Who's Being Selfish?

book review by B.C. Brown

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

Ann Crittenden
2001, Metropolitan Books

Women without children often find themselves judged, either directly or through more subtle suggestion, as selfish. As one of these women, I once tried to piece together a defense something like this: women get instant positive feedback for having children, wanting to reproduce is an ego thing, and the population's depleting the planet as it is, so I am not the one who is selfish, people who have children are! But I always knew these arguments rang rather hollow. Even Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature, allows us one child.

And I always knew that women who had children were not selfish, that they truly are self-sacrificing. Ann Crittenden, in The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued, sets out to quantify this. Here are some of the things mothers offer:

• The continuation of the species
• The raising of the future workforce, which will be paying the current generation's social security
• The cooking, feeding, cleaning, counseling, training, disciplining, chauffeuring and basic "being there" that goes into the raising of that future workforce.

These things take time. These things are rarely paid. These things are usually a second job. That someone is doing this unpaid, second job is good for the rest of us.

And yet we automatically look like more dedicated workers if we never have to leave to take care of sick children. We look easier to promote. And if a mother finds she just can't do it all and drops out of the "workforce" to pay more attention to her second job, then we don't have to compete with her at all. She disappears.

"Didn't you used to be Ann Crittenden?" the author was once asked at a party after she left the New York Times to spend more time with her child.

The mother loses both her salary and the money she was paying into social security. This is part of the reason there are so many older women living in poverty in this country.

Another reason is the way women lose out in a divorce. The marriage is a "partnership" while things are going well. It might make more sense for Dad to be in the workplace earning the big bucks while Mom takes care of their household and raises their children. (And remember, there's always lip service about how important this work is.) But presto, if things fall apart, then suddenly she is after "his" money if she wants her fair share from the arrangement--even though who she'll be spending it on is their children, who suddenly are transformed into "hers."

Or say the marriage is going well. It's nice and egalitarian. Her career is as important as his and Dad even wants to be more involved in the childrearing. Good luck finding a way to cut those hours back to do it.

Family-friendly jobs don't exist in corporate America. It's the forty hour-plus norm or it's a "part-time" gig with low pay and few benefits.

Following are a couple of tips I gathered from Crittenden:

• If you want to have a baby, join or have your spouse join the military. The child care is among the best in the country. The military knows the value of human life and treats child caregivers as professionals by training and paying them well. (Elsewhere in the US she calls child care "An Accident Waiting to Happen" and her chapter by that title will make you weep.)
• If you want to have a baby, move to Europe. Every French mother receives free health care and a cash allowance for each child, until the child turns three. (At which point free public nursery school kicks in, and of course there's universal medical care.) Women in France also get a year of paid maternity leave. If you have a husband who'd like to be involved in the childrearing, try Sweden, where men typically take a couple of months of (paid) paternity leave and can work 80 percent time to be more involved with their new families.

WWW Washington Free Press