review: The Price of Motherhood

Much like buses, in this blog you could be waiting around for book reviews with none looming on the horizon (as in September) and then several come along all at one (as in October - November). Perhaps this says something about the time I have to devote to reading relatively lengthy books on feminism and motherhood, perhaps on how alert my brain is after a day’s paid and unpaid work. As my current reading material - Sarah Hrdy’s Mother Nature - is literally verging on encyclopaedic this might be the last review for a wee while. 

Ann Crittenden’s The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued (2001) is one of the few books I have read - on any subject - that pretty much lives up to the hype on the cover: ‘a landmark book,’ ‘powerful and important’, and ‘a scathing indictment of policies that cheat mothers’. Naomi Wolf could do worse than have a squizz at this to get some tips on powerful ways to combine the personal and political (although, to be fair, I guess she probably has).  Unlike Kunin’s book, which I reviewed last week, Crittenden's book has a resonance beyond the borders of the United States. In the US, the institutional biases towards mothers may be writ large (in paid employment, in divorce, in single parenting, in tax rules), but they are present to some degree in other so-called developed countries as well. Not least in the ways at which the devaluing  - or, more accurately, the non-valuing - of a mother’s unpaid work institutionalises gender inequity and socio-economic disadvantage.

Crittenden’s book, reissued last year, is based on five years of research in economics, history, child development, family law, public policy, demography, anthropology, evolutionary psychology and on field interviews with a range of parents. It is also based on her own experiences of the acute disempowerment she felt on having children. She writes:

This is also a work of the heart, growing out of my own experiences as a professional woman and a mother. As a beneficiary of the women’s movement, for years I lived the unencumbered life of a journalist; one of the boys in a gender-neutral environment that represented enormous progress for women ... [A] surprise came when I realised [after having a baby] how little my former world seemed to understand, or care, about the complex reality I was discovering. The dominant culture  of which I had been a part considered child-rearing unskilled labor, if it considered child-rearing at all. And no-one was stating the obvious: if human abilities are the ultimate fount of economic progress, as many economists now agree, and if those abilities are nurtured (or stunted) in the early years, then mothers and other care-givers of the young are the most important producers in the economy. They do, literally, have the most important job in the world. (pp 10-11)

While I wonder just how ‘gender-neutral’ her previous work environment really was - it’s not like women without children don’t face any barriers in their careers - Crittenden’s outrage struck a chord. I read on, intrigued. 

First of all, Crittenden traces the disappearance of women’s ‘work’ during the nineteenth century, as workplaces began to be increasingly located outside the home. So far, so obvious. What Crittenden also traces is attitudinal shifts and the specific locatable moments at which these seismic changes occurred. Around the middle of the nineteenth-century, for example, the developing national census began to classify the occupations of individuals within households rather than treating households as a single economic unit. As part of this shift, household labour (‘housekeeping’) was re-classified as ‘unproductive’ and separate from ‘productive labour’. Mothers ‘keeping house’ for their own families (unproductive) were distinguished from women keeping house for wages (productive).  This shift in the way a mother’s work was conceptualised meant that by the turn of the twentieth century, women and children were both considered as dependents or, more specifically, as economic liabilities rather than assets. Despite some differences, this trend manifested across the United States, in Britain and in Australia (and, I would guess, a number of other countries too). 

And, in the 1920s, the gendered definitions of productivity became enshrined in international economic instruments, specifically in the measure that became known as Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Significantly, GDP only measured goods and services that were sold; by excluding ‘non-productive’ work from the national wealth ‘almost all the activities of married women were omitted from the scorecard of capitalism.’ (p 65). Crittenden does acknowledge that this has more recently begun to change, not least in terms of contemporary environmental problems (e.g. how do you calculate the value of clean water?), the insights of feminist economics, and a deeper understanding of what is called - a little chillingly, I think - human capital.   

Crittenden cites with approval Marilyn Waring’s call to unpaid caregivers to tell census-takers that they are unpaid workers rather than ‘unemployed’; she traces how a campaign to do just that in Canada in the 1990s led to changes in the way unpaid labour in the home was counted in the census. During this campaign, Carol Lees, its principal organiser, encountered resistance from women’s groups who apparently did not agree with her child-care policy (which, according to her, is ‘to value it wherever it occurs, in or out of the home’ p 83). By the late 1990s, a number of countries had begun to collect data on unpaid labour. These shifts started to reveal the ‘free ride’ most societies were getting on the back of this unpaid work: ‘the entire society benefits from well-reared children, without sharing more than a fraction of the costs of producing them. And that free ride on female labor is enforced by every major institution, starting with the workplace’ (p 86). In neo-liberal economies particularly, children are thus seen as an individual ‘choice’ rather than a social good (much less a community responsibility). This rationale drives such practices as expensive child care of variable quality, limited financial benefits for families, a demonise-the-parents approach to all manner of anti-social behaviours, and humiliating reckonings of what a wife is worth in divorce settlements (including child support payments). Cue a thousand comedy routines concerning blood-sucking former spouses...

She closes her analysis by setting out a programme for business, government, and the community, the ‘free riders’ on mothers’ unpaid labour who reap the benefits from well-nurtured children while contributing little to the cost.

Throughout the book, Crittenden doesn’t shy away from the fact that some early feminists bought into the productive / unproductive distinction and played a role in the perpetuation of inequity: she documents a 1909 debate between Charlotte Perkins Gilman (who described the vast majority of women as ‘unproductive parasites’) and Anna Howard Shaw (who argued that a mother’s role in the home should be compensated), as marking a crucial turning point in the US feminist agenda. Gilman, she argues, saw the shift in women’s status as requiring the overthrow of the patriarchal family as an economic unit to emancipate women, revealing some degree of contempt for the way in which a number of her contemporaries actually spent their time. 

Crittenden concludes: 

As that evening in New York illustrated, at the turn of the twentieth century, the women’s movement contained two contradictory strands: one that denigrated women’s role within the family, and one that demanded recognition and remuneration for it .... For the rest of the twentieth century, the women’s movement followed the first path, and it led to innumerable great victories. But in choosing that  path, many women’s advocates accepted the continued devaluation of motherhood, thereby guaranteeing that feminism would not resonate with millions of wives and mothers. (p 63)

I’m usually a little suspicious of sweeping statements, but it’s nonetheless hard to escape Crittenden’s conclusion. It bristles behind every cry of outrage from previously career-minded new mothers (‘why didn’t anyone tell me?’), some of which are either overtly or covertly contained in the recent outpourings of ‘mummy-literature’: from the sardonic critiques of coffee-groups, to the more personal memoir, to the political polemic, to the historical analysis of motherhood as institution, to the exposition of ‘natural’ motherhood, to the mummy blog. It’s hard not to read it into the statistic of approximately 30 per cent of well-educated middle class women in ‘developed’ countries who are apparently choosing the ‘nuclear option’ of not having children. It’s hard not to read it into the so-called mummy wars between ‘stay-at-home’ and working mothers. It’s hard not to read it in the failure of most governments to provide adequate support for families particularly in early childhood, and in businesses who bemoan family-friendly policies.  It’s hard not to read it in the overwhelming evidence - which Crittenden assembles in subsequent chapters - that those who look after children are not only poorly paid but lack status, have limited political clout, and pay plenty for their ‘labours of love’. 

Isn’t it time that governments, businesses, and communities started sharing more of the costs of raising a child, instead of just reaping the benefits?

terrible twos?

My baby is nearly two. ‘Ah, the terrible twos!’ people say knowingly, leaving me wondering what we might be in for. It’s true that, as my baby is getting older and becoming increasingly independent, we have had some moments where our desires didn’t exactly coincide (translation: she has a big meltdown if we want her to have a bath and she is busy doing something else). But - and here I should be trying to find as much wood to touch as possible - so far these meltdowns have been few and short. (I suspect this might be the moment when parents with older children are starting to think ‘mmhmmmm...just wait’). 

Thinking that it might be a good idea to get prepared for what the next few years might hold, I talked to our local Plunket nurse about managing behaviour (translation: what should I do if my baby turns into a wailing banshee in the middle of the supermarket?)  Before offering some useful tips, she said that part of early childhood development is about learning how to control strong emotions in a healthy way. She also said that so-called tantrums are a form of communication: sometimes toddlers act out because they are frustrated at not being able to express what they want in a way their parents can understand (and parents can get frustrated at not being able to understand too). If a child can speak well from an early age, they are less likely to have meltdowns because they can’t be understood. On the other hand, they can have meltdowns when their wants are understood and not supplied (for example, when their winning argument about not wanting to have a bath is ignored)

Whether it is failure to be heard and understood or failure to have one’s desires fulfilled, ‘tantrums’ (starting to really not like that word) are an expression of frustration, of being thwarted, and of being ignored. In other words, the kids are angry.

As an emotion, anger seems to have a bad rap. Anger is conventionally equated with overweening aggression and violence: at best, it should be ‘managed’, at worst ‘suppressed’. Modern psychologists, however, apparently view anger as a primary, natural, and mature emotion experienced by virtually all humans at times, and as something that has functional value for survival. Anger is thought to mobilize psychological resources for corrective action. It is uncontrolled anger that is the problem. 

British psychotherapist Sue Parker Hall, for example, argues that anger originates at age 18 months to 3 years (those ‘terrible twos’) to provide the motivation and energy for a child who is beginning to separate from their carers and assert their differences: it therefore emerges at the same time as thinking is developing.

As with much else, anger is also gendered: girls and women more commonly display passive angry behaviours such as sulking (another of my pet hate words), vindictive gossiping, defeatism and self-blame, while boys and men more commonly display aggressive behaviours, such as destructiveness and bullying (I am generalising here, of course: different people can display different combinations of passive and aggressive behaviours).  

Why might girls and women engage in more passive angry behaviours? Bit of a no-brainer this, really: because, more broadly, girls and women are not encouraged to be assertive and direct in the expression of their feelings. Instead of openly addressing people’s hurtful behaviour with them, girls and women are taught to shun them and b*tch (no coincidence that this is a pejorative word for women) behind their back. Instead of raising their voice and telling people what to do, girls and women are meant to keep quiet and get on with it, leading to the development of resentment (and rough shaking of kitchen implements). Cue an unsuspecting man saying ‘what’s wrong?’, to which a woman classically replies ‘nothing’ (in a way that indicates that everything is wrong and she’s really angry about it). He will shrug his shoulders, go back to what he’s doing, causing yet more anger .... and a million comedy routines are born.

This is by no means to say that women should adopt more active forms of anger if this means adopting aggressive, threatening, intimidating and violent behaviour. Rather, the ideal for both genders is to speak up, say what’s bugging them, and work through it constructively. It’s the speaking up about what’s bothering you that can be the hardest thing to do, especially when it seems trivial. Both men and women, boys and girls - and I include myself in this - are works in progress when it comes to managing anger successfully.

Here Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has in the last fortnight shown the way in terms of directly expressing her anger with the person concerned. Whatever her political record (and, as with any male politician, there is plenty with which to take issue), Gillard demonstrated her anger by standing up, naming the misogyny and sexism in public life, and shaming the behaviour of those responsible. That has to be a positive step in tackling sexism in public life, and it’s no wonder it struck a chord with hundreds of thousands of women worldwide.

But what about social anger? Who could deny that anger is a force for social change, both positive and negative? As I mentioned in a previous post, if ‘first wave’ feminists weren’t angry about their lack of economic or political clout and sought to do something about it, then a whole lot of women would be a lot worse off. This is true in any number of movements.

Women, particularly mothers, are still angry. In the 1990s, a Women’s Anger Study found that there were three common roots to women's anger: powerlessness, injustice and the irresponsibility of other people. Another study found that parenthood exacerbated anger in women: ‘women have higher levels of anger than men, ... each additional child in the household increases anger, and ... children increase anger more for mothers than for fathers.’

The researchers found that this ‘anger gap’ was because:

Parenthood introduces two types of objective stressors into an individual's life: economic strains and the strains associated with child care. Women are exposed to both types of strain more than men. Economic hardship, child-care responsibilities in the household, and difficulties arranging and paying for child care all significantly increase anger, and explain the effects of gender and parenthood on anger. In support of a gender inequality perspective, we find that mothers have the highest levels of anger because of economic inequality and the inequitable distribution of parental responsibilities. Mothers also are more likely to express their anger than others.

When it comes to feminism, women and anger have an uneasy relationship. Anger has ignited many a social movement, but can also be the stick used to beat those who would strive for change. Former US ambassador and Vermont governor Madeleine M. Kunin writes about anger in her 2012 book The New Feminist Agenda: Defining the Next Revolution for Women, Work, and Family. In it, she quotes from an interview she conducted with Anita Hill. Hill says:

‘We have to be allowed to be angry.’ // Women are hesitant to be angry because ‘they don’t want to be labelled femi-Nazis,’ she says. ‘Feminism has been caricatured to [such] a degree that it takes anger as a political tool away from them.’ (p 254)

Kunin agrees, but cautions, ‘if anger is too severe it may result in despair, the belief that nothing we can do will change anything. Or extreme anger may result in violence  - the belief that the only way to change anything is tear the existing system down and start from scratch.’ While Kunin thinks that there is a place for this kind of anger - e.g. in protests against totalitarian regimes - she believes that ‘change best occurs when we can express controlled targeted anger focussed on a new vision of society’.

Change can also occur by recognising that anger, particularly in women, is a healthy response to injustice, irresponsibility and powerlessness. If women learn to both express and channel their anger to address those things then doesn’t that also help role-model to their children - particularly their girls - how to best articulate their anger rather than suppress it?  

Speaking for myself, one of the things that drove me to start this blog was anger. I might not have put it that way when I started out, rather viewing it as a creative and intellectual outlet, and something to alleviate the boredom of being stuck at home with a baby all day. But it was also a means of venting some frustration: both with the pinkarama that seems to pass for girlhood these days, and with the lack of recognition and respect for the work involved in stay-at-home-parenting.

Similarly, the frustrations of toddlers are also about powerlessness and injustice (or at least perceived injustice: ‘You want me to have bath? But I want to keep riding my bike! That’s so unfair!’). It might not be quite in the same league as movements for social change - and I don’t wish to trivialise those by the comparison - but there are power relations within a family to which toddlers are on some level responding.   

Bearing that in mind, I’m going to try my best to empathise more next time a battle of wills is brewing at bath-time ...