Undervalued Mothering

Ann Crittendon. 2001. Introduction in The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued. New York: Metropolitan Books.

Ann Crittendon addresses an extremely important question: why is the work of mothering so severely undervalued in American society? Many claim to believe that "child-rearing is the most important job in the world," but very rarely is a mother rewarded for her work. In our economy, the reigning idea is "that time spent with one's child is time wasted" and anyone who chooses to mother full-time isn't really working. Crittendon points out that even children often absorb the cultural messages devaluing mothering, which is an indication of how deeply these ideas are entrenched in our society. Crittendon discusses several examples of the way the expectation of the "ideal worker" in our economy prevents mothers from maintaining lucrative careers. The United States currently does not support policies that assist the American family, which is not consistent with the "family values" platform that many of our politicians promote. The combination of inflexible workplaces, unequal family workload and unequal marital finances, and the "ideal worker" mentality of many companies makes mothering and successful careers an almost impossible mix. However, the first hurdle that must be overcome is that fact that "government social policies don't even define unpaid care of family dependents as work." As long as caregiving is not recognized by the government as work, social policies will never reflect the proper level of protection for these caregivers - unemployment insurance, workman's comp, retirement benefits - none of these apply. Welfare is the only backup for mothers in our society, and even that is not at all guaranteed and absolutely looked down upon as shameful and lazy. As a result, motherhood is the single biggest risk factor for poverty in old age. Crittendon makes a good point in her discussion of the penalization of mothers and caregivers. Even if one does not believe that mothers should necessarily be compensated for their work, they certainly should not be penalized, which is the case for many mothers in the U.S. The majority of poor people are women and children and mothers are not paid as much as women without children and certainly not nearly as much as men. I absolutely agree with her assessment of the current family situation in the U.S. - what is needed the most is recognition. People in the government, the workplace, and within the family itself need to take steps towards sustaining families rather than tearing them down and recognizing that those who commit their lives to child rearing "do have, literally, the most important job in the world."

Patricia Hill Collins. 2000. "Black Women and Motherhood." Pp. 173-200 in Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. 2nd Edition. New York: Routledge.

Patricia Hill Collins discusses the importance of the concept of motherhood in the African-American community throughout history. She first discusses the perception of the "superstrong Black mother" and the sanctification of Black mothering. While recognizing the immense praise many Black men give to Black mothers (particularly their own mothers) she also points out that "far too many Black men who praise their own mothers feel less accountable to the mothers of their daughters and sons." While I understand her critique of Black men's assumptions regarding superstrong mothers and their thought process that includes these mothers taking care of everything, I also do feel that the men are correct in worshipping these mothers because they are extremely strong. However, Hill Collins explains that Black mothers are expected to sacrifice everything to be the saving mother and she compares the idea to that of the "happy slave" to illustrate the ridiculousness of these expectations. Her explanation of Black women's "silence" when it came to Black men very much disturbed me. She explains, "internal dissent is especially frowned upon when it comes to motherhood, the seeming core of family, culture, and community" and also, "criticisms aimed at a Black man in public are frowned upon by many African-Americans...much silence emanates from efforts to support Black men's well-intentioned efforts to defend and protect Black womanhood." Hill Collins goes on to speak about the way in which motherhood can help and hurt Black women - it can help them create a sense of identity on the one hand, and gain them status in their community, but at the same time it can stifle and oppress them.

Bloodmothers, othermothers, and women-centered networks are a key component of Black family functions. The idea, as Hill Collins describes, is "because all children must be fed, clothed, and educated, if their biological parents could not discharge these obligations, then some other member of the community should accept that responsibility." These networks recognize that having one person raise a child may not be the best or the most feasible form of child-rearing. I think that this is an important concept for the U.S. as a whole to understand, because our current culture is extremely individualistic and focuses on child-rearing as a personal, individual phenomenon rather than the support of future generations and something that should be supported by multiple people within the community as well as social policy itself. Hill Collins also discusses mothers and daughters and the fears Black mothers had concerning their daughters. I have certainly seen examples in my own friends' lives of the overprotective Black mother who uses religion, education, and family responsibility to keep the girls in line. It can be difficult for Black mothers to raise daughters because their upbringing is full of contradictions. Black women want to teach their children to strive for more than they have, but at the same time they need to make sure their children have the skills they need to survive in the world that they are in. These issues make for contradictory messages for young children and create strained, emotional, volatile relationships between mothers and daughters.

While the "superstrong" Black mother is a symbol of power in the Black community and is a position that earns a lot of respect, it is also an oppressive institution in which the self-sacrificing mother essentially gives her life over to care-taking. This is not a fair way to live, and the assumption that women will take on these responsibilities is ingrained within the community. Social policies need to begin to help mothers and women overall - in more effective ways than welfare - so that this cycle can be broken and mothers can bring their children into a better world.

Budig, Michelle and Paula England. 2001. "The Wage Penalty for Motherhood." American Sociological Review. 66(2): 204-226.

Michelle Budig and Paula England attempt in this piece to delineate very specifically the wage penalty for motherhood by coding every aspect that would impact a mother at work and statistically analyzing the data they came up with. Ultimately, they uncover a wage penalty of approximately 6 percent for mothers with one child and 13 percent for mothers with two or more children. They discuss the common assumption that women "choose" more mother-friendly jobs that therefore are lower-paying because they have more flexibility for mothers. The idea of "choosing" in itself is questionable - as many mothers have very little choice when it comes to attempting to balance work and mothering. However, beyond that, Budig and England actually discovered that many jobs labeled as "feminine" or "women's work" actually have less flexibility than many men's jobs. One hypothesis had been that mothers were willing to "trade-off wages for "mother-friendly" jobs," thereby causing mothers to make less money, but they found that many of mothers' jobs are not actually "mother-friendly," and they still make lower wages. In fact, "predominantly male jobs had more flexible schedules, unsupervised break time, and paid sick leave and vacation, all features seen as parent-friendly" (p. 207). The four reasons they lay out for mothers earning less are as follows: (1) loss of job experience, (2) less productive at work, (3) trade off higher wages for mother-friendly jobs, and (4) discrimination by employers. Budig and England make some excellent points in this paper, but I felt that much of their statistical work and particularly the way it was laid out detracted from their findings. The numbers and the variables they used could have been presented in a more interesting and effective manner to better get their point across. Overall, they showed that mothers do pay a penalty for becoming mothers - further proving Crittendon's earlier point that mothers in our society are penalized rather than rewarded for their work. Mothers do indeed lose job experience, and Budig and England discovered that if they were out of work for anything more than about a month, it worked against them in a serious way when they did return to work. As far as being less productive at work, it is true that many mothers spend time on the phone with their children during the day, but this did not seem to detract greatly from their quality of work and mothers still work very hard. They may be more tired as a result of their other responsibilities, but this did not seem to make a huge impact on their work performance. Supposed "mother-friendly" jobs I have already discussed - most are not actually mother-friendly, and the idea of "choosing" anything when it comes to balancing work and family is very questionable. Finally, employer discrimination is likely a very real obstacle to mothers. Mothers are not specifically protected by any kind of anti-discrimination laws and many employers hold assumptions about mothers as workers that may work against them in the workplace. Overall, mothers are absolutely penalized through wages simply for being mothers.

Rothman, Barbara Katz. "Women as Fathers: Motherhood and Child Care Under a Modified Patriarchy." Gender and Society, 3:1-24.

This article was extremely interesting and provided an alternate point of view about mothering. Its essential point was that while mothers clearly do the majority of the work when it comes to child-rearing (and certainly child-bearing), men still collect most of the credit for children and their accomplishments as a result of our patriarchal system. Children are still encouraged to take the surname of the father rather than the mother, which is often something that is taken for granted in our society. Rothman argues against the societal assumption that mothers and fathers are equally genetically tied to their children. She argues that because mothers grew the child in their womb and shared blood and sustenance with the child, the internal bond is actually stronger with the mother. She also points out how sperm is valued in our society and seen as a path to new life, when really is it the egg that should be venerated. She also discusses new reproductive technology and its place in this entire debate. Nurturing tasks can now be taken on by wetnurses, and surrogate mothers can even replace the process of pregnancy. She challenges certain assumptions - such as that the mother must be the sole caregiver and any child-care workers are then "playing mommy." She discusses the childcare crisis we seem to have today and the respect that should be shown to childcare workers. She points out that this work deserves to be valued, and "someone who has been raising a child has moral rights invested in that child" and we must protect our child-care workers from the relationship with the child being used as a means of exploitation. Rothman's argument against patriarchy is actually somewhat disorganized and all over the place, but she does make some important points and raises important questions regarding the raising of children in today's society.

Domesticity and Family

Joan Williams. 2000. "Introduction" and "Is Domesticity Dead? (Chapter 1)." Pp. 1-39 in Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It. New York: Oxford University Press.

Joan Williams discusses the idea of "domesticity" as a social structure used in the oppression of women. She points out that the economic and occupational disparities between men and women are often explained away as the results of women's "choices." Williams does an excellent job of deconstructing this assumption and revealing how little choice women actually have in the matter. She defines "domesticity" as "a gender system comprising most centrally of both the particular organization of market work and family work that arose around 1780, and the gender norms that justify, sustain, and reproduce that organization" (p. 1). The article discusses in depth the problem of the expectation of the "ideal worker" in our current market. Today's "ideal worker" is expected to dedicate exorbitant amounts of time to their job and the norm is not simply a forty hour workweek - it is a sixty to eighty hours and above. Ideal workers are expected to have the ability to put in overtime hours and almost never take time off for personal or family commitments. When explained in this way, it truly does unveil how ridiculous workplace demands have become in our current economy. Mothers can rarely commit to the position of the ideal worker because children are a huge time commitment in themselves. Mothers, therefore, "choose" not to take on the high pressure career paths. However, this begs the question, why is the same not required of fathers? And why are companies able to demand this amount of control over people's lives in the first place? Williams goes further in her questioning - wondering why there is so much focus on intensive mothering in our culture today. Many mothers speak about not wanting their children to be "raised by strangers," alluding to childcare workers. Williams questions this judgment, pointing out that the teachers in our school systems could just as easily be defined as "strangers" who are having a huge impact on children's lives. I understand her point, and I do agree that babysitters and other childcare workers can be very adequate for watching over children while parents work, but I also feel that there are a lot of benefits for children who have their own parents with them the majority of the time. This new theme of intensive mothering came into being following the advent of capitalism in the United States. Capitalism brought with it the American ideal of the "self-made man" and an end to the days of automatic status handed down by birthright. At this point, parents had to begin being concerned with educating their children so that they had the necessary abilities to maintain the lifestyle their parents gave them. This was a very good point, and one that hasn't been fully analyzed in other articles I've read in the past. At this point, she is somewhat debating with herself, because while she doesn't agree with certain mothers' condemnation of childcare services, she also understands why women want to be present to raise their children and ensure their future success. She does not believe women's lives should necessarily be framed around caregiving, but she sees the value of a mother being with her child. Once again, the question in the background is - what about the fathers? Is their presence not necessary as well? With fathers attempting to keep up with being the "ideal worker" and the breadwinner, their presence becomes scarce. Pleck later addresses some of these issues in his work, "American Fathering in Historical Perspectives."

Sharon Hays. 1996. "From Rods to Reasoning." Pp. 19-50 in The Cultural Contradictions of Mothering. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Sharon Hays' essential point in her article "From Rods to Reasoning: The Historical Construction of Intensive Mothering" is just as the title suggests - that our idea of mothering is socially constructed. Hays delves into history and examines how society's idea of mothering morphed with the generations. She makes good points in her questioning of our current individualistic style of child-rearing. Throughout history, the well-known quote "it takes a village to raise a child" has been a more accurate description of family practice. The individual approach we now take is consistent with current American individualistic attitudes that have also prevented American politics from properly handling the work-family conflicts we now struggle with. She brings up the idea of older siblings caring for younger children and retirees being put to some kind of childcare work. One idea she brings to the table, which is something I had never considered or thought of, is staggered school schedules to allow older children to care for younger siblings. She discusses in depth the various ways in which society has viewed children over the generations. Children went from being an almost devil-like force to pure innocence that must be protected. She also argues against the legitimacy of the maternal instinct, claiming that women have not universally cared for their children in the same way we now see, and "wives were valued for their fertility but not for their child-rearing abilities" (p. 28). Some of her ideas were innovative, but she is also very long-winded and the article did drag on a bit as she went through every detail of changing child-rearing ideologies from focused affection to scientific child training and then back into intensive mothering. I found much of the article to be repetitive and much of the detail unnecessary and superfluous. She also discusses how the ideas of popular psychological thinkers, such as Freud and Erikson, impacted techniques. Hays claims the ideas of Spock have persisted into our current generation, with an emphasis on maternal affection and allowing "the child ample room to express its wants and needs" (p. 49). However, some do argue that Spock's approach produces spoiled children. Hays concludes that intensive mothering is still pervasive in American society, while at the same time more and more mothers are entering the workforce. As a result, "the cultural contradictions of motherhood are now more pronounced than ever before" (p. 50). Motherhood is difficult enough and the addition of unrealistic expectations and the fact that children are directly pitted against career in our current society make for a climate of pressure. Motherhood seems almost undesirable at this point, and, in fact, many women are choosing to wait far longer to have children or simply not have any children at all. This is a sad fact that women who may have wanted children find themselves unable because of the work-family conflicts in the United States. The notion of intensive mothering also often makes mothers feel inadequate, when in fact they are very good mothers.

Joseph H. Pleck. 1987. "American Fathering in Historical Perspective." Pp. 83-97 in Changing Men: New Directions in Research on Men and Masculinity. Edited by Michael S. Kimmel. Sage Publications.

"American Fathering in Historical Perspective" by Joseph H. Pleck makes some extremely salient points regarding fatherhood in our current day and age as well as some of the reasons why it has reached its current point. Fathers in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were the "moral overseers" of their families, and their duties to their children extended beyond the role of breadwinner that would overtake them in later generations. The father's responsibility was to "instruct children of both sexes what God as well as the world required of them" (p. 352). At this point, mothers were seen as unable to provide such guidance because of their "tendency to "indulge" or be excessively "fond" of their children" (p. 352). As ideas on mothers changed, the role of the father shifted accordingly. In the nineteenth century, the mother was seen as possessing some form of "purity" that the father did not have that made her better suited for child-rearing. Throughout the nineteenth century, Pleck documents the shift in parenting toward a greater role for the mother and a more distant and indirect role for the father. The changes made during the Industrial Revolution also made an impact on fathering because fathers began to work outside of the home and therefore were away from the children for greater and greater amounts of time, automatically making them more distant. As industry progressed, the workplace also tended to be further and further away from men's actual homes. My own father did not live with us, he actually lived about an hour away from me for most of my life. Distance plus his demanding work schedule prevented me from seeing him more than once or twice per month while I was growing up. He has since quit his job at the time-consuming law firm and has struck out on his own. He makes far less money, but he is able to be present as a father, and that means more to us and more to him than any job or paycheck ever would. The role of the breadwinner was also thrust upon the men around the same time, which put a lot of pressure on fathers, who felt they were responsible for supporting the entire family unit. Pleck discusses how "fathers lost touch with what was actually going on in the family" (p. 355) and although the father may still somewhat have been seen as the "head" of the family, his authority has severely waned. Pleck documents fathers who are upset with this distant role and wish they were able to spend more time with their children. He also discusses the rearing of young boys and the impact of having a distant father, which may lead the boys to struggle with their developing male identities. Finally, Pleck concludes that paternity leave and other father-friendly work policies need to be implemented. He points out that "policies to reduce work-family conflicts for fathers, evoke negative responses; not so much because of their actual cost, but because they so directly challenge the father-breadwinner model" (p. 360). Pleck explains that in actuality, father-friendly work policies are not overly expensive, and can actually be very beneficial to the company that employs them. All of this leads back to Williams' point in the first article, concerning the problem of the "ideal worker." This ludicrous corporate expectation must first be attacked and changed before any real help for the family can come. Until we challenge the "ideal worker," mothers will be unable to keep up with careers and fathers will be mostly absent in the lives of their wives and children. It seems that all of our conflicts involving cultural ideals and actual company and social policies are finally coming to a head. Change is arriving soon - it is imperative that the men and women of my generation make it clear that we value both family and work and demand change in social policies to reflect those values.

Women's Shift Away from the Domestic Economy

Readings:

Thistle, Susan. "From Marriage to the Market: The Transformation of Women's Lives and Work" Chapters 2 & 3

Davis, Kingsley. "Wives and Work: A Theory of the Sex-Role Revolution and Its Consequences"

Susan Thistle and Kingsley Davis both endeavor to explain women's shift from domestic labor into outside work and the corresponding changes in gender roles, relations, and the meaning of marriage. Rather than simply reviewing the facts surrounding these changes, Thistle and Davis search for answers to the all-important question - why? Both authors come to a variety of interesting conclusions, leading also to predictions regarding what the future will bring.

Susan Thistle's Chapter Two, entitled, "Support for Women's Domestic Economy in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries," looks deeper into the transition of women into the paid labor force, and the role played by the support and lack of support systems for domestic work. Thistle looks particularly at the events surrounding the Industrial Revolution and breaks down a few widely-held assumptions about the changes in gender roles in that period - for example, she explains that the advent of household appliances did not make nearly as large of an initial difference as was once thought, because at first they were unavailable to most families. Thistle splits her analysis along racial lines, separately following the transitions of white women and African-American women because their experiences differed drastically. Thistle essentially argues that the Industrial Revolution and the events of the early half of the twentieth century did not fully break down the system of women's work in the home, as is commonly assumed. She argues that these developments "merely eroded the frameworks sustaining women's work in the home" and the "radical breakdown of this old arrangement of labor" did not take place until post World War II (p. 34).

Chapter Two explains men's changing opinions regarding the role of housewife. Men previously would fight for pay that would allow their wives to stay home, because they did value the homemaking role and the work their wives did within the home. In later years, when interviewed, men expressed the opinion that they did not intend to financially support housewives and "by the 1980s male college students scoffed at the idea of supporting a full-time housewife" (p. 16). I wonder what the popular opinion of males would be today? What about males on the Boston College campus for example? I definitely think there would be mixed opinions. While domestic work is definitely not as valued as it once was, I do think there are many men who would value child-rearing and I know a lot of men who would like to have a wife who would stay home with the kids at least until they reached school age or even as long as until they reach high school. It would be interesting to see how opinions have changed and how people perceive the work of a housewife nowadays. Thistle emphasizes the decline of support for the role of the housewife and its direct relation to the breakdown of the domestic system. I definitely agree with her on this point. The cultural and social support for housewives declined and their work became less valued. This made the job of housewife that much more difficult, because if workplaces do not support the idea then they will no longer be paying "family" wages and government social policies will no longer support the idea of a woman at home. However, I think that the most damaging of all is the change in mindset - for the women as well. If the work of a housewife is not valued in society, there is a good chance the housewife herself will not see her own work as valuable and therefore will not feel that she is productive and important. This all leads to low self-esteem and discontent with the role of wife and mother..."only" a housewife. It is very important for purposes of identity and self-worth for people to see what they do as valuable, and when domestic work is not valued, the domestic workers become dissatisfied with their role. Therefore, I fully agree with Thistle's argument - the decline of support for housewives directly relates to the decline of the housewife role.

Susan Thistle's Chapter Three, "The Breakdown of Women's Domestic Economy After World War II" continues past the Industrial Revolution in the quest to uncover why women's roles changed so dramatically. Thistle again argues that lack of support systems are the primary cause because "women faced a full-scale breakdown of the economic, political, and cultural framework of support for their work in the home as the old forms of the gender division of labor came apart" (p. 35). Thistle discusses changes in divorce law, the cultural implications of the feminist rejection of marriage and early motherhood, and men's opinions as far as the breadwinner role and the decline of the breadwinner system. Thistle explains that it is actually the post WWII period that brought the large-scale ownership of household appliances, as this was the time when they became affordable for the average family. Appliances lessened the physical labor involved with running a household, which again contributed to the decline in the cultural value of homemaking. She also discusses the shift in the focus of marriage - from economic to emotional - and the repercussions of that change. The cultural changes in sexual relations between men and women, as well as greater access to reproductive controls, also contributed to the shift away from what was seen as "traditional" gender roles. Thistle concludes that, ultimately, "the legal shell that gave form to the old domestic economy crumbled," which completed the breakdown of women's domestic economy (p. 53).

Thistle discusses women's struggles to find alternative means of juggling domestic tasks with outside paid work. So many women still struggle with these dual roles today, so it makes one wonder, why hasn't more been done to alleviate the difficulties of balancing work and family? The laws have changed to reduce support for the housewife role, so why haven't systems been put into place to increase support for the working mother? Thistle explains, "no policies were yet in place to help women manage both sets of tasks," but I would argue that there still are too few policies, if any, in place to help women. It upsets me that we have been battling this issue for so many decades now, and there is still so little societal support in place. There is STILL no mandated paid maternity leave in this country and affordable childcare is very much needed.

I also found Thistle's discussion of the changing definition of marriage very interesting. With the declining economic necessity of marriage, there has been a turn towards marriage for the purposes of "emotional gratification" (p. 47). Thistle points out that many "predicted that unions based on emotional gratification would be more fragile than those grounded in each spouse's need for the other's labor" (p. 47). And they were right, the divorce rate did definitely rise. The changes in divorce law also made a huge difference in women's decisions to work outside the home. When marriage is no longer something that is guaranteed to last and your husband is no longer required to support you after he divorces you, a woman needs to be prepared to economically stand on her own two feet and support herself and her children. Thistle points out that "the specific form given the new divorce laws represented the interests of those in power, not of women" and these changes "brought great economic hardship to women whose marriages ended" (p. 48-49). I also found it very interesting when Thistle discusses the changes in reproductive law and the fact that they often benefited men just as much, if not more, than women.

Finally, the Equal Pay Act (1963) sparked my interest as well. I am not aware of the details of this act, but I am aware of the currently persisting pay inequities along gender lines. Women still make less than men, and I am wondering how this is allowed to happen if there is such a thing as the Equal Pay Act. I would like to learn more about the details of this legislation and why it appears to be so ineffective.

Kingsley Davis, in "Wives and Work: A Theory of the Sex-Role Revolution and Its Consequences," discusses the shift of wives from home to workplace through historical and evolutionary framework. He finds that production being moved from within the home to away from the home to be the ultimate determining factor in this momentous shift. As soon as women could no longer be economically productive within the home, the role of housewife began to decline and become devalued by society. Davis also uses statistics surrounding the rate of wives entering the workplace to predict when 100% of wives will be in the workforce - he predicts somewhere between 2010 and 2030. Davis describes what he calls the "household economy" system and the "breadwinner" system and then explains the decline of both of these, leading us to the confusion of our current day. He predicts that the future will hold the "egalitarian" system, but we do not as of yet know what all of the downfalls of this system will be.

Davis' analyses of the "household economy" and "breadwinner" systems both were very comprehensive and accurate. I definitely agree that the breadwinner system is internally flawed and therefore was internally breaking itself down from the very beginning. It is an interesting perspective, also, to look at the center of economic production leaving the home as the determining factor in the decline of the housewife. I would definitely agree with this idea. In terms of identity and, again, self-worth, a person needs to feel productive and feel that they are making a sufficient contribution to their life and the world. Women went from essentially being the center of production and economic stability in their families to the mercy of their husbands and dependence upon their husbands' salaries. Davis also points out the loss of control experienced by housewives under the breadwinner system. Loss of control in one's life can also lead to extreme dissatisfaction.

In Davis' future vision of the "egalitarian" system, he sees more government intervention in family life and systems that support the working mother. While I do hope he is correct in these predictions, I also question whether or not our country will move in that direction. The U.S. has perpetually held an individualistic viewpoint that has spanned across all aspects of life. Included within this has always been the feeling that family matters are private and should be privately taken care of, with little to no governmental assistance. The raising of children, in particular, has traditionally been a private matter with as little governmental intervention as possible. While other societies hold the opinion that the raising of children is a public responsibility, the U.S. has always left family matters within the families themselves. If we can find a way to look at social policies that assist families as necessary to our society rather than as "taking charity" or as a sign of weakness that families need assistance, then I think we can move forwards. However, I am not sure that we will have real, concrete family assistance until we can alter our mindset as Independent Americans.

Finally, I questioned Davis' idea that the egalitarian system would run into problems because both men and women would be working outside the home with "strangers," which could lead to a higher chance of divorce because they would be associating with other people on a regular basis. I very much disagree with this point because I believe that in any healthy relationship the two people should have a world and an identity separate from their partner as well to avoid codependence. Personal space and separate worlds as well as the world they share is a good thing for any couple. Having a strong personal identity and self-worth is essential to every person and makes for a better relationship.