Customer Reviews

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

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Forget Sylvia Ann Hewlett's "Creating a Life" and the furor it has spawned with its encouragement that professional women marry and start their families early. THIS is the book that deserved a TIME magazine cover story, and the fact that Hewlett's book has overshadowed Crittenden's in publicity speaks volumes about our culture's unwillingness to address the bottom line about motherhood. Quite simply, "The Price of Motherhood" answers all the questions about women's reluctance to start families when they are younger and more reproductively healthy. Doing so puts them at a hugely greater risk for poverty, as Crittenden so painstakingly documents in this book. Our nation expects women to bear ALL the opportunity costs of motherhood, without providing any sort of support or safety net for those who undertake the public service of raising and educating the next generation of law-abiding, productive citizens. "The Price of Motherhood" provides the evidence to support what we all know to be true, on some level. Trust me -- I'm the mother of a 4-year-old with another baby on the way, and even with my graduate degree, 15+ years of work experience and many professional accomplishments, I have been marginalized like you wouldn't believe since I became a mom. The sad truth is that most women in the throes of childrearing are so exhausted and dependent that they probably will never band together to become the political force that will create the pressure necessary to change this sad reality. Kudos to Crittenden, whose son is nearly grown, for returning to this issue at this point in her life (she's nearly 60) and taking a stand for the women and children -- and the society -- that will follow her.

Ann Crittenden should be thanked for producing a book relevant to sociologists, women's studies scholars, and mother's everywhere. Her prose is readable; her scholarship exhaustive and convincing. Every married woman or mother (and often those who are both) has said to herself, "There's something not fair here, I just can't put my finger on it." Well, Crittenden puts her finger on it! Corporate attitudes (from often "family friendly" companies), taxes, divorce law, and rotten child care all enter her gun sight as she explains the current situation, how we got here, and what we need to do TO MAKE IT FAIR. The answers are like the problems: complex and difficult to implement. That does not mean, however, that the solutions aren't worth attempting - they are.

I especially enjoyed the author's analysis of countries like Sweden and France and how they have handled issues surrounding parenting and work. The most interesting factor was the description from the member of Sweden's "Father Commission" as to why Sweden adopted such liberal and finanically supportive policy for parents. It seems that at the time of widesweeping legislation offering financial support to new parents, Sweden was undergoing a shortage of labor. Rather than relying on the importation of labor, Sweden realized its greatest resource were Swedish women who faced obstacles to working when their children were young - unreliable child care, no guaranteed job when they returned to work, lack of flex time, etc. Sweden's government decided to remove the obstacles, jack up financial support, offer great child care, and put in place crucial legislation encouraging parents (read "men and women") to spend time with their kids. Result: happier women, men who know what its like to be a parent and get support at work for doing it, and happy babies living in a profitable economy. Go Sweden!

If there are any drawbacks to The Price of Motherhood, it's that Crittenden has spent so much time with the topic (both researching it and personally experiencing it) that her bitterness occasionally seeps through in prose. I think her arguments might have been stronger in some instances if she had managed to root out the sarcasm or the repeated "It's not fair...". But she's right. It isn't fair. Read the book before voting!

I see that there are a number of folks who found this book not worthwhile at all. I'm sorry to see that so many of them are women. Crittenden, a former NEW YORK TIMES reporter and one-time Pulitzer Prize-nominee, knows whereof she speaks and writes. While the book is scholarly in tone and comes complete with copious footnotes, a vast bibliography, and so on, the passion in Crittenden's voice comes through loud and clear. Fact: Women who stay home with their kids are at a disadvantage financially and in terms of power. Fact: Women who stay home with their kids are punished (or simply not given the same breaks) by a tax system which apparently assents to the existence only of paid workers. Fact: This is a worldwide problem, with worldwide implications. I could go on and on about this book, but the best recommendation I can give you is to READ IT IMMEDIATELY. I have bought half a dozen copies of the book, in hard cover, because I felt so strongly about the value of what Crittenden has to say. Every woman I've given it to has thanked me and pronounced it fascinating, eye-opening and important reading. Even if you are not a woman--or not even a parent--you will learn a great deal from this extremely fine book on a neglected topic. Don't wait to read it yourself--get to it today!

Unlike MANY of the other reviews on this book here at Amazon.com, this review is NOT a discussion of my personal politics or values. It is simply thoughts on a book I've recently read.

This is an extremely eye-opening book. In fact, it manages concisely summerize many issues that families of all races and income levels think about, but may have trouble articulating and discussing. I was very pleased to see a reasonable explaination of questions that face families today...everything from finally having a basic handle on the tax code for married couples to understanding why families suffer so much impact financially when parents divorce or seperate from one another. It's also nice to see a well-balanced discussion of child-rearing vs. work...what could be done to make staying in the workforce more feasable for mothers without devaluing the work of parents who elect to stay at home.

Unlike many books onthe subject, this one doesn't pit one group of moms against one another. It's not a contecst of poor moms vs. wealthy moms, or working moms vs. at-home moms...in fact, quite the opposite. This is a book about what all families and parents (female and male...) have IN COMMON with one another and should be working as a group to understand. Her suggestions and insights regarding tax relief for families and children, work incentives, early childhood education options, paid parental leave, etc., explain how these issues impact each of us directly, even if we don;t have kids.

I can understand why so many poeple wrote in with such vituperative reviews of this book. It's really hard and scary to have your presumptions about something as basic as family money and our kids turned upside-down. Having a vitriolic response is, for some of us, the only response. Hopefully, the vast majority of the readers who sit down with this book will be able to see past their own fears and petty politics and see the really big picture of Ms. Crittenden's book. Reagardless of which side of the polictical isle you sit on, this book is a wonderful study of mother's work in America and where it will lead our children in the 21st century.

As a stay at home mother of 5 the title of this book intrigued me. I was interested in learning the history of how motherhood came to be valued so little by modern America. And I hoped for affirmation of my life's hardest and most important work: mothering. The beginning of the book seemed to offer both. I could relate to the instant loss of success and credibility when, despite economic and social pressures, I left my professional career to stay home with my first baby. One of my husband's married male cousins actually asked me a chapter question, "So....exactly what DO you do all day at home?"

As I read through the first half of the book I became angry at maternal social injustices and was inspired by the baby-passion that encourages mothers to raise their own children anyway. But in the second half of the book I felt profound disappointment. Ms. Crittenden seems to come to the conclusion that any form of motherhood is worthy of financial remuneration, it matters not if a mother's child is in round-the-clock day care. The myths of feminism's working woman are (inadvertently?) reinforced over the unrecognized contributions and sacrifices of career mothering.

There are however seeds of a greater truth scattered within the pages of this book: a mother breastfeeding her baby, a mother caring for an aging family member, a mother who manages the household, volunteers her time, and homeschools her children should be acknowledged and valued (page 66). We know the price of motherhood, the rewards are less understood, and a deeper question remains. How can we, as a society, best support, protect and value motherhood?

"Labor is prior to, and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves a much higher consideration." Abraham Lincoln

Families all over the U.S. are straining to provide good care for their children and manage to handle their paying jobs too. Since women, especially mothers, are by far responsible for most child care, women suffer most from the constant battle to balance workplace responsibilities and important family responsibilities. This includes women doing all kinds of family care: those with children, elderly relatives, or handicapped family members.

Ann Crittenden has studied the situation for families in the United States during the last several years, and in a clear, easy-to-read style she explains why American mothers struggle so much harder than mothers in other developed countries to meet their family obligations, and how we got to this position. She shows how U.S. institutions have repeatedly refused to support American mothers in the family care work they do, with the result that American mothers are left to shoulder alone the burden of bearing and training the children, the very essence of tomorrow's civilization. Mothers are expected to provide this labor for free, and suffer severe economic disadvantage in doing so by an establishment that mostly pretends the mother's labor does not really amount to much work of consequence.

Ann's book springs from her own experiences as a mother, and her book is one with which every mother will identify! Good Reading!

In The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued, Ann Crittenden draws on her own personal experience as a mother and the experiences of hundreds of mothers around the country, as well as recent research in economics, history, child development and family law with respect to motherhood. She concludes that even though the concept of motherhood is considered sacred in this country, women who bear and raise children are consistently undervalued, uncompensated, disregarded in many circles and most vulnerable to the possibility of living in poverty if they divorce or are widowed.

Crittenden contends that women who have children in the United States must sacrifice at least some level of professional advancement, societal status, leisure time, and economic security and/or independence. She believes that college-educated women, who have (or had) the best shot of "having it all", lose the most. If a highly educated women leaves the workforce to have a child, Crittenden cites data that estimates she will lose about a million dollars in lifetime earnings. She will not be economically compensated for parenting and running a household; she will receive no social security benefits for the work she does at home; she faces an inflexible job market that offers minimal opportunity for adequately paid part-time work; and if she divorces, most state laws will deny her family assets because divorce laws do not count unpaid work.

As a career women who found that she couldn't have it all once she had a baby, Crittenden was inspired to write The Price of Motherhood after feeling continually marginalized because she had chosen to devote her energy to raising her son. She points out that she and the millions of mothers around the country are undertaking the single most important task in America: raising the citizens of tomorrow. Human capital is our most important resource in terms of our current and future national prosperity, and she labors over the idea that the work of primary care givers, namely mothers, is not counted in the GDP, or any other national economic calculation. Assigning no material value to caregiving hurts everyone - working and non-working mothers, fathers and especially children. She cites research suggesting that when women have access to resources, their children are directly affected in a positive way.

Crittenden asserts that all things being equal, the wage gap between men and women barely exists today. However, the gap is wide and long between women with children and women without. Huge numbers of women are deciding not to have children, and Crittenden believes this can largely be attributed to the high price of motherhood. She calls it the "mommy tax" - even if a woman does return to work after having children, her earning potential and economic security is seriously diminished because of how our society undervalues the needs of working mothers. The laws in this country contribute to the risks that women take when they have children: the U.S. is one of only six countries in the world that does not provide paid parental leave; stay-at-home mothers earn nothing towards social security for their work (whereas professional nannies do); more than one-third of divorced mothers have to go on welfare because the state laws do not recognize the cost of being the primary care-giver; and only eight states have laws prohibiting discrimination against parents in the workplace.

Crittenden proposes several changes at the familial, societal and legal levels to "bring children up without putting women down." These include giving every parent the right to a year's paid leave; shortening the workweek; providing equal pay and benefits for equal part-time work; eliminating discrimination against parents in the workplace; equalizing social security for spouses; offering work-related social insurance programs to all at- home parents; providing universal preschool for all three- and four-year-olds; stopping the taxation of mothers more than anyone else; providing free health coverage for all children and their primary caregivers; adding unpaid household labor to the Gross Domestic Product; transferring all responsibility for post-divorce payments to a single federal agency; providing community support for parents and parental education; and expanding the concept of diversity to include people with caregiving experience.

In this well-written, passionate, and fascinating book, Ann Crittenden challenges us all to look at the subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which we make life harder than it should be for parents (especially moms). So many of us care enormously about both our families and our work, and too many of us are forced to choose between the two, to either drop out of the workforce when we have kids or to work ridiculous hours that don't allow us to be there for our families. As Crittenden points out, with paid parental leave, a fairer income tax structure that doesn't penalize spouses who work, more high-quality and affordable child care options, and a richer array of flexible and part-time work options, many more women would choose to and would be able to combine work and family, which would be better for women, for families, and for society as a whole. Crittenden notes that feminism largely succeeded in opening up many previously male fields to women, but only if women will play by the male rules (with the result that the gap between mothers' and childless women's wages is now larger than the gap between childless women's and men's wages). Shouldn't the next task be to transform the workplace so that it works better for everyone, including parents? So many other countries have done this -- why not the US?

Crittenden is sure to be criticized by some as another rich whiner who chose to have a child, can afford not to work full-time, and yet isn't happy with the results of her choices. This, I believe, is a superficial and short-sighted criticism. Crittenden counters that choosing to have a child is not like choosing to have a pet. Today's children will be supporting these nay-sayers in their old age. We all have a stake in making sure that families are supported and that children get the best start in life that they possibly can. Crittenden's book is a must-read.

I am a career woman who is about to become a mother for the first time. This book is supremely relevant to me for a couple of reasons:

1- All of a sudden, I now face what countless other working women have, rich, middle or poor alike: You barely get to know your baby and get your body somewhat over the delivery shock when your 'paid maternity leave/allowed short term disability' (you can't get the full STD unless some huge medical reason that has to be proven and approved goes through) from work is up (if you want to extend that, it's out of your pocket...unpaid "leave of absence" and burning up your entire vacation bank). For someone who has been at the same organization for 6+ years, doing at least 50% of travel for the last 4 years, it's pretty paltry. Yes I understand there is a business to run, but expecting women and babies to bounce back and resume 'normal lives' in a month and a half is a stretch. I don't need a full year off, but a 6 month total would give me enough time to prepare mentally and physically to resume my work and for my baby to be more of an individual, ready to assume some independence.

2- The lack of quality, qualified services to assist in raising children. It does take a village, and America's society, which is usually dispersed from close familial ties, could certainly benefit. Only those of us who make enough can afford a nanny, but what about the rest of mothers? Their options are very limited.

3 - Stay at home moms do get the short end of the stick if society does not value raising children. Couple that with deadbeat husbands who divorce them and don't do their share...why are they left to fall through the cracks? Lip service is paid left and right by government and a lot of churches to "Family Values"...but when it comes down to it, are they really there to help when things go wrong?

I am blessed in that I have a supportive, loving husband who helps with the running of the household. As a business owner, he also has more flexibility in his day that I would have. But what about fellow mothers who have spouses that don't do their part (or worse, expect her to be a June Cleaver) or whose workday is just as inflexible as hers?

People who accuse Ann of being a WASP whiner have got it dead wrong. Look around at the rise of mental illness, child abuse, effects of poverty and emotional problems that find an outlet in violence in America. I don't need to cite examples, because unfortunately, there have been a lot in the last two years that have made national news. We are paying a very high price for undervaluing mothers work and not creating a system that values the raising of happy, healthy children.

Why Motherhood is the Most Important, and Least Valued, Job in America. This economics journalist draws from hundreds of interviews & years of research in child development, history, law & economics to argue the case for the most dependent & under-rated laborers in the world.

"Not again!" I hear you mutter, "Another Feminist ranting & raving about how downtrodden are women who choose to become wives, who choose to become mothers." Well they are, legally & financially! What price motherhood? Dare we count the cost?

The costs of motherhood are apparent everywhere: college-educated women pay a "mommy tax" in lost income when they have a child; family law deprives mothers of financial equality within marriage; childcare & elder care(essentially female fields of work) are not figured into the GNP; at-home mothers are not counted in the labor force & social security simple ignores mothers & housewives - at best offering them half of their husbands' pensions in old age.

With chapters entitled: The Invention of the Unproductive Housewife; The Mommy Tax; The Dark Little Secret of Family Life; What Is A Wife Worth?; Who Really Owns the Family Wage?; Who Pays for the Kids?; The Welfare State Versus a Caring State; The Toughest Job You'll Ever Love; An Accident Waiting to Happen & It Was Her Choice, Ann Crittenden takes us through the maze of innuendo, law, history & prejudice that plague women who become full time wives & mothers & casts them as economic untouchables.

A very good read & one I hope everyone contemplating marriage & parenthood would read to see how they, in their private relationship, can balance the books so that both partners & parents are of equal value, to themselves & their society. Do check out my eInterview with Ann Crittenden - an interviewer's dream: she takes the questions & runs! I think you'll like it!