In recent decades, laws and workplace policies have emerged that seek to address the “balance” between work and family. Millions of women in the U.S. take some time off when they give birth or adopt a child, for instance. However, as Hampson shows in her new book, The Balance Gap: Working Mothers and the Limits of the Law (Stanford University Press 2017), these policies, and women’s ability to understand and utilize them, have fallen short of fully alleviating the tensions that women across the nation are still grappling with as they try to reconcile their work and family responsibilities. That is because these tensions are deeply embedded in our workplace institutions and cultures. As Hampson argues, it is only through attentiveness to the informal norms that govern workplaces that true social change for working mothers is possible.