Final answer:
Increased unemployment may lead employers to offer fewer family-friendly benefits as job competition intensifies and worker bargaining power decreases.
Step-by-step explanation:
The change that might cause employers to become less family friendly is an increase in unemployment that makes jobs harder to find. When unemployment rates are high, there is more competition for jobs, and employers may feel less pressure to offer benefits related to family obligations such as flexible work hours or parental leave. Prospective employees have less bargaining power and may be willing to accept positions without such benefits. Meanwhile, other conditions such as an increase in the number of Americans having children, an improvement in benefits not related to family obligations, and local laws and regulations requiring flexibility for working parents would generally have the opposite effect, either necessitating or encouraging employers to maintain or expand family-friendly policies.