I began to wonder if the crazy way the entire child-care system is organized is really one not-so-subtle message telling mothers to hang it up, quit, and go home where they belong. “We’ve heard that from policy makers,” Michelle Noth, an advocate with Child Care Aware of America, told me. “That’s what they had as children. With their wives at home, that’s what they have now. They’re not thinking about how employers can work with both mothers and fathers to figure out a way to support people who have children in this country.”
