Off To Work She Should Go
Linda Hirshman
(New York Times Op-Ed)
THE United States Bureau of Labor Statistics recently published its
long-awaited study, "Trends in Labor Force Participation of Married
Mothers of Infants." "In recent years," the number crunchers reported, "the labor force participation of married mothers, especially those
with young children, has stopped its advance."
Sixty percent
of married mothers of preschool children are now in the work force,
four percentage points fewer than in 1997. The rate for married mothers
of infants fell by about six percentage points, to 53.5 percent. The
bureau further reports that the declines "have occurred across all
educational levels and, for most groups, by about the same magnitude."
In
sum, sometime well before the 2000 recession, wives with infants and
toddlers began leaving the work force. And they stayed out even after
the economy began to revive.
For several years, experts have been
arguing about the "opt-out" revolution -- the perception that there has
been an exodus of young mothers from the work force. Heather Boushey of
the Center for Economic and Policy Research called the opt-out
revolution a myth, and asserted that married mothers don’t drop out any
more than other women in a bad economy. The new report is strong
evidence that something really is going on.
Why are married
mothers leaving their jobs? The labor bureau’s report includes some
commonsense suggestions, but none that fully explains the situation.
New mothers with husbands in the top 20 percent of earnings work least,
the report notes. As Ernest Hemingway said, the rich do have more
money. So they also have more freedom to leave their jobs. But why do
they take the option? It’s easier in the short term, sure, but it’s
easier to forgo lots of things, like going to college or having
children at all. People don’t -- nor should they -- always do the easier
thing.
The authors also speculate that the pressure of working
and running a household is great. They do not say, however, that
working hours have increased as participation has declined. Educated
women, they report, work 42.2 hours a week on average and those with
professional degrees, 45 -- hardly the "80-hour week" of legend.
Poorer
mothers can less afford child care, and because they earn less, their
opportunity costs of not working are lower, the authors suggest. But
for these women, lost income cuts deeper. And this factor, like the
average number of hours worked, has not changed since 1997.
What
has changed in the last decade is that the job of motherhood has ramped
up. Mothers today spend more time on child care than women did in 1965,
a time when mothers were much less likely to have paying jobs, family
scholars report.
The pressure to increase mothering is
enormous. For years, women have been on the receiving end of negative
messages about parenting and working. One conservative commentator said
the lives of working women added up to "just a pile of pay stubs." When
the National Institute of Child Health reported recently that long
hours in day care added but a single percentage point to the
still-normal range of rambunctious behavior in children, newspaper
headlines read, "Day Care, Behavior Problems Linked in Study."
Should
we care if women leave the work force? Yes, because participation in
public life allows women to use their talents and to powerfully affect
society. And once they leave, they usually cannot regain the income or
status they had. The Center for Work-Life Policy, a research
organization founded by Sylvia Ann Hewlett of Columbia, found that
women lose an average of 18 percent of their earning power when they
temporarily leave the work force. Women in business sectors lose 28
percent.
And despite the happy talk of "on ramps" back in, only
40 percent of even high-powered professionals get back to full-time
work at all.
That the most educated have opted out the most
should raise questions about how our society allocates scarce
educational resources. The next generation of girls will have a greatly
reduced pool of role models.
But what is to be done?
Organizations like Moms Rising and the Mothers Movement Online have
stepped up the pressure for reforms like flexible work hours and paid
parental leave. Such changes probably would help lower-income women in
the most unforgiving workplaces. But they are unlikely to affect the
behavior of the highly educated women with the highest opt-out rates.
We
could make an effort to change men’s attitudes. Sociologists have found
that mothers (rich and poor) still do twice the housework and child
care that fathers do, and even the next generation of males say they
won’t sacrifice work for home. But in the short term, it might be
easier to change the tax code.
In most American marriages, wives
earn less than their husbands. Since the tax code encourages joint
filing (by making taxes lower for those who do), many couples figure
that the "extra" dollars the wife brings in will be piled on top of the
husband’s income and taxed at the highest rates, close to 50 percent,
according to estimates made by Ed McCaffery, a tax professor at the
University of Southern California. Considering the cost of child care,
couples often conclude that her working adds nothing to the family
treasury.
If married couples were taxed as the separate income
earners they often are, women would be liberated from some of the
pressure to reduce their "labor force participation," as the labor
bureau would say.
Labor statistics are always couched in such dry
language, but it reveals a powerful reality: working mothers, rich and
poor, struggle with their competing commitments. Now that we have seen
the reality, it is time to address it.
Linda Hirshman is the author of "Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World."
My Thoughts:
This piece is so condescending and completely seems to miss the point.
"New mothers with husbands in the top 20 percent of earnings work least, the report notes. As Ernest Hemingway said, the rich do have more money. So they also have more freedom to leave their jobs. But why do they take the option? It's easier in the short term, sure, but it's easier to forgo lots of things, like going to college or having children at all. People don't, nor should they, always do the easier thing."
Why are there more professionally educated women, married to men in the top 20% of income leaving work? This doesn't seem like a hard question to answer-- because THEY CAN. They don't financially have to go to work, why do 2 jobs when you can only do one? Is the author overestimating the number of people/women who love their jobs? Is she underestimating the number of people/women who believe that raising children IS A JOB and a hard one and one that is very fulfilling and very necessary? There are many families that choose to go with less in the way of material stuff in order to have a stay at home parent because they believe it's important and because they want to-- if they didn't think raising kids was important, then maybe they wouldn't have had them.
Which brings me to another question, should good/ excellent child care be cheap?
The more education and skill a job demands, the more money the person filling that job expects to receive. The idea that a double-income family should be able to pay for childcare and still come out ahead is predicated on the assumption that whoever is making less money (usually the woman) should still earn MORE than the whoever they're paying to care for their child while they are at work. Which is predicated on the belief that childcare is not a job requiring skill and education. Which is crap.
Sure, there are many women out there who do find blending working out of the home with being a mother to be more fulfilling (there are certainly a lot of men who do, or who don't even feel like staying at home full time is an option) and it's fine for them to seek alternate caregivers for their children, but the family shouldn't expect to do it on the cheap. Devaluing alternate caregivers, devalues the primary ones, who are almost always the mother.
"Should we care if women leave the work force? Yes, because participation in public life allows women to use their talents and to powerfully affect society."
I have two problems with this statement:
First, that the stated reason we should care if women leave the work force is NOT because it statistically puts women and children in a financially vulnerable position (if you don't know what I'm talking about, read The Price of Motherhood), it's because they are no longer participating in public life and powerfully affecting society. Second, the implication here is that being a mother means that you don't participate in "public life," don't "use your talents," and that you don't "powerfully affect society." WHAT? Is the author clear that society is made up of individuals and that every single individual out there has a mother? I don't want to go all Whitney-Houston-I-believe-that-children-are-our-future on her ass, but children actually ARE the future and raising them to be caring, educated, and evolved people takes talent and powerfully affects society.
(And this is not to say that there's one specific way to raise children well, everyone is different, in some couples it might actually be the man who is better suited to nurturing young children, but, DAMMIT, someone needs to take care of the kids and in a perfect world it would be someone who is "educated" and "talented.")
"That the most educated have opted out the most should raise questions about how our society allocates scarce educational resources. The next generation of girls will have a greatly reduced pool of role models."
This is probably the most insulting line in the piece.
What if, WHAT IF the most educated are opting out specifically because they are educated and they want to use their skills and talents to raise their kids?
And WHAT IF the next generation of girls grow up with well-educated mothers? What exactly is it that the author believes women should be role-modeling? Working themselves to the bone to try and maintain a household and get ahead in a system that devalues them to begin with, and that, for the sake of convenience and money, fails to recognize the direct contribution mothers make to the work force? (I.E. stable, well-adjusted, well-educated kids grow up to be good employees, leaders, etc.)
WHEN WILL THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT REALIZE THAT YOU DON'T MAKE PROGRESS BY PRESSURING WOMEN INTO CONFORMING TO A SYSTEM SET UP LARGELY BY MEN? You make progress by valuing the unique contributions that women bring, you make progress by valuing mothers because the reality is women are the ones who bring forth human life and all of the good and bad that entails-- but the "bad" should be nausea and swollen feet and sleepless nights, not losing out on promotions because they can't stay at the office until 11pm (because maybe NO ONE should stay at work that late) or being at much greater risk of poverty following a divorce.
ETA Also, reading articles from women like this makes me wonder what their version of an ideal world would be-- 100% of women with infants and preschoolers in the work force? So... in that version, who, again, is taking care of the kids? Oh, wait, they're paying someone else to do it, right? So, wait, if you're being PAID to take care of children you are "in the work force" (which, according to the author, seems to be a good thing), but if you do it "for free," you are not "in the work force" and that is bad? Again, I have to go with Ann Crittenden on this one, MAYBE the answer is that we as a society SHOULD pay mothers for their contribution.
Thanks to T450 for the article.
)
). I don't know. It was well done and beautifully shot, but I wasn't as moved as I expected to be. Maybe it was more shocking and moving for older generations who couldn't conceive that two men could actually love each other (as opposed to just having a sexual relationship). Of course, I was breaking down boxes and trying to get the living room in better shape while I watched it, so maybe I was too distracted. It did give me a better appreciation of Heath Ledger as an actor, though.
Recent Comments