From The Center for American Progess report:

"As a result, professional women who need hours more like a traditional full-time job of 40 hours a week often find themselves 'doing scut work at slave wages,' as one professional woman put it.  This systematic de-skilling of women who work part time — as one in five professional and middle-income mothers do, according to our data analysis — is a major macroeconomic cost of workforce-workplace mismatch. So is underemployment of low-income mothers, who face wage rates so low that it makes little economic sense for them to work; a lack of subsidies for childcare often leads to the perverse situation where a mother’s take home pay is less than childcare costs."

"The Economist offers a sober assessment of the macroeconomic consequences of the resulting loss of women’s human capital. The magazine warns that many women 'are still excluded from paid work; many do not make best use of their skills. Greater participation by women in the labor market could help offset the effect of an ageing, shrinking population and hence support growth.' "

"Designing workplaces around the old fashioned breadwinner-homemaker household has microeconomic consequences as well. Individual employers may think, in good faith, that they need to work employees longer and longer hours in order to remain competitive. But that conclusion reflects confusion between the inevitable costs of doing business and the costs associated with a specific, and outdated, business model."

"Extensive research documents that the mismatch between work and life today leads to very high and very expensive levels of absenteeism and attrition as well as to decreases in productivity. Indeed, the 'business case for workplace flexibility' is extensively documented at the microeconomic level. We will limit ourselves to one example: A study of manual, customer service, clerical, cashiers, and sales positions found that employee turnover was 20 percent in a single month, or 240 percent turnover a year."

"That’s no way to run a business. Replacing these workers is extremely costly, given that replacing workers earning less than $75,000 costs 20 percent of their annual salary. Research suggests that the turnover rate for employees who lack the flexibility they need is twice that of those who have it."

"These costs remain largely unnoticed because they are seen as inevitable costs of doing business. They aren’t, of course. Both macroeconomic and microeconomic analyses demonstrate that policymakers need not fear that work-family policy initiatives will undermine American businesses, or America’s competitive position in the world economy. In fact, reconciling work and family would enhance American’s competitive global position — which is why Europeans have focused so much energy on this issue."

"If the United States continues on its present course, it will face a united Europe that has made great strides toward providing family-support laws and institutions — and less developed countries where work-family conflict for professional-managerial and often even middle-income families is muted by the availability of extremely cheap domestic labor. To ensure the United States provides quality care for the next generation of workers, while at the same time utilizing effectively the human capital of its mothers, fathers, and all caregivers, we need to get serious about work-family public policy."