Rebecca's Interview with Ann Crittenden
author of
The Price of Motherhood

Rebecca :
The Price of Motherhood is an eye-opener of a read! My pink collar is damp from the revelations of the inequities in the workplace & the conflicts of interest in the justice system. It is also satisfying to have 90% of my griping confirmed!

You write: “Parenting, the most important job in the world, ought to be seen as a credential.” I get quite miffed when people discount my years of parenting. What's this undercurrent I sense about it being my “choice” & therefore not worthy of compensation or certification? What if football players didn't get compensated for choosing their careers?

Ann :
Yes, I don't notice that people who “choose” other useful occupations, like being a doctor or a nurse or a teacher, are not compensated just because they like their work. And people who choose to be soldiers or sailors are compensated quite well by the government itself. Veterans of the military, for example, enjoy cash subsidies for education; special preferences for government jobs; subsidized housing loans; subsidized medical facilities; special low auto insurance rates, and the country's best system of subsidized child care -- even if they never saw a battlefield. None of this is available to veterans of the nursery. although it is hard to argue that mothers are not as important as soldiers.

Rebecca :
What are our neighbors in Canada doing about care-givers that we are not?

Ann :
In Canada an alliance between women's groups, professional working moms, and organized foreign-born child-care workers was able to set up a system that brings in qualified nannies.

Temporary work permits are granted to non-Canadians who have either six months of classroom training in early childhood development or four years of on-the-job experience. These people must live in, and after a couple of years they can apply for permanent resident status in Canada. As a result, there is no shortage of good nannies in Canada, and no “Zoe Baird” problem.

Rebecca :
What strategies would you suggest to couples about to embark on the career called marriage, to ensure that they are true economic partners? Should a wife get a pay check - separate & apart from the money doled out to her to pay the bills, feed the family & put clothes on their backs? Who is there to tell them how to even think about this?

Ann :
My big advice to anyone embarking on marriage is marry the right guy! By that I mean a person who seems to love being with children and who has a generous spirit. For marriage as a true economic partnership under the law does not yet exist in the U.S.

Family law in the U.S. is state law. So mothers really need to try to change their state's family law to put caregiving on a par with bread-winning in marriage.

The American Law Institute's Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution calls on states to pass laws mandating compensation for a family's primary caregiver in the event of divorce(in addition to child support). Compensation would be owed if a caregiver could prove two things: first, that she (or he) had a lower income at the time of divorce than when she married; and second, that she performed “substantially more than half of the childcare.” Or the law could simply call for an equal standard of living for all family members after divorce, as long as there are minor children.

Short of this kind of divorce reform, I suppose a couple could try to work out a purely private legal agreement, to take effect if a divorce occurred. At the moment, there is a lot of thinking about all this among family law professors, but I know of no group working to advise people that these ideas exist -- which is a big reason why I wrote the book.

Rebecca :
In The Dark Little Secret of Family Life you expose some bones we'd all rather ignore. The conspiracy of dependency. This was a hard chapter to read & I'm still reeling from it! What was the British plan for child benefits that caused such an uproar in Parliament? How many MPs are women?

Ann :
In 1977 the British Labour government decided to create a child benefit, a nontaxable weekly sum for each child paid directly to mothers. This took the place of a family tax credit. The net effect was to increase economic equality in the family by increasing taxes on the wages of primary breadwinners, and sending every mother a check from the government.

Men went nuts, saying this was a transfer from the male “wallet” to the female “purse.” But the change went through and no big protest followed, probably because most families' overall income increased.

The story tells us that child allowances paid to mothers, which are common all over Europe, more directly benefit women and children than so-called “family tax cuts” that simply increase the take-home pay of the principal wage earner. Amazingly, this change occurred even though there were no more women in the British Parliament than there are in the U.S. Congress(not many).

Rebecca :
When I was a single parent, I had to go on welfare for a while. I considered the stipend, my paycheck for raising future productive citizens. Even on the strictest of budgets, we never had enough fresh food. It was as if I were being punished for having children outside of the “norm.” Why is that?

Ann :
Actually, welfare is a kind of child allowance. But instead of going to all mothers, it is paid in the U.S. only to the very poorest, which is why it is so stigmatized and so hated, especially by other single or divorced mothers who are struggling to make ends meet with little help from anyone.

As I explain in the book, it's no accident that the big automatic entitlement programs, like Social Security, were originally set up only for employed workers, who were mostly men.

Unpaid workers, who are mostly women caring for children or sick or elderly family members, are not entitled to any government support in return for their work. All they may get is welfare -- briefly, if they're desperate -- and even that grudgingly.

Rebecca :
In your chapter: What is a Wife Worth? you report on the landmark divorce case of Wendt vs. Wendt. You recount what Lorna Wendt said over lunch one day: “...I believed we had a partnership...that we were a team. Don't teams share their ups and downs? I believe that half of what we had is fair.”

In the real legal world - aren't there rules by which partners must abide? Why does our society cringe at the thought of marriage as an equal economic partnership?

Ann :
Yes, I agree that if marriage were fair, a couple would share in the risks and the rewards of marriage -- you know, “for better or for worse.” But we don't have that kind of fairness or equality for one simple reason: it would require men to share their income with their wives and children even after divorce.

Many men just don't want to do that. As several people told me: “it seems like some fathers just don't want to pay for their children unless they're sleeping with the mothers.” Because the law supports that attitude, some 40 percent of divorced women end up on welfare, and the U.S. has a higher percentage of poor children than any other “advanced” country.

Rebecca :
I would have thought the child-care industry would be a natural for women to enter, there must be thousands of day-care centers around this nation - why is the child-care industry in trouble?

Ann :
The child-care industry is suffering an acute shortage of trained people, again for a very simple reason: it pays the lowest wages in the economy. Even people with advanced degrees in child development can barely make a living wage, so the industry has been hemorraging educated teachers. This in turn forces many working mothers to worry themselves sick, or to quit their jobs, because they cannot find anyone they can trust with their children.

We could create millions of good jobs for women (and men) if we had subsidized daycare/early education for all children. Parents would pay on a sliding scale, depending on their income.

The teachers and aides would have to be trained, and would be paid salaries similar to that of other teachers. The government has set up this kind of system for members of the military but not for anyone else.

Rebecca :
You write: “...in many courts of law to this day, it is still considered unnatural for a wife and mother to claim a material reward for her labors on behalf of the family.” Would you explain the idea of “separate spheres...a woman's work on behalf of other family members is a labor of love, and we all know that loves is its own reward.”

Ann :
Under the 19th century doctrine of “separate spheres,” the world of money, commerce and industry was reserved for men, while women reigned in the sphere of the home.

The “true woman” was the upholder of morality and the caring sentiments, an unselfish creature who would never stoop to ask for any monetary compensation for her labors. As we all know, these ideas are still alive and well.

During a recent prominent divorce trial, the very wealthy husband wanted to “give” his wife no more than 10 to 15 percent of the couple's assets. As he said in a deposition, “My rewards were financial, and I think her rewards were perhaps emotional...the satisfaction of being with the children.”

“Separate spheres” is sort of like the old doctrine of “separate but equal” facilities for blacks and whites. In both cases, separate was never equal, and the doctrine served to justify a monopoly of resources by white men.

Rebecca :
In The Truly Invisible Hand, you post a help wanted ad to entice the femina economica or Economic Woman into the real-time position of motherhood. How can we put a price on mothering?

Were we to hire separate individuals to do all of the tasks a mother performs within a 24 hour period - the family would go broke in a week. From bottom wiper to brain minder & everything in between - bus boy to caterer to teacher to entertainer; to maid to nurse to protector to laundress; to cleaner to shopper to gardener to physical trainer; to chauffeuse to secretary to social planner & nanny - it's been a while since I was a Mother Rabbit.

What price motherhood indeed? What can we do at the grass roots level?

Ann :
If I understand your question, you're asking how mothers could ever realistically be paid what they're worth, since their worth is so invaluable.

I'm not advocating that mothers literally “be paid.” I'm saying that the value of their work should be recognized, instead of valued at zero, as it is now. It is a zero in the GDP; a zero in Social Security; a zero in child support formulas; a handicap in the job market, and on and on, as the book shows.

Grass roots mothers' groups can change all this if they get together, decide what change they need the most, research the issue, and put pressure on their state and Federal representatives. The fact that politicians all give so much lip-service to “family values” is an enormous strength. OK -- put your money where your mouth is!

Rebecca :
In your Conclusion you posit replacing the Welfare State with a Caring State. During my counter culture years the mothers would bring their children into staff & commune meetings. Before we began the agenda - we'd pass the babies around to remind us of why we were there.

In what ways could our representatives in government support & encourage the parents of future citizens?

Ann :
In the book I list some government reforms that would help mothers and children -- I call it how to bring children up without putting women down.

Two of these ideas are very do-able right now. One is giving Social Security credits to caregivers. Al Gore suggested that any stay-at-home parent should be given credits equivalent to a $16,500.annual income for up to five years. This would lift the benefits of roughly 8 million people, almost all of them mothers, by an average of $600 a year.

The other idea that is to tax husbands' and wives' income separately. Right now working married mothers are the heaviest taxed people in the country, because their every dollar is taxed at the family's highest tax rate.

Separate filing would dramatically increase the take-home pay of married mothers. There are other ideas, like paid maternity leaves and universal preschool for four-year-olds, that are in the works in several states.Many politicians have told me that if mothers get strongly behind an issue, it is hard to resist.

Rebecca :
The Price of Motherhood: why Motherhood Is The Most Important - and Least Valued - Job in America is eminently readable, thought-provoking & revealing. What else have you got up your sleeve?

Ann :
Rebecca, your questions were fresh and fun to answer! Right now, I am running around the country trying to sell the book and promote the idea that mothers, united, can change the world for themselves and their families. In my opinion, this is the big unfinished business of the women's movement. I also have two other books in the wings. I did so much research and reporting for this book that I have two other books already half written!

Rebecca :
Do check out my review of Ann Crittenden's The Price of Motherhood - it'll make your hair curl!

Rebecca Brown
(Published 02/22/04)