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Professor Ruth Rosen, Visiting Professor of History and Public Policy at UC Berkeley,  Professor Emerita at the University of California at Davis, is a pioneering historian of gender and society, and an award-winning journalist. She has taught American history, women's history, history and public policy, and immigration studies for over two decades. Ms. Rosen has written hundreds of op-ed columns for the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers. Among her books are these: The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America (1982); The World Split Open: How The Modern Women's Movement Changed America (2001).

With President Bush's recent veto of the latest attempt to bring a children's health care program initiative to legislation, we find the United States back at "square one" with regard to any kind of comprehensive health care program for its citizens. Individual states, such as California and Oregon, are working on bills that will provide health care for some, but not all. Meanwhile, how does the health care crisis impact the economy and quality of all our lives, and who bears the burden?

"For four decades, working women have poured into the paid labor force. Yet American society has done precious little to restructure the workplace or family life. The result? Working mothers are burdened and exhausted, families are fractured and children are often neglected. The dirty little secret, we repeatedly tell each other, is that it is both profitable and convenient to our government, business and many men, for women to wear themselves out tryting to do the unpaid work of careing for children, caring for the elderly and caring about the social networks of our communities. It's as though Americans are trapped in a time warp, certain that women will still do all this caring, even though they can't, because more than half are outside their homes working in the paid workplace. And so, we have the mounting Care Crisis." --Ruth Rosen