BookLife Review: The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued (Ann Crittenden, author) by Carol O’Da
Non-fiction, historical, political, economic analysis of the economic impact of raising children, tension between women’s rights, unpaid work, societal policies on motherhood, childcare, family leave
BookLife Review: The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued (Ann Crittenden, author)
by Carol O’Day
Ann Crittenden’s meticulously researched and documented book, The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued, was ground-breaking when it was published in 2001 and remains provocative twenty-five years later. Crittenden begins with a broad overview of the state of affairs of motherhood and child-raising in the United States. She illustrates various choices families make about child care, including the messiness, challenges and inadequate social and economic support that accompany the decision to leave paid employment and raise children. Crittenden notes that motherhood is the largest occupation in the world, bar none, that it is absolutely essential to the physical, mental, emotional and intellectual well-being of children, and to the nation’s economy as it produces our next generation of workers and citizens. After setting the stage, Crittenden dives deeply into the economic history of motherhood and marks the key crossroads in American history where decisions-economic and political-were made that profoundly altered the economic lives of families.
Crittenden reminds us that the U.S. once was a largely agrarian economy, where men, women and children operated farms, raised crops and livestock, fueled their homes, made their own clothing, relied on a simple general store or craftsman for extra services, and children were educated at home, or in small, seasonal school houses. During the Civil War, when hundreds of thousands of men went to war, women continued to operate family farms and run households. It was not until after the War, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, that men began working in cities and towns and earning hourly wages. During this transition, women remained largely at home (or worked as domestic servants for room and board), shouldering more of the burden of maintaining a household alone (farming for food, making clothing, educating children) while men earned cash wages. It was at this pivotal point in history that governmental economic decisions were made.
In 1820, the federal government first began measuring economic activity, it counted the number of households engaged in agriculture, commerce or manufacturing. By 1850 the Census counted the number of males over the age of 15 engaged in a profession, occupation or trade. In 1860 that occupational count was made of women. But in 1870, the critical fork in the road occurred. General Francis Walker, placed in charge of the Census, did not believe that women’s work when identified as home-making, or housekeeping, was of any economic value. It was re-named “keeping house” and was stricken from the list of productive employments.
This critical decision had a cascade of consequences. Not only was women’s significant economic contribution of operating a farm, maintaining a household (when virtually no conveniences existed for housework, production of clothing or farming) not counted in the economic calculation of the country’s Census, it was also excluded from later calculations of national Gross Domestic Product. Moreover, this view of women’s contribution to the household and in turn the economy, ultimately deprived women—homemakers and mothers, from benefitting from the nation’s system of Social Security whereby paid employees contributed to a fund that was and is intended to sustain and support them in old age. As a result, divorce can leave a woman without Social Security benefits or with minimal benefits from pre-child earning years, plunging huge swaths of women into poverty in old age.
Though women did gain the right to vote, entered the workforce and fought for their civil rights, sexism and presumptions about the role of women in society, together with the systemic devaluation of the work of child-raising still presented barriers to economic justice. Undervaluing the economic contribution of women to bearing and raising children repressed the development of a fair and thoughtful system of paid family leave and robust childcare options. These systems are considered essential to women’s economic and professional advancement in countless other first-world nations. Instead, inadequate and uneven family leave policies, pay inequities and the persistent century-old presumption that child-rearing and household management has no economic value to society as a whole, means that the parent who exits the wage-earning workforce to raise children still receive no contribution to her Social Security account for any of the child-bearing and child-raising years she spends outside of the wage-earning workforce.
Current policies and lack of meaningful equal pay, paid family leave and robust childcare systems overlook critical economic realities and create barriers to greater economic success for all. Human capital, i.e., workers or employees, is by far the greatest resource for any employer. Reliable, well-educated, responsible, curious employees are the backbone of any company’s success. It follows that the occupation of raising human capital, i.e., birthing, child-raising and education of the child, are the single most important “occupations” in a nation’s overall, long-term economic growth and success . And yet, in the United States this role is uncompensated, devalued and largely unrecognized. The primary caretaking parent is expected to bear, and raise a child or children and to perform the myriad tasks that entails-development of language and numeracy skills, social and emotional well-being training, and teaching skills around compromise, collaboration and cooperation, appreciation of nature, fairness, ethics, tolerance and manners, and self-discipline. This caregiver is generally expected to do that for multiple human capital “units” (or children) while simultaneously running and maintaining a home–cleaning, gathering and preparing food, clothing, household supplies, pay bills, manage communications, and perform or overseeing home maintenance and repairs, and more. And she (largely she) is expected to perform these many skilled function without receiving any economic compensation (other than in the few states that specifically count spousal earnings as community property).
The undervaluation of the role of primary caretaker, usually mother, of children is not a global one. Many other first-world countries, notably Scandinavia, Germany, France, Canada and New Zealand, boast social and economic policies that recognize the economic value of raising children. They have paid family leave of up to a year per parent, robust and widely available quality child care, health care and professional support. Crittenden’s book identifies key policies and programs that are available, possible and essential to a more equitable and fair system.
Anyone who has or will have children should read this book. In fact, anyone who: works with anyone who has or is raising children; operates a business; holds government office or an administrative role which impacts employment or economics should read this book. Crittenden masterfully digs way beneath and beyond the buzzy topics and debates surrounding parenthood and work-life balance. She unearths the history and economics that explain and challenge the system in which we currently live, and in which so many mothers or at-home fathers attempt to raise and protect our most value assets-the children who are our future.
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