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| 52% had a full time job on average in 2007, just 49% in 2025 |
... Clare Zakowski, a 28-year-old who works part time as a manager at a therapy practice, says she would welcome a federal paid family leave program, not that Congress is offering. She has always loved children; as a high schooler in Green Bay, Wis., she babysat and ran the activities for a summer camp. “I love their naïveté and innocence,” she told me. “I just think kids rock.” Ms. Zakowski has been with her boyfriend for over seven years, and children have been part of the discussion since the two first got together. But lately, she has been appalled by the manosphere, and worries about how A.I. will affect society. “The news every day is crazy, and it’s been that way for a while,” she said. “It just feels like we’re living in a really, really weird time.” Beyond paid leave (or universal health insurance, for that matter), she yearns for something deeper: a sense of security, something that she has yet to experience in America in her adult lifetime. “I feel like there’d have to be, I want to say a revolution, but basically big political change, like a moral awakening from everyone,” she said.
She had been looking for a full-time, higher-paying job to set herself up for parenthood, but found the search to be so stressful that she gave up. “I know there can be negatives to not planning ahead,” she told me, but “who even knows what the future holds?” ...
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