With the COVID pandemic putting the multiple demands on working mothers in the spotlight once again, Leah Ruppaner's Motherlands provides some welcome insights into where and why US mothers benefit from a supportive environment to enter and stay in the labor force.

The primary goal of the book is to explain the variation in maternal employment by state using state-level family and work policy environment indicators and sociodemographic factors that may contribute to maternal employment levels as explanatory variables. The main conclusion is that “the states with generous family policies and economic opportunities for mothers do not have particularly supportive childcare regimes, and the states that offer the most comprehensive childcare and school-aged-care resources have unsupportive political and economic contexts” (p. 137). Consequently, the labor force participation of mothers varies across states in ways that might be unexpected.

The stories of “Michelle” and “Ava,” working mothers residing in California and Nebraska, respectively, are a useful device employed throughout the book for illustrating the individual and household level effects of each state's context. Michelle lives in a state with progressive family policies, plentiful economic opportunities for women and relatively high wages, but a lower maternal employment rate than Ava in Nebraska, a politically and religiously conservative state with a high concentration of jobs in female-dominated industries. At the same time, Michelle is faced with expensive childcare that is difficult to access and a high cost of living, while for Ava, childcare is affordable and available, and a middle-class lifestyle is within reach for the majority of families. Despite wanting to continue her career, Michelle is considering leaving the workforce to reduce the stress and disruption of unreliable childcare of unpredictable quality. Ava intends to continue to work full time as do most of the mothers she knows.

The introductory chapter of the book lays out the theoretical context, situating the book's thesis within the existing literature on welfare states and making the case for a subnational analysis that recognizes the importance of religious, demographic, economic, and political characteristics of states. Subsequent chapters describe the evidence on state-level variation in a range of indicators of employment, availability and cost of childcare, school-aged care, family leave policies, female wages, pay gaps, female representation in state legislatures, and a host of other measures.

Some readers will find the statistical analyses basic and the methodological details lacking. For example, the regression modeling in Chapter 4 and its assumptions are not described in full. The tables and figures would have benefited from more thorough labeling with clarity about numerators and denominators of the indicators. Also, the rationale for the category boundaries in the many maps is unclear (e.g., Fig 2.1 shows five categories for the percentage of full-time working dual-earner families: 22.20–31.90, 31.91–34.60, 34.61–36.60, 36.61–39.60, 39.61–49.80). There is little attempt to justify the choice of indicators or consider their strengths and weaknesses, and no discussion of the quality of the data used for the analysis.

Based on the findings of the state-level analysis, the policy solutions offered include reducing the cost of childcare and increasing its availability, better synchronizing school days with workdays, providing paid parental leave to both parents, enhancing schedule flexibility, and investing in female pursuit of well-paid professions. Ruppaner contends that state-level examples of effective policies around each of these issues exist and that states should borrow from each other so that universal support of working families becomes a reality. The book concludes by arguing that the topic of maternal employment and childcare needs reframing, not as a “woman's issue” but rather as a larger, bipartisan social issue that affects everyone and, if addressed, could not only improve the lives of families but increase the economic strength of states. —A.B.

随着 COVID 大流行再次将职业母亲的多重要求置于聚光灯下，Leah Ruppaner 的《祖国》提供了一些受欢迎的见解，了解美国母亲在何处以及为何从支持性环境中受益以进入和留在劳动力市场。

本书的主要目标是使用州级家庭和工作政策环境指标以及可能有助于孕产妇就业水平的社会人口因素作为解释变量来解释各州孕产妇就业的变化。主要结论是“那些为母亲提供慷慨的家庭政策和经济机会的州没有特别支持的儿童保育制度，而提供最全面的儿童保育和学龄儿童保育资源的州则具有不支持的政治和经济背景”（p . 137）。因此，各州母亲的劳动力参与率可能出乎意料。

“米歇尔”和“艾娃”的故事，分别是居住在加利福尼亚和内布拉斯加州的职业母亲，是贯穿全书的有用工具，用于说明每个州背景对个人和家庭层面的影响。米歇尔生活在一个家庭政策进步、女性拥有丰富的经济机会和相对较高的工资的州，但产妇就业率低于内布拉斯加州的阿瓦，内布拉斯加州是一个政治和宗教保守的州，工作高度集中在女性主导的行业。与此同时，米歇尔面临着难以获得的昂贵的托儿服务和高昂的生活成本，而对于艾娃来说，托儿服务是负担得起的，并且大多数家庭都可以过上中产阶级的生活方式。尽管想继续她的事业，米歇尔正在考虑离开工作岗位，以减少质量不可预测的不可靠托儿所带来的压力和干扰。Ava 打算像她认识的大多数母亲一样继续全职工作。

本书的介绍性章节阐述了理论背景，将本书的论点置于现有福利国家文献中，并为承认国家宗教、人口、经济和政治特征重要性的次国家分析提供理由。随后的章节描述了关于就业、儿童保育的可用性和成本、学龄儿童保育、家庭假政策、女性工资、薪酬差距、州立法机构中的女性代表以及许多其他指标的州级差异的证据。措施。

一些读者会发现统计分析很基础，缺乏方法论细节。例如，第 4 章中的回归建模及其假设没有完整描述。表格和数字将受益于对指标分子和分母进行更彻底的标记。此外，许多地图中类别边界的基本原理不清楚（例如，图 2.1 显示了全职双职工家庭百分比的五个类别：22.20–31.90、31.91–34.60、34.61–36.60、36.61–39.60 , 39.61–49.80)。很少尝试证明指标的选择或考虑它们的优缺点，也没有讨论用于分析的数据的质量。

根据州级分析的结果，提供的政策解决方案包括降低儿童保育成本并提高其可用性、更好地将上学时间与工作日同步、为父母双方提供带薪育儿假、提高时间表的灵活性以及投资于女性追求高薪职业。Ruppaner 认为，围绕这些问题中的每一个都存在有效政策的州级例子，并且各州应该相互借鉴，以便对工薪家庭的普遍支持成为现实。该书最后指出，孕产妇就业和儿童保育的话题需要重新定义，而不是作为“妇女问题”，而是作为影响每个人的更大的两党社会问题，如果得到解决，不仅可以改善家庭生活，而且可以增加国家的经济实力。-一种。