In the introduction to her book, The Price of Motherhood, Anne Crittendon presents the problem of our society’s undervaluing of mother’s work at home. She begins by discussing the venerated and mystified image the mother has incurred in our culture. As Crittendon explains, however, this image provides mothers with no real compensation or insurance. Rather, the economic view that childrearing deteriorates the caregivers use to society had saturated societal thought. For this reason, caregiving is, in reality, penalize and often being a mother can turn into a handicap.
Crittendon gives three examples to show that our society’s actions and policies conflict with its stated values. The first of these examples is the uncompromising workplace, which forces women to decide between their careers and their children and creates an enormous gap between mothers and childless women. The second example Crittendon cites is the unequal financial relationship hats develops that marriage creates. Lastly, there is the fact that the family dependents who are devoting all their time to unpaid care receive no support, other welfare, if they lose their source of support. This is because the government does not classify unpaid care as work. The dependent caregiver, therefore, is not regarded as “a full productive citizen.” (pg 6).
Society justifies its lack of compensation for mothers by maintaining that it is the women’s choice to have children. Furthermore, it is in their nature to care for children and they do it out of love for their children. But Crittendon argues that this does not justify the utter exploitation of the mother and devaluation of her work that our society has fostered.
The Wage Penalty for Motherhood
By Michelle J. Budig and Paula England
In, “The Wage Penalty for Motherhood,” Michelle J. Budig and Paula England discuss how motherhood affects an employed woman’s wage, providing evidence of a wage penalty for mothers with children. Budig and England describe four possible reasons that having children way lower a mother’s wage: (1) loss of job experience, (2) loss of productivity at work, (3) substitution of higher wages for mother-friendly jobs, and (4) employee discrimination. However, all of these possible reasons are the effects of a greater issue, which is an indirect discrimination. This issue, according to the authors, is that the demands and expectations of the workplace are incompatible with those of childrearing.
Budig and England explain that the mother is most often the one to pay almost all the cost of having children, while the rest of us are “‘free riders’ on their labor.” In other words, everyone in society benefits from well raised children. Past studies have found that part of the cost of motherhood is an immediate 4-6 percent wage penalty for women with one child. However, this penalty has been shown to increase in the long-run and with additional children. According to the human capital theory, this penalty can be explained by the fact that women conserve their energy for work in the home, which means that their work in the workplace suffers. This inevitably leads to decreased wages. Furthermore, because women are forced to divide their energy between the home and the workplace, they often choose less demanding, more “mother friendly” jobs once they have children. There is the theory that it is not the effects of having children that lead to a decrease in wages among mothers, but rather it is that those women are less educated or have not pursued a career. However, as Budig and England counter, this theory does not account for the fact that women’s wages continue to decline with the more children they have.
Finally, Budig and England conclude that young American mothers incur a wage penalty of roughly 7 percent per child. They argue that one-third of this penalty is produced by the fact that motherhood often leads to employment breaks and a decreased accumulation of years of experience and seniority. They also found that a second child increases the wage penalty and that women who have never been married experience a lower child penalty than women who are married or divorced. The authors believe that the rest of the penalty is brought about by a decreased productivity of mothers in the workplace as they spend more of their energy at home and by discrimination. However, because social science research, as Budig and England explain, does not provide for a direct measure of either productivity or discrimination, it is unclear what causes the remaining motherhood penalty of 4 percent per child. What is clear, Budig and Enlgand assert, is that childrearing receives little of the public support it deserves. All sects of society benefit if the job is well done and so the authors believe that some of the costs of childrearing should be socialized in order to help the mother.
By Patricia Hill Collins
Patricia Hill Collins asserts that the African American mother has long been neglected in the feminist analysis. Feminist work on motherhood during the 1970s and 1980s focused on the experience of White, middle-class women as mothers, failing to delineate how race and class affected the experience of motherhood. In the context of the African American communities, mothers are glorified and so sanctified that “the idea that mothers should live lives of sacrifice has come to be seen as the norm” (Christian 1985, 234). However, despite their praise of their own mothers, Black men often neglect the mothers of their own children. According to Collins, there are several aspects of the Black civil society that contribute to this model of Black motherhood. To begin with, the Black community has long confronted racism by establishing an outwardly united front. The community, particularly in the realm of motherhood, frowns upon any conflict or rebellion that threatens this front, as that is the apparent pillar of community and culture. Furthermore, if Black women publicly criticize Black men, they experience harsh opposition in their community. This stems from the idea that Black men are trying to protect Black womanhood and override the negative White male views with their own, positive ones. Finally, Black women remain wary about U.S. feminism as it seems be comprised of a perceived Whiteness and antifamily politics. Collins points out that with in the Black community, women hold varying stances on motherhood. Some feel trapped and oppressed by it, while others feel that motherhood is a privilege from which they may grow.
Collins discusses the distinct practice of using what she calls “othermothers” that has developed in the Black community in order help with childrearing. In this practice, the “bloodmothers,” or biological mothers, use extended kin or even “fictive kin” to help raise there kids. Othermothers, therefore, form a women based set of networks that establish community-based childcare. This practice began during slavery and has extended into present day, though the practice is dwindling. In many instances othermothers are themselves children. This follows the tradition of Black mothers training their daughter in domestic work from an early age. This is to prepare them in supporting themselves. Black mothers have thus developed a stereotype that is cold and unbending. However, despite this stereotype, mothers hold a prominent place in Black society. Today othermothers have used their social power and influence to begin trying to uplift their surroundings.
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