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.
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