continue to perform a disproportionate share of “family labor,” or the unpaid work of caring for children and other family members. Feminists have long been concerned that the gendered division of family labor reduces women's wages, contributes to the high and disproportionate rate of poverty among single mothers, limits married women's autonomy within the marital household, and circumscribes women's life choices and social and economic power.

Although many feminists agree that legal reform should address the economic and social consequences of the gendered division of family labor, they differ significantly in their objectives and policy prescriptions. Feminists may seek to increase women's autonomy, economic well-being, power, or happiness. Feminist policy prescriptions also differ, although they tend to pursue one of three main goals. Some feminists advocate equal treatment, or the application of the same legal rules to men and women, in order to eliminate legal biases that discourage women's market work and reinforce traditional gender roles. Others favor policies that would not only eliminate legal biases but affirmatively encourage women's market work in order to change gender roles and enhance women's economic self-sufficiency. A third group argues that instead of trying to change women's behavior, public policy should provide additional income transfers and other assistance to caregivers in order to directly improve their economic security and social status.

This article argues that tax policy can make an important contribution to a feminist legal agenda, but that some prior scholarship has overlooked the normative and institutional complexity of translating feminist goals into concrete policy prescriptions.

Introduction

In this chapter, I propose asset grants to address a persistent inequity of modern society: the precarious economic position of those parents, mostly mothers, who sacrifice market opportunities to rear children. New caretaker resource accounts would give every parent who cares for a child under 13 an annual grant of $5,000, or approximately £2,500. The money could only be used to pay for one of three items: childcare, education, or retirement savings. All three would improve parents’ future options and permit maximum flexibility in deploying resources over time.

The proposal for caretaker resource accounts reflects a normative commitment to individual freedom. One core claim is that an assets approach best supports each person's capacity to plan her life over time, with appropriate state support but minimal state intervention. A second central claim is that an assets approach can enhance the economic options of mothers in a wide variety of circumstances, from the poorest through the middle class.

Society can – and should – do more to protect mothers’ life chances. In the US and Britain, mothers work less, earn less, and achieve less in public life than men or childless women. Although more mothers than ever work in jobs, many work part time or take years out, and even those who hold full-time jobs interrupt their working lives at higher rates than other workers. These patterns persist across income classes. To be sure, middle-class mothers are materially better off than their lower-class peers, but both groups face economic insecurity due to their limited earning power. Middle-class mothers are often only a divorce away from real economic distress.

Child rearing is intrinsically important to any society that aspires to greater equality of opportunity because enduring care by a parent (or a parent figure) is critical to children's development. While schools and other public institutions supplement parental care, it is the close and lasting relationship between parent and child that gives the child the emotional and social tools to take her place in the world. Parenthood is truly the last ‘no exit’ relationship left: marriages now come and go, but parenthood endures. Even when one parent exits, the other – typically the mother – remains. Ninety-five percent of children have never spent more than a month apart from their primary parent, usually their mother (Lugaila, 2003).