How to Fix the Relentlessness of Modern Parenthood
It starts with acknowledging the national economic value of “woman’s work” and demystifying motherhood.
In America we like to forget the reality of working mothers. Instead, we tend to imagine “good” mothers as unfailingly devoted to the all-consuming task of caring for others. American motherhood is celebrated in visions of a stay-at-home mom whose life moves to the rhythm of her kid’s needs. Always present. Always solicitous. Steady and unwavering in her focus on her children’s and family’s slightest need.
This ideal completely lacks any allowance for a woman’s own selfhood. It obliterates the needs of the female adult while also elevating her work so stratospherically high that it becomes beyond worth…to pay for such purity would be disrespectful. No. A mother’s work is beyond and above such dirty things as pay…or social security…or gasp…healthcare!
Interestingly, at the same time that it is too holy to be paid for, it is also denigrated as skill-less and unworthy of pay.
In 1963 Betty Friedan wrote, The Feminine Mystique.[1] This ground breaking and culture shifting book looked at how an idealized definition of femininity was constraining and entrapping women in certain roles and behaviors. In the ensuing years, much of that mystique has been dismantled as women stretched for liberation.
But the idealized “American Motherhood” lingers as a leftover residue of those repressive expectations. It’s now okay for a woman to wear pants. It’s now okay for a woman to work. It’s even okay for a woman to pursue a career…right up until it comes up against the idealization of American motherhood.
Once she becomes a mother, she is expected to sacrifice her own needs in the effort to single handedly produce a perfect child with a perfect childhood. Thus, an American mother’s involvement in the adult world is not really wanted, nor valued. Because, that would pull her attention from its focus on the ideal of endless self-sacrifice in the name of care giving.
Furthermore, her own life’s industry becomes of no societal value in comparison to meeting the needs of her child and family.
As her career and industry are sacrificed, so too is her financial independence and security. If she instead fights to maintain her career, interests, and income then she will often do so while still attempting to meet the silent expectations of the self-sacrificing perfect American Mother.
If my criticism of the idealized American Mother upsets you then consider: Daddyo. Fathers are not expected to give up their life’s industry to be a good father.
They need to be present, yes. They need to be loving, yes. Today’s fathers need to be involved, yes. But they are also expected to take business trips, go to the gym without kids in tow, meet friends for bowling or biking or a beer every now and then.
There is no unspoken expectation that fathers obliterate their own adult needs and contributions to the world. Sure, they need to compromise and give up a thing or two, but they are not only allowed but unconsciously expected to continue adult pursuits. Thus, while many fathers have their own stressors, they are spared the overwhelming expectations and judgmental burdens of a woman’s domestic second shift.
Our American concept of motherhood is emotionally unhealthy, and a ridiculously unrealistic reflection of modern life. Women need to work. Get paid. Strive for achievement. Build a retirement income…but also sacrifice everything for family?? Many new mothers find themselves blindsided by these crazy expectations just as they are hitting professional stride.
Women today have often worked hard to gain the skills of independence and financial solvency. But as soon as they grow a baby, they are expected to fill a role of endless under-valued emotional giving and care-taking…without pay.
So, we women are expected to be the primary influencers on the growth and worthiness of the next generation of American adults. We are expected to do it for free…out of our pure and selfless heart. Out of motherly love for our children.
Fathers love their children. Yet, they do not risk financial destitution to have children. So far our feminism has made it possible so that if mothers really want to (as in need to), they can work full-time outside the home while they give full-time within the home. Yipee! We can have it all…but only get paid less than a man…for part of it. Yipee?
And yes, I know you’re all uncomfortable now because I implied that a mother should get paid for raising our country’s next generation. But here’s the thing, we no longer live in hunter-gather societies where food and property are shared….where social structure is egalitarian as opposed to hierarchical…where babies are genuinely raised by the whole village. No, we live in a capitalistic, hierarchical, competitive world where privilege and comfort must be worked, fought, and struggled for across a very uneven playing field.
But, you want women to sacrifice all their energies and skills to raising the next generation? And you are going to take care of them how? That paternalistic marriage thing never worked and is now fully broken. We can’t count on that.
So, what do we do here in America? We expect women to seek employment for their own personal needs and dedicate themselves to a second job that requires far more hours of labor, endless on call, endless innovation, endless drudgery, endless giving…and no pay.
Wowie, we may need to work on this a bit!
Perhaps a first step is to recognize the economic value of traditional “women’s work.” The unpaid labor that is contributed by women to the economy has been called “home production.” In the 1940’s it was much debated by politicians and economist who were developing standards for measuring America’s economy. Over protests by some, it was ultimately decided not to include the domestic work of women in assessing our countries economic welfare. However, as women have entered the work force, many economists now recognize that this unpaid labor of house work, child rearing, and caregiving is in fact a vital contribution to the economics of America…and the whole blinkin’ world!
As women have moved to jobs that give them income, power, and a retirement without poverty their movement has created a giant labor vacuum at home. Thus far, families and especially women, have continued to try and fill this domestic gap while also filling new fulltime responsibilities outside the home. It is an untenable task for women, and men certainly seem incapable of handling the load as well. Which leads us to the fact that we as a nation need to ask ourselves how we will fill the very large domestic labor gap women leave behind when they seek paid work.
Frankly, we are going to have to pay for that domestic labor. Whether it’s childcare workers or eldercare specialists, these workers will want a decent wage…and benefits. As family members, we will want those workers who are caring for our loved ones to be educated, highly trained, and thus, well paid. So, why not offer the same to a stay-at-home parent? That is what extended paid parental leave really is. It’s paying American mothers and fathers to raise the next generation of American citizens.
Other western countries seem to understand that we as a society are going to have to pay someone, parents or caregivers, to raise our next generation.
We in America, however, tend to think of children as an expensive luxury that parents need to be able to afford. We believe that parents should be responsible for the cost of raising the next generation. Children are seen as either an emotional luxury for those who can afford them or as a parent’s investment in a person who will care for them. However, this attitude ignores the fact that our American society needs these children. The truth is that our children are the sum total of America’s potential.
Without children to grow into our culture, to work and invent, and create, without children America will cease to exist. All our innovations and improvements are worth nothing if we have no children to carry them forward. The basic financial future of America depends on our children. Truly our entire culture and economy would collapse without well raised, happy, educated, industrious children.
Meanwhile, the birth rate continues to decline across the westernized world. Other countries have come to realize that if they want to continue as a culture and a country that they need children. Plain and simple they need children to be born to their citizens.
These nations recognize that there is great economic value in raising children. That it is a legitimate need of the country to financially support the having and raising of kids. It cannot be viewed as a luxury and privilege of the well off. It must be recognized as a valued contribution to our society. Every child born to us is our next leader, creator, builder, thinker, citizen. Raising them well, has real value. It is our most important fundamental investment in America’s economic future and basic existence.
So, if raising children has real economic value then we might expect economists to measure these benefits. In fact, we do have modern economic models that include the contributions of unpaid domestic work in economic assessment.[2],[3] So, why wouldn’t we in America include the value of our unpaid domestic workers in the measurements of our economic dynamics? Partly, it’s because the status of women and women’s work is still rock bottom. Partly, it’s because if you can make women do two full time jobs but only get paid for one…and convince them that this is a reasonable idea…well then who needs to credit them for the extra work they do? If you give women credit for the value of their second shift then they are just going to get uppity and ask to be paid for it!
But that is exactly what we need to do in America today. We need to pay for America’s second shift. We have two parent families with two adults doing the work of at least three full-time jobs. We have single parents doing double the load. We do not have a hunter-gatherer village to help raise our next generation. And so, for American parents today, parenthood is utterly, exhaustingly, relentless. And it’s not sustainable.
Interestingly, the word “relentless” now comes up again and again in modern parenting articles. American women are burning-out and opting-out of paid work under the burden of the second shift. Covid and the unfair burden of mothers homeschooling will undoubtedly push even more women out of their jobs and professions. Working men who try to step up to the second shift often only take on a tiny portion of the load, yet still they are exhausted.
Meanwhile, the help and services that might ease parenting work are typically only available to the very well off. More and more parents pour their shrinking income into ever ballooning costs for child care. Daycare, pre-school, after school care, pick up / drop off nannies, summer camp, camp for spring break, camp for winter break, sick child care. It all becomes a ridiculous patch work of costly care and juggled schedules.
If we want parents, mothers or fathers, to consider a job that is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year…without bathroom breaks or status…well we’re gonna need to pay them and offer a few benefits. We are gonna need to create a support network that makes adulthood, parenthood, and childhood enjoyable. Which is exactly what most countries do. We’re really the only westernized country to fail our national needs by ignoring the value of parenthood and children.
Finally, there are parenting lessons for us from WWII. In America, women were desperately needed in the paid work force. We all think of Rosie the Riveter, but what about her kids? During WWII, the federal government funded daycare centers across the country so that women could work. Let’s say that again…the federal government funded daycare centers across the country so that women could work!
We want women to work now too. We need their insights and skills and education and life’s industry.
So…daycare…federally funded daycare! Good quality! Well paid! In every neighborhood. On every corner. Safe and full of adults with master’s degrees in early childhood development. Bright, light, joy filled spaces with lots of fresh air and outdoor time. So, then parents don’t have to quit work when they can’t find good care.
And it needs to be free. So, that we create for all our children the freedoms and independence that come from equity. We need to be sure that all children have access to care whether born to rich or poor parents. This creates freedom of opportunity. It creates children who are free to grow and bloom. And do we not celebrate freedom above all else in America?
Here’s what I want my kids to inherit when they have their own children needing care.
1. Eighteen months of federally paid parental leave per child that can be used any time until the child turns eight years old. Require that at least 40% of that leave must be taken by the father or second parent. This will force employers to not discriminate against women of childbearing age or those who use their parental leave. Businesses will have to adjust as they have successfully done in many Nordic countries.[4]
2. Fund social security and healthcare for all stay at home parents. Aim for equity and access to parental leave for allparents in America.
3. Require all daycare and childcare workers to have a bachelor’s degree in education with extensive child development courses. Pay them well.[5]
4. Since our knowledge regarding brain and child development keeps growing, I’d require yearly continuing education credits in learning differences and brain development.
5. Fully fund or highly subsidize infant and childcare for all who need it. Allow parents to decide whether to use the child’s care-funding for daycare or a nanny or other kind of childcare helper.
6. Aim for equity of quality and access for all children in America.
Don’t tell me our country can’t do this. The Danes do it. The Swedes do it. The French do it. The Italians do it. The Fins do it to excellent effect.[6] Pretty much every other country does some variation of this. So, don’t tell me that we in America are too weak, too diverse, too incompetent to do these things. We are quite capable. And frankly there is really no other choice. We are not egalitarian hunter-gatherers with a village to raise our children.
So, let’s get it right. Let’s fix the relentlessness of American parenthood. Let’s recognize the economic value of traditional domestic women’s work. The value of American children. The intrinsic value of a woman’s life industry. The needs of fathers for an emotional life and family connection. Let’s recognize that it is unrealistic to expect modern women to work without providing childcare for the family. Let’s restructure our society to truly support families in everyday life.
This restructuring has been done before in many countries.
Let me repeat that! This is not an undoable fantasy.
Other countries have reorganized and reprioritized their governments and society to make all of these changes. They have been very successful at steadily growing their economies while building a high quality of life for their citizens We can even learn from their successes and mistakes. We will bring joy back into family life. We will give parents a chance to breathe. We will give our children a better adulthood.
We will also be taking the first of several steps towards rebuilding the American dream of equity for all, of free people living a joyous, creative, and industrious life. We will build a daily life that is “Of the people, by the people, and for the people”[7] and after all “it is to protect these rights that governments are instituted among men.”[8] And women!
Look for my next essays to see what other steps we can take in the pursuit of happiness and the expansion of true freedom to all Americans. Aka. How to make the world a better place for your kids to inherit.
[1] The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan, 1963, by WW Norton Publishing.
[3] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/04/why-economic-policy-overlooks-women/
[4] https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-maternity-leave-paternity-leave-policies-latte-dads-2018-4
[6] The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life, Anu Partanen, 2017.
[7] Gettysburg Address, President Abraham Lincoln, 1863.
[8] Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson principle author, 1776.
