The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued

by Ann Crittenden

THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION OF THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER THAT CHANGED AMERICA'S VIEW OF MOTHERHOOD

In the pathbreaking tradition of Backlash and The Second Shift , this provocative book shows how mothers are systematically disadvantaged and made dependent by a society that exploits those who perform its most critical work. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and research in economics, history, child development, and law, Ann Crittenden proves definitively that although women have been liberated, mothers have not.

Bold, galvanizing, and full of innovative solutions, The Price of Motherhood was listed by the Chicago Tribune as one of the Top Ten Feminist Literary Works since the publication of Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique . This "bracing call to arms" (Elle) offers a much-needed accounting of the price that mothers pay for performing the most important job in the world.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Parenting, Sociology, Economics, Gender, Womens

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Ann Crittenden is the author of Killing the Sacred Cows: Bold Ideas for a New Economy. A former reporter for The New York Times and a Pulitzer Prize nominee, she has also been a financial writer for Newsweek, a visiting lecturer at M.I.T. and Yale, and an economics commentator on CBS News. Her articles have appeared in Fortune, The Nation, Foreign Affairs, McCalls, and Working Woman, among others. She lives with her husband and son in Washington, D.C.

Reviews

[Ashley · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's kind of ironic. We're reading this for book club because I recommended it, but I don't even want to finish it. She is very right, though. Mothers are horribly disadvantaged, and it's not fair. Society really does need to stop devaluing mothers. I have to say, though, this is the most worldly book I've ever read. Maybe it is because my husband and I have a very good relationship, financially, that I feel they way I do. I know money is important, and without it, life can down-right suck. But she makes it all about money. She drags out all the horror stories and the worst case scenarios. I get a very strong vibe that she thinks that women should not be in the home, that to be "equal" they need to be working. It makes me think of the scripture of the natural man. The entire book is about the natural man; devoid of the qualities that make marraige and motherhood worth it.

Don't get me wrong, though. I definitely think that motherhood should not just be rewarded by warm fuzzies, like many people seem to think. She is right that things NEED to change. It's absurd the position that this devaluing motherhood puts caretakers. I haven't actually finished the book, so everything from here on out is interpolation, based on what I've read so far. We seem to think very different things need to change. I think that jobs need to be less demanding. It completely absurd for jobs to expect 90 hour work weeks from anyone, let alone a parent. This book has completely convinced me that if we follow the principles of the gospel, it will make things better in our families.

I just figured out what is rubbing me so wrong about this book. It's the fact that she is making all these arguments about motherhood being not valued, but the whole time I feel that she is saying that you only have value as a mother if you are working, too. Yep. Don't like the book.

Update: I skipped ahead and read her conclusions. This book was written in 2001, 15 years ago. I have to admit, I am not sure, but it seems like many of her conclusions and suggestions have been at least partially implemented. Obviously, to me at least, things have not changed as much as she would hope. I wonder how much they have changed. Since I was fairly young and clueless in 2001, I can't really compare then and now. I would be curious how she would write this book today. Would she feel that we've implemented her suggestions all wrong? Would she feel that we've made some progress, but we have more to go? I also am looking at what is going in the European countries she extolled in this book. I don't know if the countries like Greece, which are facing such huge financial chrises were on her list of forward-thinking countries or not, but I'm curious. I also know that France is considering ending their 35 hour work week, in favor of a 40 hour work-week. I'm not saying her ideal has failed. I wonder if it has failed, or if a culture of greed has overtaken it, and is trying to destroy something good. I really just don't know.

I still don't like that to her, to be successful, women should be working. She says that we need to stop the stigma of being a mother, but she seems to be adding to the stigma of being a stay-at-home-mother. So many of her suggestions seem to focus entirely on getting all moms working. I guess they seem best if that is your ideal, but I think it would be a beautiful thing if we didn't need so many preschools because mothers were staying home and being actively engaged in their children's early education. Maybe having free co-op style preschool materials, instead. I would enjoy seeing a book that had stay-at-home-mothering the end goal, instead of working-mothering the end goal.

[Wren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crittenden peals away the sentimental layers from the labor of mothering to perform a strictly economic analysis that left me feeling devalued and angry. She marshalls not only interviews and anectdotes but also data from a variety of sources as well as theoretical analyses from sociology, law, anthropology, and economics to show how women who have children end up seriously disadvantaged economically as compared to childless women and men with or without children. As a professional woman, I have made similar observations, but the evidence she presents shows that I'm not just paranoid.

Her book analyzes the plight of mothers from a variety of lenses: stay at home moms, working moms, welfare moms, divorced moms, nanny-employing moms, executive wives with kids, retired moms and so forth.

I do have to concede that I don't want to feel this way about being a parent. It's bad mojo. I must use other measures than financial to value my family relationships. Furthermore, I don't want to accept her view that I'm merely being "duped" by these noneconomic valuations. (I feel this same way about Marx, too; money is important, and I fight like hell for fairness and equailty, but it's a morally impoverished way to reduce the world.)

In order to cleanse my palate from this book, I'm going to need to read some literature, meditations and folktales -- and I'm going play with, hug and kiss my kids. But I'm still glad that I read it.

[Jensa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished reading this book and, I have to say, I haven't concentrated so hard on a text since college. It was very research based and packed with content. It brought out so many poignant questions and comments about how our country rewards/penalizes parenthood.
The thesis of the book is that parents (mothers specifically) provide a "free" service to our society by raising law-abiding, social security paying citizens. Businesses and communities are receiving the benefits of this situation while parents are bearing the financial cost of raising the children in this country. I have always known, and this book reiterated, that raising children is real work and it is work that provides value for the whole society.
Parent's labor is "free" in regards to our economy. However, a parent who is working fewer hours in the labor force to be home with their children pays the price of lost income, lost retirement benefits, and lost marketability. When they are ready to enter the labor force again, being home to raise children is as valuable on a resume as being unemployed. How can they hold the same value when one helps mold a productive human?
Much of a parent's work doesn't figure into the Gross National Product. All this unpaid labor is going unrecognized economically. Why is it that a nurse feeding formula to a baby counts as a productive activity, but a mother's feeding doesn't? Care for an aging relative in a nursing home counts, while at-home care by an unpaid family member doesn't? Charitable contributions of money are tax-deductible, but volunteer donations of time are not? Teaching twenty children in a classroom counts, while teaching your own children doesn't? It baffles me.
A clear example of how good parents benefit the economy is illustrated clearly by the story of Tony Williams, a former Washington D.C. mayor. He was neglected as a newborn so much that his head was disfigured from lying in the crib and he hadn't spoken a word even though he was 3 years old. He was qualified to be sent to a home for retarded children when he was adopted by Virginia and Lewis Williams. These two parents gave him the love, education, moral integrity, and life lessons that most parents would. This once retarded child grew up to be not only a productive citizen, but a brilliant CFO in several city governments where he steered the city away from fiscal collapse. Society benefited from these parents' labor, and yet the parents were penalized financially for raising him (mother's lost income to stay home part time to raise him, less retirement, etc.) This family provided something for nothing. Doesn't seem right.
Our country talks so much about "family values", but very little is done economically to back it. The U.S. spending pattern shows that our national defense program is a priority. Quality child care, like quality soldiering, does not come cheap. Those serving in the military receive financial assistance with education, home purchasing, subsidized (and highly trained) child care, and health care. As a result, we have one of the best militaries in the world. However, where does that leave our children? Why is our country not investing in them? Won't they be the future leaders and tax payers when we are retiring?
Our government doesn't need to foot the bill because parents are taking the financial hit. As a parent, I love what I do. However, just because we enjoy what we do, doesn't mean that our labor should be exploited.
The solutions that the author suggests are overwhelming (to me) and would require overhauling government, business practices, family law, and community practices. What it all comes down to, though, is that caring needs to be conceptualized as work if it is ever to be properly valued socially, legally or economically.
It's issues like these that inspire me to go to law school and create change. Either that or just move to Sweden. :-)

[Colleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just finished this book last night and can't even articulate my thoughts, plus at times it hurt my head to read. Thank God I didn't major in Econ. So I"ll borrow a quote to share some of how I feel "Few men in positions of authority have any firsthand experience caring for children and therefore no basis for understanding just how difficult and important a job it is. Their ignorance helps perpetuate a system that takes the work for granted." (p. 241) YUP!
In addition I may have to encourage India to move to Sweden when she has her babies (and Isaiah's wife/girlfriend) even though it might break my heart to do so.

[Marin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ann Crittenden was a journalist for Newsweek and the New York Times before she decided to leave her full-time career and devote her time to full-time caregiving for her child. During that time, she collected anecdotes, statistics, and personal observations for this book.

Her main point is that motherhood is a hugely important societal benefit, but, for all of the lip service Americans give it, it goes unrewarded in any way that counts. As a result, the number one indicator for poverty in old age is motherhood. Also, educated and amibitous women are waiting longer and longer to have fewer and fewer children.

Crittenden doesn't show just one solution to this problem: she shows dozens of solutions. The U.S. could give tax and social security credits for full-time family care. They could require employers to hold jobs open for mothers temporarily leaving the workforce, as they do for veterans. They could subsidize child-care for working mothers with small children. They could ease immigration restrictions on skilled child care workers seeking to come to the United States as nannies. They could require more fair divorce settlements. And on and on.

Since the U.S. does none of these things, the book got a little depressing after a while; however, I felt like it was an empowering book rather than a whiney book. It made me want to pay more attention to my retirement plan and to take affirmative steps to stay active in my career choice during the years that I stay home with children. I'm even going to find a good way to put my full-time motherhood on my professional resume because I am more and more convinced that it is a mark of professional pride.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

An often scathing analysis of the economic costs to women who choose to have children. The author has done serious research on the topic, and also presents wide-ranging information on related topics in marriage and women's employment outside the home. The chapters on divorce, and what current practice says about the value placed on women and children, are particularly fresh and alarming. The writing is rigorous yet very readable. Not to be missed.

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very dense, fascinating book. The book approaches the subject of motherhood from an economic standpoint and in nearly every evaluation, the mother who chooses to care for her child, whether as an at-home mom or as a working mom who forgoes overtime and higher pressure job tracks, pays a hefty price. Crittenden makes some very compelling arguments, but many of her "solutions" are going to cause as many problems as they start. She constantly points to Sweden, France, and several other more socialized countries as the model for how the U.S. should behave in regards to mothering.

Overall, the book was interesting and well-written. Ann, like many modern feminists, has rejected the feminism of yesteryear, where the way women were to become equal was to become more like men. She outlines clearly that while childless females are virtually on par with men in the workplace, women with children are almost always making less. Women make sacrifices for children and feminism needs to acknowledge the importance of rearing children.

My three main criticisms of the books is first, that her world-view is too narrow. When your only tool is a hammer, every problem is a nail. Nearly all of the problems she describes are modern issues, many caused by feminism's social experiments and the breakdown of the family. Yet every solution she suggests involve more government, more social experiments, more money being spent on this or that program. My second criticism is that she is quick to jump to conclusions and then state her conclusions as fact. My third criticism is that she seems to want it both ways -- she wants mothers who choose to stay home to be valued, and yet almost every program and solution she touts would bring more mothers into the workforce. She says that Sweden is wonderful because they value motherhood, and yet, she also states that they have the highest female workforce participation. So, while stating that an at-home mom is an important job, she seems to suggest that the best way to support at-home moms is to make sure that there are subsidized day cares, long paid maternity leaves, and shorter workdays mandated -- in short, to get those at-home moms back in the workforce as soon as possible.

Here are her main arguments (and my evaluation of them):

1. Rearing children is an important social function that ought to be respected and valued. Rearing a child contributes to a country's economic prosperity to a great degree -- in fact, economists estimate that 2/3rds of a country's economy is due to human capital. (I agree wholeheartedly)

2. Women who choose to stay at home with children are not very well-respected by society at large.

3. Corporate America substantially rewards those who are unencumbered and able to work like a dog for promotions. (Yep; men who want more family-friendly options are at a disadvantage too. But changing leave policies or workweek hours is not likely to change the cultural, break-neck pace of many companies.)

4. In high-pressure, educated fields such as accounting, law, and science, women who have children are always making less and achieving less than men and childless women.

5. Stay-at-home mothers do substantial work, and yet their work is not considered "work" because it's not paid. Because economists only measure work that is paid, the huge amount of capital produced by mothers rearing children is not included in any measures. Mothers who don't work for pay receive zero Social Security credits. Women at home with children are considered "dependents" who are not contributing, when in actuality their work is very valuable economically and socially. (This is an argument that I agree with completely. As a mother at home with seven children, I work and I contribute a lot; and yet, in most measures, I am considered even worse than "unemployed." I am a dependent.)

6. There ought to be a better measure of services and "nonmarket" activity such as the work of a SAHM included in a nation's measures of wealth. In fact, some studies have found the value of these nonmarket sources of production to be very high -- 55 percent of GDP in Germany, 40 percent in Canada, 46 percent in Finland. New measures of GDP are needed. (Since I'm not an economist, I'm not sure how much a new measure would change the status quo, but it seems logical that leaving out huge sources of production and work is a problem).

7. There is a "Mommy Tax" on all mothers, and it hits those who choose to stay at home with their children the hardest. Even those who stay at home for just a few years are penalized in the marketplace, and those who do go back to work often cut back on hours and choose less-demanding positions in order to preserve time for their children. This affects their lifelong earnings potentials. (Very true, though I don't think there are solutions that make sense. This "mommy tax," in my mind, is the failure of feminism to account for the biological, emotional and internal desires mothers have to be mothers, not wage-earners. It is not possible for women to have it all, and the statistics just make that point. The only way for women to compete with men the way the feminists of the 60s and 70s encouraged is not to have children. Children require sacrifices, which Crittenden, who stayed home with her first child and paid her own "mommy tax" in her high-profile career as a journalist, well knows. Who makes the sacrifice and whether there is some way socially to compensate those who make it is a very interesting debate.)

8. In chapter 6, "The Dark Little Secret of Family Life," Crittenden makes many unsupported claims about how bad it is for women and children to be dependent on men. One-quarter of wives are "completely depended on their husbands." She claims that because of this, women are not true equal partners and that, "we all know from experience that the subtle balance of power in a marriage is tilted in favor of the spouse who contributes the money. In the privacy of the bedroom, who has not heard or uttered the dread cry, "I make the money in this house!" (Of all the arguments in the book, this is the one that makes me the maddest, because instead of actual research, Crittenden just makes blanket statements about "what we all know" to be true. Fact is, I've never heard such a statement and the truth is that dependency on each other makes for strong marriages. Just as my children and I depend on my husband to provide the finances for the family, he depends on me to nurture our children and provide the many services I give for the family. Crittenden would have society give women who stay at home independence from a wage-earner, which makes me wonder, what is left in her world for a man to do? She's already established that women do the bulk of the nurturing, whether they are at home or not, and yet, she says it is not good for a man to provide for his family because it makes his wife "dependent" on him. Later, as she writes about solutions, basically, all of her solutions have to do with diminishing the role of the father as provider and replacing him with government programs. Ironically, I read yesterday that studies have shown (didn't cite a source, though, so I'd need to look it up) that women manage the finances in 80% of marriages, which is hardly the picture of the poor, meek little dependent spouse that Crittenden would have us believe in)

9. Women who have access to money are more likely to spend that money on the children's well-being than fathers. (This is outlined by studies done in developing countries where payments to fathers often go to booze or drugs and payments to mothers go to children's educations. No argument here, except that you cannot extrapolate those studies to mean that in all countries, children are better off if their mothers have access to aid money, as Crittenden does.)

10. Women need more leverage in marriage because of point #9, and therefore, an independent income. "This is why reducing the mommy tax, by making it easier for married as well as single mothers to maintain their own income, is so important." (So, though Crittenden gives lip service to the valuable work of an at-home mom, the ultimate goal for her is to make it so women can compete better in the workplace and make more money without being penalized for having children. The last three points are made upon very tenuous grounds, with lots of assumptions about power struggles in marriage and about the evils of fathers providing. She's simply trying to take the same feminist arguments that drove the "be like a man" mentality and extend it to be "be like a man except when you're a mother, then let government make up the difference to you." Honestly, is it THAT hard to see that a traditional marriage where a man is a strong provider and a woman is a valued mother is best for children, rather than the many social experiments of the last fifty years? If there are problems with some marriages, and there are, then that is something to be addressed, but not by throwing out the whole institution and tradition of centuries and substituting laws that force a workplace to accommodate motherhood or institutions that pay care-givers separately from the family. In my opinion, devaluing the role of provider that fathers have performed for ages is just as big a disservice to children as devaluing the role of the nurturing mother.)

Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of time left to go into the other major points of her book, but here they are briefly:

11. Social Security devalues mothering in two ways. First, a SAHM earns zero credits for her work at home, and then when she retires, she is allowed to have half of what her husband earned during those years. So essentially, the SS system says that a mother is worth half of what a breadwinner is. (I agree with this, but I also think Social Security is on it's way to bankrupting our country and that the full cost of this entitlement will be paid on the backs of our children, so fixing Social Security to value SAHMs is probably not the first priority in that broken system.)

12. Second, Social Security provides a safety net for widows and orphans who receive payments when the primary breadwinner dies. She points out that there is virtually no difference between a single, divorced mother and a widowed mother, and yet the government provides for one and not the other. (Actually there are two huge differences between the two. The first is that the children in the first instances still have a living father who is supposed to provide for them and by law is required to via his child support payments. The second is that a widow presumably had no choice about her husband's death, while many divorced women did have some choice in the matter of their divorce. Not all, but some contribute to the divorce by their own behavior or even seek it despite their husband's wanting to remain married.)

12. Despite child support payments and in some cases, alimony, divorce leaves many mothers and children in poverty. (Through many examples, she makes it clear how bad divorce is for women and children and how getting men to pay their child support obligations can be difficult. After talking to an attorney friend who works in this area, it seems that many of the formulas and enforcement is actually more fair than Crittenden would lead one to believe. However, there is just no getting around the fact that a woman who has chosen to be at home raising children is much worse off in the event of a divorce than her former spouse. Now, she is expected, by law, to both work and to do the bulk of the nurturing of children. In one area, not mentioned by Crittenden, the value of a SAH mom is even further denigrated. In addition to child support, men are expected to pay their share (based on income, custody arrangements, etc) of any day care expenses. But if a mother somehow wants to stay home to provide her own care to that same child, she gets no additional money, so she loses both her own income and the money she would get to pay for day care. So, in this way, a "quality day care" is worth more than a mother. The travesty here is that I believe some distinction should be made in the system for the age of a child and that mothers should be able to receive at least a little additional for the years when her child is the most vulnerable and would do the best in her care, not in some day care center while she works minimum wage. Once a child is school-age, the support obligations on the part of the father can go down to previous levels.)

13. Furthermore, Crittenden takes divorce as a matter of course and something that cannot be helped, reversed or lessened at all. Since divorce is likely to happen in 50% of cases, she suggests all sorts of ways to help mothers become more independent of men. (Again, just because divorce in the last 50 to 60 years has become common doesn't mean that more social engineering is needed. Why not work on the divorce issues and strengthen families rather than simply accept the status quo and re-engineer social benefits so that women can walk away from marriages as easily as men? I do realize that there are some inequities in law that ought to be fixed, but moving to the Swedish system (universal government-sponsored day care, one year maternity leave paid for by government, etc.), which Crittenden constantly suggests as a better way, is likely to increase our divorce rate and the number of children being raised in single-parent homes, just like in that country. The fact that children do better with two parents is just as important as all the facts outlined about the difficulties of single parenting, the problems of poverty, child support enforcement, alimony, etc., and yet solutions like making divorce harder to obtain for couples with children or government subsidies for marriage counseling are never addressed. It's just not politically correct to suggest a couple to fix their marriage for the sake of their children, even though such a solution is going to do a lot more for children than any of the fixes Crittenden suggests.

14. The welfare mother problem is addressed. Welfare moms are usually on welfare because former spouses are not paying child support. With welfare reform, mothers are forced into the workplace and children into low-quality substitute care.

15. Child care, child care, child care. It's quality needs to go up. It needs to be subsidized by the government, it needs to be demanded by women's groups. Crittenden writes about the dismal pay, enormous turn-over, and frustrating working environment in most day care centers. (Yep -- "quality day care" of the touted studies (you know, the ones that show that children in "quality" care do as well as those with mother's at home) is actually elusive, and where it exists, expensive and with long waiting lists, giving some mothers no choice but to stay home with their own children. I'm conflicted on this issue. Once again, it seems that feminists are demanding that government provide a suitable subsitute for the work of a stay-at-home mom, so that women can be free to "have it all" and be saved from the tough choices that come with bringing a child into the world. When the substitute isn't adequate, they demand we throw more money at it until it is. Is it government's role to provide birth to age 5 care for children? Or to subsidize it? And who is hurt the most when all wage earners are taxed to pay for the day care expenses of the mothers who choose to work -- most likely the SAHM, whose husband's income will take a further hit and who will have to stretch the dollars even farther.)

16. Legal nannies are hard to find and even harder to retain. Immigration policy limits the number of "unskilled" workers allowed in a country and even if a nanny has years of education, she is still considered unskilled. A change in immigration policies would help a lot of upper-middle-class women find better care for their children. (I think our current immigration policy is a travesty and this rule is one that should be changed.)

17. "It was her choice." A long chapter delineates why this statement isn't fair to women, in Crittenden's opinion. A mother who chooses to stay at home pays the mommy tax, deals with the uncertainty of single parenting if it happens and loses respect in society. But she does it because she loves her children and wants what is best for them, and that is her choice. Crittenden says it is only her choice because there are no other alternatives. If the government would just step it up and provide quality day care or allow more nannies in or mandate 6 hour days for working moms, then there would be a real choice. (Yes, a real choice that will cost society an enormous amount of money through expanded socialism and entitlements and still won't be as good as the traditional family.)

18. After spending the great majority of the book writing about all the unfairness in society, a very short chapter at the end (18 pages of a book length of 275) outlines some suggested solutions.

They are:
Employers should redesign work around parental norms. Give every parent a year's paid leave. (Not to worry, the cost won't have to be borne by the employer alone, the government can step in and pay for it.)
* Shorten the workweek. In Sweden (yes, that wonderful utopia), parents by law can work just 6 hour days until a child is 8 years old
* Provide benefits for part-time work. (Actually of all the suggestions, this is one that makes some sense -- why don't employers allow more part-timers? I don't think government mandates are the way to accomplish this, but if a mother could work part-time and still be considered a valuable employee and not a temp, wouldn't that serve both businesses and society?)
*Eliminate discrimination against parents.

Government should
*Equalize social security for spouses. Stop penalizing full-time caregivers. (agree, but as I said before, this isn't the worst problem with the SS system)
* Offer work-related social insurance to all workers (Agree here, too. A mother needing to enter the workforce should be able to access the same job-training help as any other worker.)
* Provide universal preschool for all 3 and 4 year olds. (No. I don't disagree with part-time preschool programs for disadvantaged kids, but school already begins early enough with 5 year olds attending kindergarten.)
* Stop taxing mothers more than anyone else. "The government could actually raise more revenue, without lowering families' income by a penny, by taxing married men more and married women less." (And who does that penalize the most? Those families who DO try and live on that married man's income. Once again, this solution only destroys the provider role traditionally given by fathers)
*A Child Allowance Should be Given for Children. This is better than the current tax credits because it goes to all parents, not just those rich enough to owe taxes. (I'm on the fence on this one. Our tax code already makes significant allowances for those who raise children, and rightly so. Families who are raising tomorrow's taxpayers ought to be given credit for the work they do. However, I also believe in self-reliance and this idea smacks of a dole, with all its attendant problems)
* Provide free health coverage for all children and their primary caregivers. (All this sounds great until you consider just how expensive something like that would be! Already, there are health benefits to lower-income mothers and children in the form of Medicaid. Why expand that to include everyone? Just to make us more socialist?)
* Add unpaid labor to the GDP. (Sure, sounds fine)

[Aisha Manus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Omg this has me raging at time at the injustices that women, in particular mothers, face because of toxic masculinity and the patriarchy. While a *few* things have progressed since this book was written 20 years ago, sadly mothers are still not valued like they should in the American system. Countries around the world have proven over and over that if you invest in mothers it benefits the country economically, yet the American corporation still keeps men in power. I highly recommend this book. But be prepared to be upset a lot.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an incredibly well-researched and largely well-articulated expose on the status of mothers in American society. Crittenden clearly defines how mothers are socially, legally, and economically disadvantaged and lists specific actions that can be taken by employers, governments, families, and communities to help mothers achieve equal citizenship. This book is a must-read for everyone!

On a personal level this book was deeply insightful into why I have a love/hate relationship with being a stay-at-home-mom. Specifically:

1) After having witnessed serious financial abuse within my own immediate family, I loathe that I am now absolutely, utterly dependent on a man financially. Interestingly, Crittenden drew me into this book when she wrote in the introduction, "...motherhood is the single biggest risk factor for poverty in old age" (p. 6), and "...although [mothers] work as hard as or harder than anyone else in the economy, they are still economic dependents, like children or incapacitated adults" (p. 10).

2) American society places little to no value on caretaking as an occupation. As Crittenden says, "A mother's work is not just invisible; it can become a handicap. Raising children may be the most important job in the world, but you can't put it on a resume," for most people consider childrearing "unskilled labor." (p. 3). I fear that if I needed to "rejoin the labor force," then my time spent as a SAHM would, as Crittenden says, become a handicap.

3) As Crittenden explains, there are few flexible employment options available to mothers. I would like to stay abreast in the public health field somehow by working just a little, but it seems impossible and I feel left with no option but to stay at home while my children are little.

4) I simply hate the fact that my job as a SAHM is undervalued and disrespected. That widespread perception often permeates my own thinking and has me wondering if what I'm doing truly is of any value.

Thankfully Crittenden also repeatedly reiterates that childrearing is extremely important and she encourages me to work harder to do my best by learning more about child development and education and using that knowledge to better care for my child.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this for a class titled "Women, Work and the Family" that I'm going to propose be subtitled "AKA: Men are trash" in future versions of the class. Because man (hah -- sorry), do our patriarchal heteronormative gender roles ever screw us over. And don't get me wrong, those norms are screwing men over, too (toxic masculinity is real), but it's hard to focus on that when this book lays out all the economic and social fuckery we're laying at women's feet.

This book is worth a look for its well-researched exploration of the economics and social construction of motherhood and caregiving work, both in and out of the home. Given that this book is pretty old at this point, I wouldn't list it as a must-read. It falls into the trap of focusing primarily on upper-middle-class white feminism (not exclusively, to its credit, but intersectionality isn't really a key focus in most of the book), and parts of it don't hold up particularly well. Its focus on the economics of motherhood and caregiving work, whether in or out of the home, is absolutely valuable, but I was uncomfortable with how much it valued women for their reproductive abilities and "natural" nurturing desires being quashed by those nasty work-first feminists. What about women who can't, or choose not to, reproduce? What about people whose caregiving work centers around people besides children (e.g., caring for elderly relatives)? The same economic arguments can apply, but not only does Crittenden exclude them from most of her book, her key suggestions at the end of the book completely give them the shaft when she suggests economic incentives that kick in for existing marriages only when the couple reproduces.

I don't have a great head for econ, and I want to give this book credit for explaining economic concepts (like threat points as applied to marriage and relationships) in much more approachable terms than any of the other books I've used in this class. Parts of this book are dense and stat-heavy, but it's easy to get the general gist of those sections with a quick skim if you don't want to do a deep dive into the numbers and then carry on with the rest of the book.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. On the one hand, this book is vocalizing everything that I want people to understand about motherhood. On the other hand, it's really depressing to really think about how poorly mothers are treated. I alternate between saying, "Yeah, Sistah!" and "Aggh! Why are people so messed up!?" Anyway, my personal agonies aside, this is a wonderfully well-written, well researched book. I very highly recommend it as a good, enjoyable and thought provoking read. My husband and I have had SEVERAL long and thoughtful discussions trying to solve the problem it presents: how can society make mothers less vulnerable? Friends - I am extremely interested in hearing your opinions on this book. I've always been a big fan of the traditional family as the model for society, but I think that Ann Crittenden has convinced me that societal norms are not fair to mothers, mainly because of how vulnerable they are if their husband decides to walk away. He keeps his job and income, and she suddenly finds herself unemployable or unable to find good employment. And why is it fair that just because you chose to take care of your children, you are rewarded with a low lifetime income if your husband bails? Even I, with a advanced degrees in lucrative fields, know that if my husband died today, I wouldn't be able to get a job anything like what I could have right out of college. And it's scary. And how much more scary must it be if you're not well educated and you didn't have a marriage relationship based on eternal commitment to each other.

She has some suggested solutions to the problem, which I will leave to you to read in the book. Some I agree with, others I'm not sure about. But I think her best point was just that we need to value mothering and caretakeing, wherever it occurs and by whomever. And we need to show it by how we treat mothers (and NOT just those mothers who perform in the way we think is ideal.)

[Ladyfilosopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I applaud this book for having been written in a time when so few women were listening, not to mention men.
19 years have passed and frankly, I am looking forward to a new edition before reading it. Meanwhile, I am getting up to speed on economics and the alterations of the system needed. I found Crittenden's book title in Eisler's "The Real Wealth of Nations " in the closing chapters on activism. I am giving Crittenden's book many stars because it was a lone voice at the time of its conception and looking at the reviews it did its job admirably, even if it made a few feel disenfranchised with their denial dashed , all the while their 'paranoia' validated leading to a sense of empowerment and self trust. Others challenged their brain boundaries to learn about economy, which Aristotle described as a natural caring of one's household, community and city, state. He continues to describe an unnatural version of money accumulation for its own sake and its management (sound familiar? ) it was given different term 'Chrematistike', our current manner of dealing with money and building a totally unnatural set of social values around it. We do not have an economy, we are in an chrematistic money making extractive dogma. Even my high IQ mother belittled herself by saying and believing that maths was beyond her, then her otherself would appear regularly to balance the household accounts. Any change towards a truely representative and natural economics will only happen when women skill themselves up and make noise with our governmental representives to regulate in a manner to allow all, men and women, to flourish. Back to Crittenden, I agree that feminism has been steeped in white feminism, the malaise of 1990s and 2000s, unaware bold and blind. I await a new intersectionally aware edition.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I should have reviewed this book sooner after reading it (and before reading a book with many opposing arguments), but I do remember the fundamentals: Crittenden makes the seemingly basic--but in this country, revolutionary--argument that the work of "caring" (for children, mainly, but also for the elderly) should be valued along with every other type of work.

And when Crittenden says "valued" she doesn't mean that we should all give our moms really nice Mother's Day presents and express our appreciation often in communal and individual ways. No, she means concretely valued just as other jobs are valued.

Her basic argument is that caring work produces human capital and in a society like ours, where human capital is almost always more valuable than any other kind, that work should be recognized monetarily and legally. Some of her specific suggestions include the right to a parental year-long paid leave, a shortened workweek, equal pay and benefits for part-time work, equalized social security calculations for spouses, universal preschool, tax reform, unpaid household labor factored into the GDP, divorce and child support reform, etc.

Crittenden offers a compelling argument that transcends the "mommy wars" and gets to the heart of what I think is really at stake there anyway. Many of her specific suggestions seem overly expensive, especially for the taste of most Americans. But not all. Especially in the legal arena, there are some astoundingly simple changes that could and should be made to value the type of work that the majority of the country's women perform.

This is worth a read!

[Ami · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an amazingly detailed and researched book concerning motherhood and economics. My eye were opened and my blood pressure was raised while reading this book. Ann Crittenden, in a completely professional, yet ultimately passionate manner, tackles the question 'Do we really value motherhood?'. The results are disheartening.

Why did I like this book that almost caused me to froth at the mouth? It was well written, extremely well organized, and brilliantly researched. There was no name calling or finger pointing, and while Ann Crittenden's politics may be slightly more left than my own, there was no political grandstanding or party bashing. Best of all, the book doesn't leave one without hope at its close. The author, in addition to presenting the material, has also given her opinions to possible solutions. While I cannot agree with all of them, I can support several.

This book should be read by women everywhere, whether they be mothers or not. The information is relevant and empowering. How much do you value motherhood?

[Tricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I stumbled upon this book in the library when I was doing research for a paper on the subject of motherhood and the paradigm produced from our society's view of mothering/motherhood. Crittenden has done some serious homework in this book serving up some awesome empirical evidence in support of her claims, most of which are economical considerations and concerns. I appreciated her depth of research, however, many of her studies come from the mid-90s. While that might have been relevant at time of publish, 2002, I'm suspicious of how they hold up now. Nonetheless, her book really offers a powerfully compelling argument for a paradigm based on compensating mothers instead of glorifying their sacrifice. I felt it was very fair to the power structures which foster that expectation of sacrifice. Well-written and logically structured, I can't imagine how this book could have been better (egotistically I suppose I could say that it would have been better if it most closely aligned to my own thinking, hahaha).

[Suzanne Lorraine Kunz Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book will forever change the way you value mothers and the way you view the sacrifices of women to become mothers. I don't see how anyone can read this book and not come away with a greater appreciation for mothers and want to changes things to reward their sacrifices more.

**Talking Points - what are some of the ways your mother sacrifices for you? Would you want to sacrifice in the same way?

[Maha Elahi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for all women, especially the ones who are ignorantly ruining their lives & the lives of their children!

Read it if you're a good & confused new mom ...read it so you won't allow others to destroy your life as a wife & mom.

A precious book indeed!

[Saleh MoonWalker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Onvan : The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued - Nevisande : Ann Crittenden - ISBN : 805066195 - ISBN13 : 9780805066197 - Dar 323 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 2001

[Kathryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

i am reading this for a class i'm teaching. i am only 15 pages in and i already feel outraged. i am probably going to have vandalize something by the end of the semester.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this. Understand why you're pissed all the time.

[Katherine Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

I went into this book feeling skeptical and...I left it with mixed feelings. Since I write these reviews for my future self and children to reference, I don't feel like I need to get into all of the details of my beliefs about motherhood here. I will say that I agreed with some of the conclusions drawn by Ann Crittenden and disagreed with others. It was an enlightening read, and led to lots of interesting conversations with people close to me. People in general have strong feelings about how women (especially mothers) should be using their time, and this book motivated me to give women more space for what they choose. I'm supportive of supporting mothers.

"The Price of Motherhood" is meant for women who want a fulfilling career outside of the home and children at the same time. The author was a former NYT reporter, and her perspective is left leaning. Her data is now about 25-30 years old, so it needs to be updated. She is clear on how difficult it will be for women in the U.S. to have career success and prioritize children. Her focus is that caretaking has economic output, and society should prioritize it, but she doesn't give much encouragement to have kids. This book also seemed to fuel the fire of resentment that moms can sometimes feel.

Chapter 3, which went into the history of how motherhood has been viewed in America, was interesting. As families moved away from agricultural lifestyles, women's roles were seen as having less monetary influence on the family. Instead of helpmeets and equal partners, they were seen as "dependents" who did tasks that were not as financially productive as what men did outside of the home. Feminists of the 1850's and 1860's worked hard to get the government to recognize women's work in the home as valuable to the family economy and worthy of compensation. Later feminists have encouraged women to 'be more like men' and work outside of the home in order to have access to their own funds. I appreciated the line of thought that domestic labor has economic value.

"The very word "economics" derives from the Greek root oikonomia, the management of the household...so as to increase its use value to all of its members over the long run." pg. 67

Nancy Folbre, speaking of the motivations of mothers said, "What [economists] really resist is the idea that altruism might be one of the engines of economic growth. This would destroy their model that self-interest drives everything." pg. 77

One point that was surprising at first was that it's not good for women or children to rely on the financial support of a spouse/father. From a legal perspective, the money a breadwinner earns belongs to them alone. Women need some type of legal financial security, and in the mean time, the author argues that women just need to make their own money so that they have access to funds. Later, she also points out that women spend more (as a percentage of their income) on their children than fathers do.

"Economists now believe that mothers are so much more likely than fathers to invest in children's health and education that the surest way to promote economic growth in poor countries is to educate and empower girls. Apparently, nothing improves human capital so much as capital in the hands of mothers." pg. 119

American child support system sees support as monetary, not time or care. The welfare state does very little to support those in caring roles. There were interesting statistics about European countries that are better at supporting new mothers and single mothers. It was shown that married mothers are more likely to stay at home.

"What look like female values are regulations of society at large: to protect, conserve, love and rescue life. It is because these are demanded as actions and attitudes from individual women and not from a social structure thay women are oppressed." - Poet Frigga Hug, 'Daydreams' pg. 233

"The key variable was the mother's education--a proxy for her position in the labor market. The more money she earned and the more fulfillment she found outside the home, the more space she was willing to create for the father within it." - Goran Swedin, head of maternal and child health care at Ostersund Coutny Hospital pg. 244

"Dignified motherhood is a feminist priority. [Women must see a] future beyond joing the masculinist elite on its own terms...There has to be a better way." - Germaine Greer pg. 255

[Frrobins · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book articulated a lot of the frustrations I feel over how little the work I do as a mother is appreciated, something that really hit when I had to leave my fulltime job to give me the flexibility to homeschool my son with special needs because the school would not provide adequate services for him. I am furious that I pay taxes for a system that excludes my son and that I took such a financial hit and I do not get paid for the work I do educating him, even though I have a higher level of education than many teachers and a better understanding of autism than them. Basically they won't do the job that my tax dollars are paying them to do, so the burden falls on me to do it for free. At the same time it seemed too radical to expect the government to pay me for my work with my son. That was until I read about how mothers in some European countries are given monthly stipend because caring for children is seen as work.

It also articulated what I noticed working with clients who are home health aides for the elderly. They have little training, the pay is terrible, and some of them are so unstable I would not let them in my home. Yet one day we are all going to grow old and likely end up needing the services of a home health aide. We could see this as a skilled profession that needs adequate compensation, training and regulation, but we don't, and yet we trust vulnerable people to their care because we devalue the value of caretaking.

In some ways, this book is dated. It was written in the late 90s, and the data it draws from shows this. Some of the positive changes is that women are now calling for paid family leave and universal child care, but a lot of the problems outlined in this book are still problems that families with young children are struggling with.

Definitely a must read. It validated the feelings I had that the work I do is not valued as it should be and made some compelling arguments for why things should change.

[Brooke · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In Sweden, parents can opt to work a six-hour day until their children are eight years old. In the Netherlands the official workweek is thirty-six hours, and workers have a right to a four-day week. The legal workweek in France was reduced from thirty-nine to thirty-five hours in 2000..." This book is full of jaw-dropping examples of how the rest of the world values parents and raising of children, and how the US...well...does not. This edition of the book was pubbed in 2010. I would be very interested in an updated version. The focus is mainly on middle-class white women, with scattered examples of women of color. I would like to see a wider socioeconomic spectrum here, along with different kinds of families represented. There is a big section about how the ACA was hugely helpful for low-income single mothers, and that's such a huge step forward, hooray! Except in 2017, not so much. Sobering to think about how every day the US values parents and women less and less, if that's possible. But it was a fascinating read.

[Sally Duros · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book inspired me to write this essay.

Choosing Otherhood over Motherhood
Sally’s World, May 2003
http://www.sallyduros.com/choosing-ot...

By SALLY DUROS

New research in the United Kingdom has found that among women born between 1954 and 1958, college graduates were 50% more likely than non-graduates to remain childless throughout their lives. Studies conducted in the United States and Germany had similar findings.

These trends register as true for my generation of college-educated women, but I am betting that findings might be different for women younger than I am.

I have seen three circles of friends choose motherhood at different phases of their lives. When I was in my early 20s, many of my neighborhood friends from grade school were married and had their first children shortly afterward. When I was in my late 20s and early 30s another circle – these women my college friends – married and had kids a few years into their careers. And finally during my late 30s and early 40s, during the 90s, another circle – this time high-level executive women – decided that to follow their hearts, they would put corporate America behind and have families.

I made a different choice. When I was 13, I decided that I would not marry and that I would not have children. My youthful decision, arrived at so easily, emerged organically from the political, social and economic climate of the time. It was my personal hard line against what I saw as an erosive devaluing of women’s contribution to the world.

Sometimes we doubt the powers of our intentions, our ability to do what we intend to do. But this youthful commitment was something that I accomplished with little difficulty. Throughout my adult life, as time passed, with considerable reflection and equal doses of gladness and sadness, I have stayed that initial course.

At times, I have felt as though my head intended one thing, but my heart expected another. There is a way, I think, that women of my generation, no matter how well-developed our desires, still believe at some gut level that a knight on a white horse will ride in to save us from ourselves.

When I told a client of mine recently that the main reason I didn’t have children was because I had chosen a career over home-making, he said he didn’t believe it. I suspect many people just a squeak younger than me don’t believe it. But it’s true.

The way I perceived things as a teenager, the role of wife and mother was limited, especially financially. I really didn’t like the idea of not having my own source of income. My mother worked hard creating a loving home environment, raising four children and being wife to my energetic, responsible and loving father. Still some inner voice urged her out into the world, and in 1971, like so many women in their 40s at the time, she headed off to do office work. It was a point of, well, umm, discussion in our family’s household, and it met with a little resistance (I love you, Dad!)

But in the end my mother won. She took deep pride in the work she did, the money she earned, and the substantial contribution her income made to the well-being of our family. My mother loved working outside the home. As a result, she was always very supportive of my life choices – no matter how hare-brained they seemed to others – and she always urged me to aim for personal happiness.

At the time I made my youthful decision, there were few visible and positive examples of the myriad ways to be a woman, raise a family and have a career. After watching my mother’s happiness with her work, I took the road most natural to me. It seemed that to have two full-time jobs, and to try to do them both well – was not an option for me.

Since that time, many women have taken creative plunges into unknown seas of work and motherhood. Their powerful excursions – into business, politics, family and community – have opened doors for women and men alike. The most fortunate of us now have full freedom to choose our roles in accordance with our unique desires as individuals rather than by rules of gender and conformity.

For Mother’s Day, I offer them deep gratitude for their courage in finding their own way, clearing the path and making transparent and accessible for all of us what was once invisible: our unique hearts and our unique paths.

Recommended reading for this Mother’s Day: Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh; The Price of Motherhood: Why the most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least valued by Anne Crittenden; Bold Women, Big Ideas by Kay Koplovitz; and Toward a New Psychology of Women by Jean baker Miller.
Gift from the SeaBold Women, Big Ideas: Learning To Play The High-Risk Entrepreneurial GameBold Women, Big Ideas: Learning To Play The High-Risk Entrepreneurial GameToward a New Psychology of WomenAnne Morrow LindberghJean Baker MillerKay Koplovitz

[Kimberley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. I read it many years ago and still think about it often today. The price of motherhood still isn't well-understood or accepted. I was a hands-on mom and entered the workforce post-children, and I make a measly salary compared with what I would have by now had I spent more time in school (I was on track for a PhD) and then had gone straight into the workforce and stayed there. It really isn't fair. I did complete a master's degree while caring for children, so it isn't lack of intelligence or lack of hard work. I'm divorced now, and all three of my successful children have households incomes higher than mine. My ex earns 6 times what I do, and although I receive spousal support, it nowhere near makes up the difference. I don't even know what to do to fix this.

[Alyssa Easton · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'll be honest I couldn't even finish the book. While I completely agree mother's we're still undervalued, this book has not stood up to time, written almost twenty years ago, I don't agree with everything in this book. The world isn't perfect, mother's still have a marathon to run to find equality in the world. As a full time working mother I unfortunately see this more than I wish, but women are being recognized for the value they bring to the world and the gap between parenting; mothers and fathers; has drastically improved. This book is exactly the style I'd love, very research based. But it no longer is accurate enough to be considered in todays conversation about mother's rights in the world and the value placed on parenting.

[Jennifer SJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Books like this are both crucial for women to read…and can also be hard to read. Crittenden’s book was published in 2001, and I strongly doubt that anything is better for mothers in 2023 than it was 22 years ago. That is hard to stomach and increases the anger I often feel at being so dependent on the vagaries of the husband’s willingness/ability to work, for my own survival. The fact that nannies (who have Social Security numbers) do the same childcare work that I do, not only get paid for it BUT ALSO are simultaneously paying into Social Security - and yet I don’t and can’t? Hell yes, that makes my blood boil.

[Neil Meyer]

Ann Crittenden’s "mommy tax" of a million dollars suggests a salary scale that doesn't reflect the average reality. Most mothers return to work relatively quickly; to suggest that a brief hiatus results in such a staggering financial deficit is hyperbolic.

Children are not a liability to be balanced or a debt to be amortized. They are the living testament of a relationship. If you are looking at the creation of life through the lens of a spreadsheet, you’ve missed the point of the "spectacle" entirely. To reduce the most profound human experience to a question of "lost income" is a fundamentally vulgar perspective on what it means to be a parent.

[Abdullah · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is my favorite subject , because i think it's the key to solve most of our problems . the problem of human is losing wisdom < and wisdom comes from good education , and good education comes from good nurturing & raising up a child ( especially the first three years ) the best one to do this job is the mother ( if she is capable and will equiped to do the job ) if not , then the best carer is a must . the problem we all facing is , misconception of life ??? what do we want from life ? if the answer is : joy , wealth , fame & success ... then , this is the main defect ! ?

[Cassidy Sullivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for a class (if that wasn’t obvious) and I was surprised by how many concepts this book challenged me on. It was written nearly 22 years ago, but it’s still extremely relevant.

I’d recommend this reflection to mothers/aspiring mothers (or maybe even single fathers) who are weary of corporate life or want to find some general validation. I can’t relate to this struggle at this stage in my life, but I’d imagine that this group of people may appreciate it! It definitely opened my eyes to some differing paradigms and perspectives, which I see as a win!