Part 1: Women in the Workplace and the Collapse of America's Mental Health
Do we even understand attachment in America?
My next three articles will be a deeper dive into the collapsing of what I would call the three-legged stool that holds up the mental health of America. The three legs of the stool are women (primarily mothers) staying in the home, men (primarily fathers) boldly and attentively leading their families, and covenant marriages where divorce is not even spoken of. With the rise of women in the workplace, men being weak and aloof to their wife and kids, and no-fault divorce, these legs to the stool and our collective mental health started crumbling. Now, I could easily make cases for the importance of these legs from Scripture or from history, but I want to explore these from a psychological perspective. American mental health and society as a whole has been falling since the collapsing of these stool legs. Let’s first examine women working outside the home because this affects us from the earliest moments of life.
Attachment Theory
In the 1950s, British psychologist John Bowlby began his work on what we now call Attachment Theory. He was challenging the views of prominent theorists at the time who believed childhood issues were due to internal factors, not external. Joined later by Mary Ainsworth who built upon the theory, the two helped us understand the incredible importance of a baby’s attachment to his or her parents, especially the mother.
A baby is supposed to bond to a loving and present mother where his needs are taken care of and he learns to trust that his caregiver will be there for him. Secure attachment has countless positive effects on a person’s life as they grow such as feeling worthy of love, feeling wanted, and feeling valuable. To the flip side, anxious, avoidant, or disorganized attachment has lifelong negative effects unless appropriately addressed.
We now know a child’s attachment style is primarily formed in the first two years of a his life, though it is built upon for many years after that third birthday. This makes the first two years crucial in terms of developing that special bond and the accompanying positive effects. Confidence, courage, motivation, contentment, worthiness of love, and much more are built upon a mother consistently meeting the needs of a child when he cries.
According to a University of Iowa study, “infants who have a close, intimate relationship with a parent are less likely to be troubled, aggressive or experience other emotional and behavioral problems when they reach school age.”1
Attachment in the first few years of a child’s life is beyond important, which is being proven more and more as we further study Bowlby and Ainsworth’s work. A caregiver (primarily a mother) being consistently present for her child and meeting his needs when he cries is incredibly necessary to create secure attachment.
Yet, for all the therapy we love to talk about in America, we sure do get this one wrong.
Life Post-WWII
Let’s go back once again to the 1950s. World War II has been fought and won in the previous decade. Life has resumed and people are procreating more than ever giving rise to the Baby Boomer generation. Many of the women who had been working in the factories during the war decided to stay outside the home. Instead of resuming their positions as stay-at-home wives and moms, millions remained in or joined the workforce. This was a major shift from before the war.
According to a 1962 report by the U.S. Department of Labor,
The number of women workers, continuing a long-term upward trend, rose from 16.5 million in 1950 to almost 22.5 million in 1960—a gain of 35 percent. This greatly exceeded the 14 percent increase in the number of women of working age in the population—57 million in 1950 compared to 65 million in 1960.
However, those numbers are for both the single and married women. Concerning working wives specifically, the report says,
The increase in the number of working wives—from 7.7 million in 1950 to 12.4 million in 1960—accounted for four-fifths of the 5.8-million gain over the decade in the total number of women workers. The proportion of married women who work jumped from 22 percent in 1950 to 31 percent in 1960.2
Many of these were women with children. For those that weren’t mothers at the time, many went on to have children or encouraged other females to choose this path.
Previous generations had stay-at-home mothers where kids would often come home to a clean house and a prepared snack after school. Mom was there to hear about their day including struggles at school, exciting events, and more. Daughters were mainly raised to keep home and make it a loving environment for their families.
As the decades passed, that became more of a rarity. More and more women joined the workforce and dual income families became the norm. The loving and warm tone of the home that women provided was given up for the “finer things” only made possible by two incomes.
According to a U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics report, women’s labor force participation increased dramatically from the 1960s through the 1980s, before slowing in the 1990s. In 2019, 57.4 % of all women participated in the labor force. The article continues, “Since 1970, women have become more likely to work full time and year round. Also, women with children have increased their participation in the labor force considerably.”
Specifically for women with children under 18 years of age, the labor force participation rate was 72.4 percent in March 2019. The rate for women with children under 6 years old was 66.4 percent, and the rate for women with children under 3 years old was 63.8 percent.3
You might see those ages and think that maybe the mothers are spending substantial time with their infants during maternity leave before reentering the workplace, at least establishing positive attachment from 0-2. Going back to the 1960s, for the working women who had children, 62.8% of them quit their jobs after giving birth so they could be there with their baby.
However, that percentage has dropped substantially decade after decade. According to an April, 2024 journal article, only 24% of women quit their jobs after their children.4 So the overwhelming majority stayed in the workplace after their maternity leave despite one in three wishing they could quit their jobs.5
Further complicating the problem, in America today, 40% of women don’t qualify for their 12 weeks of paid maternity leave. In the private sector, only 12% of women get paid leave while 25% of women are forced to return to work within 2 weeks of giving birth to support their families. So the working women who are giving birth are not able to spend much time with their infant at all.6
This creates attachment issues because the child is not able to bond to their caregiver. They may bond to the nanny or another relative throughout the day only to be taken back by the parents at night. If the nanny takes a different job or phases out over time then the child is losing a major caregiver. Is the attachment formed to the nanny/relative or to the parents? In early childhood, it’s unlikely to form securely with both. In fact, this can create anxious attachment.7
A mother’s absence from her child also causes issues with breastfeeding, a major part of building attachment. According to one peer-reviewed journal article,
Breastfeeding contributes to the development of secure attachment through consistent and responsive interactions between the caregiver and the infant. When a mother breastfeeds, she holds the baby close, providing physical closeness, eye contact, and skin-to-skin contact. These interactions foster a sense of intimacy and connection between the caregiver and the infant, helping the infant build a strong emotional bond [9]. The act of breastfeeding also involves the release of hormones like oxytocin, often referred to as the "love hormone." Oxytocin promotes feelings of warmth and connection between the mother and the baby. These positive interactions and emotional experiences create a foundation for the infant's understanding of relationships, forming the basis for future social interactions [10].8
When mothers are forced to return to work early in a child’s life, they lose out on the beauty of breastfeeding. It’s not easily replicated through pumping and feeding the child via bottle because the oxytocin bond is lost. According to an Americanpregnancy.org article, “The passive immunity and oxytocin controlled bonding that comes into play with breastfeeding cannot be replaced with a bottle or formula.”9
There is a connection with oxytocin production and sensory stimulation. This is simply lost when a mother who is capable of breastfeeding chooses to feed her baby from a bottle so she can return to the workplace.
Also, studies have shown that a mother turning to bottle feeding has been associated with postpartum depression and mimics the conditions associated with the death of her baby.10
Another peer-reviewed article written in International Breastfeeding Journal states,
A total of 715 employed mothers’ data were collected. Of the shift workers, 90.1% breastfed during maternity leave, but the breastfeeding rates after returning to work decreased to 21.5% for one to six months and 17.9% for more than six months. Of the non-shift workers, 87.6% breastfed during maternity leave and the breastfeeding rates after returning to work were 24.1% for one to six months and 34.6% for more than six months.11
If breastfeeding and early bonding time with a child is so crucial to appropriate attachment and emotional development why do so few stick with it after six months? It plays a big role in helping to create secure attachment that will set up a person for life, so why did women willingly sacrifice this when entering the workforce post-WWII?
“Progress”
For the feminists of the 1950s and 1960s, this was “liberation,” “progress,” and “freedom.” Women were no longer oppressed and forced to stay in their homes. Instead, they joined the rat race only to become oppressed by their bosses, but at least that was better than being oppressed by the patriarchy at home.
They found value in the workplace, especially in homes where their husbands failed to give them the cherishing they needed. Despite the fact that studies have shown women do not form their identity around work like men do and despite the fact that working women with young children are less happy in the workplace, this was an accepted change at the time.12
Men accepted it as the second income lifted quite the burden off of their shoulders. Besides, women helped keep the country going during WWII so it only seemed right to let them stay in the workplace. Who were they to stand in the way of Rosie the Riveter?
Meanwhile, no one thought about the kids. Did anyone think to ask how the mass exodus of mothers from the home into the workforce through the generations would affect the children? If they did ask, they came up with the wrong answer.
What About Childcare?
This rush to the workplace left a major problem. Where do the kids go while the mom is at work? During the 1950s, childcare for the working mothers was largely provided by relatives - grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. - or friends. Though this was better, it still created issues of parental involvement in the day-to-day life of a child, consistency in discipline, and staggered attachment forming to multiple caregivers.
As years went by, childcare shifted to daycare, babysitters, and nannies for young kids. The government also played a role through programs like Head Start in the 1960s that started as an eight-week summer program but gave birth to a year-long program for children aged three to six that focused on cognitive and emotional development for children1314
Similar programs soon followed after giving rise to a generation of kids who spent the majority of their young childhood outside their own home. And for the parents who couldn’t afford childcare, didn’t have access to these programs, or had no family to help, they gave their children a key and told them to make sure they didn’t burn down the house (latchkey kids).
Children were being passed around to whoever would take them or forced to stay at home where no one would take them, and somehow we thought this wouldn’t have a devastating effect on them. This subconsciously taught them exactly what you would expect: No one wants me.
It is also not hard to see how a child could watch his parents give up time with him for the sake of money and later come to the conclusion that money, status, possessions, and even his own college fund matter more than him.
Imagine a child coming home after being bullied at school to find no one. He might just drown out his emotions with the TV, finding solace in the heroes on his shows instead of in real life. These days, they drown it out through porn or social media.
Or maybe that child was forced to go to daycare where he was pushed around and forced to develop an every-man-for-himself worldview just to survive. Someone has to look after him and he quickly learns that that “someone” is him. He is alone in solving his own problems because mom and dad aren’t there and they aren’t saving him from daycare anytime soon. He’ll be back tomorrow.
Fast forward a decade or so and we see California become the first state to pass no-fault divorce in 1969 which gave way to many more states joining after. It makes perfect sense. After all, every man for himself, right? And why should they be forced to think about how the divorce might affect their kids? They were an afterthought to their parents when they were young.
A Harsh Reality
You might be thinking this is too harsh. Surely the kids weren’t an afterthought to their parents. That’s too critical of those parents who were “trying their best.” Well, how would you describe giving up a child for several hours of the day to pursue another interest? If we did that with anything other than work we would seriously question someone’s motherly instincts.
Imagine if a mother left her child at daycare every day so she could go get her nails and hair done for 8 hours. You would rightfully wonder how much she actually wants to be around her child. The child might be wondering the same thing, right? Do children have the ability to delineate between hair & nails and the workplace? Young kids cannot comprehend that “mom’s job really really matters.” They merely feel the affects of an absent parent who is not there to help them when they need.
From six weeks old on up, children of working mothers are made to believe they don’t matter as much as the paycheck. They’re forced to care for themselves and become ultra self-reliant. They push down any feelings of rejection and abandonment that come up with being left for large amounts of time.
This is further compounded by mothers who just can’t wait to send their children back to school after summers or who don’t have time to make home-cooked meals made with love at dinner time. That order from the local Italian restaurant for the fourth time this month just doesn’t taste as good as mom’s homemade spaghetti.
Consequences of Feeling Unwanted
Children feeling unwanted and angry about the lack of attachment has real effects. Their anger and lack of supervision spills over into violence. There have been 413 school shootings since Columbine in 1999.15 Children who don’t feel wanted by their own families seek out those who do want them. Now, 28% of Gen Z identify as LGBTQ.16 The lack of attachment leads to lashing out in behavior. Nearly one in four children show behavioral, cognitive, or emotional problems.17
There are several additional factors that contribute to these issues, first of which is probably social media. However, even that gives rise to the question: Where are the parents to restrict the social media usage? Why aren’t the parents more involved in setting boundaries? Well, too often they’re gone. They are too busy or too distracted to set boundaries and stick to them. Of course, the children know their parents are too absent to set boundaries. That’s why they’re acting out in the first place.
My theory is this all started with attachment issues stemming from mothers working outside the home. The problems we see today are the mere fruit of a rotten root system that was planted back in the 1950s with the rise of feminism and working women.
Attachment affects behavior, self-esteem, relational abilities, anxiety levels, and so much more. A mother who is consistently present for her children and emotionally engaged (attuned) with them helps the child learn they are valuable, lovable, wanted, cared for, and an important part of the family. We’ve now witnessed several generations who simply did not get this and the results are not good.
We have completely missed the boat regarding attachment for the last 70 years. We think bonding over six weeks of maternity leave and then a few hours together at night will create secure attachment? Even with significantly longer maternity leave, we simply cannot replace what is lost due to both parents being gone for the majority of their kids lives up to 18.
The Childhood Spiral
Going back to the beginning of a child’s life, the lack of attachment has reverberating effects throughout the years, starting the moment he is taken out of his mother’s arms. And these stack up faster than parents realize.
The newborn quickly grows up to be put in daycare where it’s that every-man-for-himself mentality most of the time. He is brought into the harsh reality of the world when as a toddler he is suddenly punched by a fellow three-year-old for holding the other kid’s toy at daycare. The world is cruel and no one is there to protect him.
He is then pushed into the public school system where he’s taught to hate his parents, to only trust credentialed authority figures, and to seek the approval of his peers more than his own family. When the kid begins to struggle emotionally due to bullying which is perceived as confirmation of his already-established internal belief that he’s not worthy of love, the untrusted parent tries to utilize their non-credentialed authority to try to help the child they’ve been pushing to the side for the last decade.
It’s only then that they find they don’t really know their kid or how to help him so they send him to another credentialed authority figure, a therapist. Surely modern therapy will fix the problem, right? Unfortunately, the child is usually put on medication, a further confirmation that no one wants to deal with him or his emotions.
You may think I’m overstating this, but this is literally the stories for millions of Americans. Lack of attachment to the mothers and fathers who largely check out of their kids lives are ruining the youth in America. (More on the fathers’ role in the next article.)
If you saw a young kid who got lost at an amusement park and was away from his mother for eight straight hours, we’d rightfully recognize that as traumatic to a kid. Though he may have had someone helping him, he was calling for help and his mom didn’t come. He thought she left him. Multiply that by thousands of days and suddenly it’s okay?
Why did we ever think this was the path to healthy children? On a societal level, we didn’t. Society just shifted the goal away from creating healthy children to creating productive and consumeristic adults. The wonders of childhood are gone. The whimsical is traded for the practical. Imagination is traded for screen time. True learning is traded for a passing grade. The wonders of childhood are traded for the fears of adulthood at too early of an age (think climate change and transgenderism). Rushing kids through their younger years to turn them into producers who earn for the simple reason of consumption makes sense when both mom and dad chose their jobs and the subsequent consumption over their children. I think this is one of the core tenents to our declining mental health in this country.
On an individual level, I know many families who aren’t just trying to create productive and consumeristic adults. They simply cannot make it on a single income in America today. In no way is this intended to be unfeeling to the women and families who feel forced to have two working parents to help meet basic needs.
But we must start the conversation at some point. This is why young men must be taught to pursue a career that can support their future wives so they don’t have to work. We must train our young women to look for a man who will take care of them in such a way.
Women in the current workforce may not be able to quit for financial reasons, but that doesn’t mean they can’t raise their children differently. If we understand the importance of attachment then we must pursue a brighter, even if harder, future.
Testing the Theory
But let’s test my theory. Because if it is correct that poor attachment due to mothers working outside the home is hurting mental health, I think we’d see several things. We’d see:
Moms would struggle between their desire to be with their kids and their desire for the workplace, which would lead to anxiety and depression due to feeling pulled in two directions. This would give rise to a significant use of anti-depressants and therapy.18
Replacement rates would be low due to not wanting children. After all, children are a hassle and a distraction from the real important stuff like money, just like mom and dad modeled.19
Making money would matter more than kids. Being famous (known) would matter even more as a way to feel desired by others.20
Men would act like children and use their wife as a mother-figure.21 This would manifest in a fear of making decisions lest they be left by the mom-wife for doing the wrong thing (anxious attachment).
People would fail to think generationally and keep things for themselves. Every man for himself, just like they learned in daycare and in the home.22
Subsequent generations would look to change their parenting and to swing the pendulum back, which would lead to things like gentle parenting where you “respect” the child and his unruly emotional outbursts because their own parents never paid attention to their emotions or helicopter parenting where a child is rarely allowed to take risks lest they get hurt because their own parents weren’t there to protect them.
Women would reject the advice of their parents and would instead seek it from “qualified experts” or even friends on social media.
Parents would give into their children’s tantrums out of guilt for not being there or out of a desire to give them what their parents did not.
Addiction would be rampant as we try to fill the holes of childhood attachment wounds and soothe ourselves with things that make us immediately feel good.23
Many women would not allow children to get in the way of their valuable work so abortion rates would skyrocket.24
Kids would no longer trust their parents as knowing what’s best for them so they would openly rebel against long-held familial beliefs such as religion, politics, social beliefs, etc. This would lead to them ultimately ostracizing their family.25
Children would seek attention in crazier and crazier ways from anyone that will notice them.26
Decisions would be made purely for the benefit of the individual in the here-and-now and not for the future generations so problems like inflation or rising healthcare costs would be a major issue.27
Men would have little understanding of how to connect with women and would not respect or feel close to them. Because of this, they would merely use women to gratify their desires so sex addiction would increase as they seek to feel wanted by a female.28
Feminism would rule the day due to women realizing they are having to raise the kids and make the money, thus making the man’s role obsolete, especially with things like sperm banks where a man’s presence is not even needed to have a baby.
Anxiety from poor attachment and not knowing how to make it in the world would cripple kids trying to accomplish regular tasks leading to anxiety disorders.29
I can’t speak for you, but I would say we’re seeing all of those in America today. I’ve seen most of these struggles in therapy with clients. Many of these are also the effects of physically or emotionally absent fathers, which too often coincides with women working outside the home. Once again, this will be the focus of the next article.
The bottom line is this: The importance of childhood attachment cannot be understated. The importance of an available and attuned mother in a child’s life cannot be downplayed. We learn that we are lovable and worthy from that consistent interaction in our earlier years. Not stunted interaction with a mom spending most of her day on social media, but a truly attuned mom.
If we hope to change the direction this country is going with its mental health then we must start considering how we might bring this back.
The positive news is that many mothers are already leaving the workforce, especially post-Covid.30 People are waking up to the fact that women just want to be home with their children and that’s a really good thing.
I certainly hope more in the future will recognize the unbelievably important role a mother plays in a child’s life, and I hope they will adjust to give kids the secure attachment they need and deserve.
https://now.uiowa.edu/news/2012/10/parental-bondinghappy-stable-child
https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/women/b0284_dolwb_1962.pdf
https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/womens-databook/2020/home.htm
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11047346/#:~:text=Cross%2Dcountry%20research%20demonstrates%20that,%25%20are%20absent%20%5B6%5D.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91004705/new-moms-consider-leaving-workforce-not-returning-jobs
https://www.healthline.com/health/pregnancy/united-states-maternity-leave-facts#Maternity-leave-facts-in-the-United-States
https://thebetteryouinstitute.com/2024/05/27/the-impact-of-childcare-on-attachment-styles-does-choosing-daycare-nanny-or-stay-at-home-parenting-matter/#:~:text=Nanny%20care%2C%20with%20its%20one,may%20impact%20the%20attachment%20experience.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10631302/#REF10
https://americanpregnancy.org/healthy-pregnancy/breastfeeding/breastfeeding-vs-bottle-feeding-formula/#:~:text=The%20passive%20immunity%20and%20oxytocin,with%20a%20bottle%20or%20formula.
https://www.albany.edu/news/images/GGallupbottlefeeding.pdf
https://internationalbreastfeedingjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13006-022-00467-8#:~:text=Results,for%20more%20than%20six%20months.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/opinion/sunday/are-women-allowed-to-love-their-jobs.html
https://researchconnections.org/sites/default/files/pdf/rc2088.pdf
Payne, J. S., et al. (1973). Head Start: a tragicomedy with epilogue. New York: Behavioral Publications.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/interactive/school-shootings-database/
https://www.prri.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/PRRI-Jan-2024-Gen-Z-Draft.pdf
https://journals.lww.com/inpj/fulltext/2017/26010/a_descriptive_study_of_behavioral_problems_in.17.aspx
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-so-many-middle-aged-women-are-on-antidepressants-11648906393
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/09/14/what-makes-for-a-fulfilling-life/
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kids-want-fame_b_1201935?ref=celebrity
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-second-noble-truth/201102/when-men-are-boys-and-wives-are-mothers
https://www.gobankingrates.com/net-worth/business-people/bill-gates-rich-people-wont-leave-money-kids/
https://nida.nih.gov/about-nida/legislative-activities/budget-information/fiscal-year-2024-budget-information-congressional-justification-national-institute-drug-abuse/ic-fact-sheet-2024
https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2024/one-four-us-women-expected-have-abortion-their-lifetime
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/why-so-many-people-are-going-no-contact-with-their-parents
https://www.tiktok.com
Look at the price of groceries
https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/does-society-have-a-sex-addiction-problem
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/any-anxiety-disorder
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/08/womens-labor-force-participation-rate-hit-33-year-low-in-january-2021.html