3 Powerful Truths About Household Labor and Criminal Records That Still Control American Lives

Urban City Podcast Group — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 14:15:02 +0000

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Major Takeaways

Women still perform most household labor, including the invisible mental work of managing families even when both partners work full time
Criminal records lock millions of Americans out of stable careers long after their sentences end
New Clean Slate laws aim to give people a second chance by sealing eligible criminal records and restoring economic opportunity

How household labor and criminal records shape lives

This week on Viewpoints. The anticipating of the needs, the management, the oversight of schedules and calendars, knowing what’s coming up next and being prepared for it. Some chores are obvious, others never make the list.

We look at why household work still isn’t shared evenly. Then… They’ve all talked about how their record has continued to haunt them in a sense of where they work, where they can go to school, if they’re able to participate in their kids’ livelihood. How a new law aims to change what a criminal record means for millions of people.

I’m Marty Peterson. And I’m Gary Price. These stories in-depth this week on your Public Affairs magazine, Viewpoints.

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The fridge is empty. School forms need to be signed. A birthday is coming up and someone has to remember the gift.

These are the kinds of small, everyday details that quietly pile up. Kate Mangino studies how these responsibilities, both physical and mental, are divided between partners. She’s a gender expert and the author of Equal Partners, Improving Gender Equality at Home.

She says this imbalance often comes down to what she calls cognitive labor, the invisible work of planning, organizing, and remembering everything on the to-do list. In many heterosexual relationships, where both partners are working and earning money, women are still handling the majority of this work. I raise the fact that it is definitely the physical tasks that are important.

You have to think about washing the dishes and doing the shopping and bathing kids and grooming pets, but there’s also the cognitive labor that’s really important, the anticipating of the needs, the management, the oversight of schedules and calendars, knowing what’s coming up next and being prepared for it, evaluating situations, making decisions. There’s a lot of household work. Just like a project manager does in an office setting, there’s a lot of project management work that happens in the home, and that work isn’t necessarily doing something physically.

It’s in your mind. A 2023 Pew Research Center study found that even in marriages where partners earn about the same, husbands spend roughly three and a half more hours per week on leisure than wives. Meanwhile, wives spend about two additional hours on caregiving and roughly two and a half more hours on housework.

The data shows that even as financial roles have evened out, responsibility at home hasn’t followed at the same pace. Mangino says that deep-rooted societal norms still affect people’s breakdown of who does what. While it can appear that both partners are doing an equal amount based on difficulty, there are tasks that women tend to do that are more relentless.

If you miss a day, it’s very obvious. If you stop washing dishes for one day, if you stop feeding your children for one day, the household is going to notice. It’s going to be problematic, to say the least.

And these everyday routine tasks follow you on vacation, they follow you on holidays. It’s very hard to ever relax or get away or have a break. Outdoor tasks are labeled as intermittent.

These are things that can happen on weekends, and if you don’t mow the lawn one Saturday, you might annoy your neighbor, but it’s not going to be as problematic as, for example, not feeding your kids. So there’s flexibility that comes with those outdoor intermittent tasks, and there’s lack of flexibility with those indoor routine tasks. So even though we delegate this way, you know, she does this and I do this, I think it’s really important to realize that delegation doesn’t always mean you’re reaching parity.

There’s also been real progress over the past several decades, especially among younger couples who are having more open and honest conversations about how to better divide responsibilities so it feels more like a partnership. Looking ahead, Mangino points out that long-term change starts even earlier with how parents, caregivers, and teachers shape expectations for young girls and boys. I think we still raise girls with this unspoken objective in their life that they’re going to take care of a domestic space, that they should prioritize domestic space over income generation, and I think it’s the opposite with boys.

We raise them with the implicit message that to provide for a family, you need to earn money. So a lot of women, I think, fall into this cognitive labor role, and people say, oh, it’s her personality, or she’s just really good at multitasking, or she’s good at all those little things in the house. I don’t actually think it’s about her personality.

I think women are sort of trained to take care of the home, and that multitasking and that skill set that she’s learned throughout her life to do those things is more a coping mechanism to meet social expectations of what she’s going to do when she grows up and is a mom. She believes that young girls today are more empowered. They’re taught that you can have it all, an ambitious career and a family if you want it.

But she says there hasn’t been as much movement in how we bring up boys. I think there’s a lot of work we could do in helping boys to learn how to be caregivers, to value caregiving, to understand that unpaid work in the home is also providing for your family, and I think that there’s work to be done with boys and young men to sort of prepare them to be more equal partners in their home and to take on those cognitive labor tasks. She adds that involving young boys in routine household work and caregiving roles from an early age can help reset expectations over time.

I think just as we look at little girls who hold their dolls and take them for a walk in a pretend stroller and say, oh, she’s pretending to be a mommy, I think we need to have that same language with little boys and say, oh, you’d be a great daddy someday. Can you give your doll a hug and a kiss? When boys are a little bit older, try to find ways that boys can babysit, be caregivers for smaller children in the family or neighbor kids. Involve boys in caregiving for older adults in your family.

And by the time they’re teenagers, you can have really specific conversations about how important caregiving is to the family. Make the invisible visible. So it’s hard enough for your partner to see the work that maybe you’re doing that isn’t as obvious, but we also have to make that invisible work obvious to our kids as well.

And conversations about improving gender equality at home aren’t about assigning blame. The end goal is to work better together as a couple so each person feels supported. To some, it may seem like gender equality is only directed at improving women’s lives.

But Mangino argues that it benefits both men and women. When men are pushed into their masculinity box, this is what you’re going to do. You’re going to earn a paycheck.

You’re going to provide for your family in a material way, and you’re not expected to provide for them in an emotional or a caregiving way. I think that you are limiting what men can do just as much as when you limit what women can do by saying you have to have a focus on the home. To learn more about this topic and our guest, Kate Mangino, visit ViewpointsRadio.org. Also check out her book, Equal Partners, Improving Gender Equality at Home, available in bookstores and online.

This segment was written by our executive producer, Amira Zaveri. I’m Gary Price. Coming up, why many women returning from prison are locked out of care-based jobs they’re trained for and want to do when Viewpoints returns.

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For many people coming home from prison, the hardest part begins in the weeks and months after release when the search for housing and steady work sets in. One of those stories is that of Chanel Burnett. She’s in her mid-40s, lives in Virginia, is a mother of two, and is trying to rebuild her life after serving an almost 20-year prison sentence.

While she was incarcerated, she used her time to earn several certifications, including a paralegal license. She was released from prison last June and since then has been trying to land full-time employment. So far, that search has felt hopeless.

It’s like a lot of places are saying they’re hiring them. And when you do apply and they see these charges, they’re automatically not interested any longer. The only sector where she’s received a response is in retail.

She currently juggles two part-time sales jobs, but neither has benefits and there’s little opportunity for advancement. When I have these certifications saying that I’m qualified to do this, and even though I may have the knowledge to do better things, I’m knocked out of the category by other people who don’t have this felony. One resource she’s used is called TAP, or Total Action Against Poverty, which helps connect job seekers with local TEMP agencies, staffing short-term roles for larger employers.

While these roles can in theory lead to permanent full-time jobs with the companies, Burnett has never made the cut. I would get hired for a position through the TEMP agency, and when they would refer me to the company, the company didn’t want to take me because they didn’t take felons. So it’s like, you set me up for this interview, and I did all this, and you say I have this employment, and now I don’t have the job because the company said no.

It is difficult. A lot of sleepless nights, honestly. Still trying to just process everything.

I still journal to kind of just get myself through mentally. It’s been a lot. And Burnett isn’t alone.

What she keeps running into isn’t about interview performance or work ethic. It’s about risk. Without civil immunity protections, employers can face lawsuits if an employee with a criminal record commits another crime while on the job.

To avoid that risk, many hiring departments quietly follow a policy that avoids bringing on anyone with a record. These blanket policies can dramatically reshape the job market for a large share of our workforce, who find themselves in the same position. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports that about 79 million people in America hold a This equates to roughly one in three adults, many of whom can’t find a job because of their past.

For many women in this group, a record becomes an automatic exclusion from pink-collar work. These are service-oriented jobs in beauty, health care, administration, and other fields they’re experienced in or drawn to, but can’t access because of state licensing rules. You can get the degrees, spend all this money, and then be told that you cannot take the exam, like you basically wasted all your money because you’re not going to be able to go into the field that you went to school for.

So it’s disheartening. It sends folks down a dark path when they’re looking forward to doing something new and exciting with their lives, and then doors are being shut in their face. That’s Collette Payne, a formerly incarcerated woman and the director of the Reclamation Project at the Women’s Justice Institute in Chicago.

Today, she works with many women with records who are trying to get hired within pink-collar industries. Payne first entered the prison system at 14 and spent years cycling in and out before turning her life around in 2012. She’s long been drawn to people-facing work, and as part of a job readiness program, remembers accepting an unpaid administrative and housing-focused internship at YMCA in downtown Chicago.

After finishing the internship, she felt hopeful about the possibility of it leading to something more. I remember them wanting to hire me. And I feel they was like, you should put in for it.

After your internship, I did exactly that. And then the background check came back, and they gave it to me in the mail. And they said, OK, you can dispute it and come in and talk about it, you know, with the employer.

And I was like, sure, because I know I just did this, I think it was a month internship for free. And I was good enough to do that month internship for free, but I wasn’t good enough to be hired. And they told me, you know, because of your background, we’re not going to be able to hire you.

In Payne’s case, she was exceptionally good in the role, but company policy kept it from becoming official. And she says this happens again and again, especially in jobs that involve care, trust or special access. Many of these positions require state-issued licenses, leaving the final decision in the hands of occupational boards made up of professionals from that field.

A lot of the roles and jobs that women play during their incarceration, they can’t come home and get a license to do the very thing that they’ve been doing for years. That’s Marlon Chamberlain, a former prisoner and the founder and executive director of the Illinois Coalition to End Permanent Punishments. Chamberlain says that these panel experts who approve or deny licenses often have broad discretion and little context for what a charge actually means or how long ago it happened.

Let’s say, for instance, you have a possession of a firearm and you were convicted of possession, but the way the charge reads, if somebody from downstate who’s not aware of that particular charge, the way they would read that charge, it would look as if this person had a firearm and they were out in public sort of brandishing the gun or whatever when it was just a simple possession. But the way that charge reads, certain people from different committees would deny that person an opportunity for the license based on how the charge is read, not the actual charge or what this individual has done since the charge. Data from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce also reflects this systemic failure.

Unemployment among people with criminal records currently hovers around 30 percent. Compare this to the national unemployment rate of 4.6 percent from November of this year. One of the common themes that we’ve heard from individuals who have been out a year, three years, five years, 10, 15, we’ve even talked to people who have been home 40 years, is that they’ve all talked about how their record has continued to haunt them in a sense of where they work, where they live, where they can go to school, if they’re able to participate in their kids’ livelihood.

And so what we’ve also heard from people is that folks are not just looking to find a job, folks are looking for careers, and there’s over a thousand statutory barriers that basically determine whether a person can pursue a career or not. In Illinois, lawmakers recently passed the Clean Slate Act, a big step towards clearing these barriers to employment. The new law automatically seals eligible criminal records after a set period of time without requiring people to go through the lengthy process of petitioning the courts or hiring a lawyer.

This shift is critical because it moves the burden and financial barrier off the individuals who are already struggling to get by. In Illinois, about two million people are eligible and will begin having their records automatically sealed starting in 2026. While law enforcement and other state agencies will still have access, private background checks done through employers and landlords will be cleared for those who are eligible.

The new law does have some exclusions and doesn’t wipe convictions for murder, sex offenses, domestic battery, and other serious crimes. Chamberlain is clear that Clean Slate isn’t about eliminating consequences. It’s about creating a path forward for those who’ve served their time and want to change.

I would make this distinction that we also believe in accountability, and so people who are out currently committing crimes, we believe they should be held accountable. What we’re simply saying is, is that at some point, this individual may change, have a change of heart, and we want to create opportunities and pathways where when people grow or people mature, that they have an opportunity to change their life and that they’re not defined by one or two mistakes that they’ve made in life, that they’re given a real opportunity to turn it around. For people like Chanel Burnett, this is her reality.

She’s actively rebuilding her life and searching for a steady job that leads somewhere. For her and many others across the country, laws like the Clean Slate Act will decide whether a past mistake will continue to cancel out every future possibility. It would be very helpful if everybody’s slate could be wiped clean, and, you know, we’d be all given a second chance without having being looked at as these awful people that, you know, made these mistakes.

A lot of people make mistakes, but if we’re not given a chance to get back up and do something different, then how are you ever going to know if we can do better if you don’t provide the opportunity? To learn more about this topic, resources, and our guests, Chanel Burnett, Colette Payne, and Marlon Chamberlain, head to ViewpointsRadio.org. For more behind the scenes and to support our show, follow us at Viewpoints Radio on Instagram, Facebook, and X. This story was written by our executive producer, Amira Zaveri. Our studio manager is Jason Dickey. I’m Marty Peterson.

Viewpoints returns in just a moment. A KFC tale in the pursuit of flavor. The holidays were tricky for the Colonel.

He loved people, but he also loved peace and quiet, so he cooked up KFC’s 4.99 chicken pot pie, warm, flaky, with savory sauce and vegetables. It’s a tender, chicken-filled excuse to get some time to yourself and step away from decking the halls, whatever that means. The Colonel lived so we could chicken.

KFC’s chicken pot pie. The best 4.99 you’ll spend this season. Prices and participation may vary while supplies last.

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Welcome to Culture Crash, where we examine what’s new and old in entertainment. Guillermo del Toro is a legendary filmmaker, with movies like Pan’s Labyrinth, The Devil’s Backbone, and The Shape of Water under his belt. For years, he spoke of his affection for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a story he fell in love with as a child and was actively working to direct as a film for more than 20 years.

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And find a library of past programs on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Spotify. Plus, you’ll always find previous segments and more information about our guests at ViewpointsRadio.org. Join us again next week for another edition of Viewpoints.

second chances – Urban City Podcast Group

3 Powerful Truths About Household Labor and Criminal Records That Still Control American Lives

How household labor and criminal records shape lives