COMMENTARY—March 13, 2001

A book review of The Price of Motherhood 

by Ann Crittenden

(2001, Henry Holt & Co., 323 pp.)

Ann Crittenden has written a remarkable but profoundly depressing book about the state of motherhood in the United States.  Ms. Crittenden is an economics journalist and Pulitzer Prize nominee who has written in numerous national newspapers and magazines. 

In 1983, after the birth of her son, Ms. Crittenden was forced to leave her position at the New York Times because the newspaper did not offer part-time employment.  In her book, Ms. Crittenden details how women who bear children wind up becoming the poorest members of American society. 

Well-researched and informative, The Price of Motherhood portrays the harsh and uncompromising reality of mothering today.  In chapter after chapter, Ms. Crittenden explains how women are penalized for being mothers.  A woman who takes any time off from work, even for a brief maternity leave, is put on a work track that will not lead her to the upper tiers of management. 

No matter how hard a woman may toil, if there is any indication that child-rearing is as important as work, her superiors will assume that she is not dedicated to her career.  Consequently, many women work long hours at lower pay and earn fewer promotions even if they work full-time and overtime.  The only women who succeed nearly at the levels that men do are childless women who dedicate their lives to their work. 

Women who have children are believed to have made a choice for which they will have to pay.  Most readers will assume that women and men have made the choice to have babies and to care for them.  Ms. Crittenden, however, offers compelling evidence that shows that women pay inordinately more than men do when it comes to having children.  She offers numerous examples of women from every social background who pay dearly for having children. 

The most surprising examples are those of highly educated and ambitious women who marry, have children, veer their careers toward less demanding work or no work at all, earn less or no money, and wind up divorced and profoundly poorer with custody of and financial responsibility for their children.  With these women in poverty or near poverty, Ms. Crittenden demolishes effectively any conception we may have of welfare as being a hand-out only to the poor and uneducated.

Ms. Crittenden explains clearly that the current tax system either faults mothers for working or forces them, particularly those who are educated and employable, to choose not to work.  When a woman's income is added to her husband's income, their increased joint income probably causes their tax bracket to go up, and it is the woman’s income that is taxed automatically at the higher rate. 

Ms. Crittenden argues that this is unfair and that the income of a married woman should be taxed separately from that of her husband.  This would enable a woman who works to pay taxes according to what she earns.  Ms. Crittenden writes that many women realize that working outside the home may not be as worthwhile if they consider the higher taxation on income, especially when there are young children at home.  She views this as an established way of keeping women out of the workforce.

Unfortunately for women, if they choose not to work outside the home, then a husband's income is deemed to be his alone.  Consequently, when the issues of divorce and child support arise, married women find themselves tremendously disadvantaged.  Ms. Crittenden researched the prevailing attitudes of lawyers and judges and found that they usually side against a mother and her children and in favor of the income-earning father. 

 Judges, she learned, will rarely make a husband support his ex-wife's former lifestyle.  Although the entire family will be poorer after divorce, it is inevitably the mother and children who will be significantly poorer.  Tragically, a mother who spends years rearing children, either unemployed outside the home or working part-time or full-time outside the home, will never be rewarded with either a nod of respect from society or any financial remuneration. 

Ms. Crittenden decries the fact that child-rearing is so disparaged in our society that it is considered unpaid and uncategorized labor.  Mothers are expected to perform child-rearing as a responsibility without receiving any compensation.  The real consequence of motherhood today is that not only do most mothers lose income and the prestige of climbing the career ladder, but they also lose Social Security retirement benefits and retirement funds that every other working person receives. 

Mothers do the work of child-rearing for free, and the result is that there is a huge hidden tax that most women with children pay.  Ms. Crittenden calls this the "Mommy tax" and estimates that an educated professional might easily lose one million dollars in income.  Every woman with a child is subject to the “mommy tax.”

While researching her book, Ms. Crittenden found that there was no consensus among women as far as finding solutions to the sad state of motherhood today.  Conservative women advocate the male-dominated, male income earning family unit while decrying welfare and government-sponsored benefits to mothers.  Meanwhile, feminists praise the progress made in the work place by childless women; they have no interest in helping the huge percentage of women who have chosen to become mothers. 

Ms. Crittenden learned that women have such strong opinions that they have been fighting each other.  For example, she learned that in California an attempt to help divorced mothers gain child support payments from ex-husbands was faced with furious opposition from the new wives of the ex-husbands.  The second wives did not wish to forgo any income on behalf of their husbands’ children from previous marriages.  Such dissension was vehement. 

Ms. Crittenden points out correctly, though, that any married woman treads a thin line, for chances are that she may become another statistic in the future.  In fact, one out of two married women will eventually face her own divorce.  Then what happens?  She would certainly want a safety net that would enable her to care for herself and to rear her children.

Ms. Crittenden proposes several solutions that she thinks would force the U.S. government to make significant changes in legislation for the benefit of mothers and their children.  For one, child-rearing should be recognized as the invaluable service it is.  Today's children will work to fund the next generation of Social Security beneficiaries, a fact that is dismissed by many people, including those who do not wish to have children. 

Second, modeled upon a successful social program in Sweden, women should be given a paid maternity leave of at least a few months, a stipend for child-rearing in the early years of a child’s life, and a guarantee of employment so that she will have a job she returns from her maternity leave.  Third, women with young children should be given the option of reducing their hours to part-time work without impairing their career prospects. 

Fourth, women’s income should be taxed separately from that of their spouses so that their income will be taxed in recognition of its own value.  Fifth, if families face divorce, a husband needs to share income so that the costly burden of child-rearing does not fall only upon the mother’s shoulders.  The same should be true during the marriage, such that the primary breadwinner, who usually happens to be the father, does not have sole ownership of the income.

Ms. Crittenden also advocates better community support for parents and better parent education.  She believes correctly that child-rearing needs to be recognized as the skilled labor it is.  For far too long, Ms. Crittenden opines, mothers have been expected to do what is right for their children without compensation.  At the same time, occupations related to nurturing and caring have always been compensated the most poorly.  For instance, Ms Crittenden voices her concern that nurturing and caring professions such as nursing and teaching are occupations in which women predominate and receive minimal compensation. 

It is time for society to acknowledge the invaluable contributions that are made by mothers who rear children.  The reality is that without a new generation of children, the country will face a dearth of future workers and taxpayers.  The nurturing of healthy and contributive citizens should not be taken for granted.  As it stands, most of the nurturing done on behalf of the next generation is done at the expense of women, and it is simply unjust. 

Ms. Crittenden has probed the complex topic of the economics of motherhood, and it is evident that the price of motherhood is extraordinarily high.  Mothers should not have to bear the burden of child-rearing without compensation and a safety net.  It is clear that government policies in effect penalize mothers unfairly and unreasonably. 

The good news is that the shunting of women lawyers from big firms, where working hours are unreasonable and biased against mothers with young children, into academia is generating thinkers who are interested in changing current laws so that mothers and children are better protected.  The sad news is that the overwhelmingly male dominated lawmaking bodies ignore these intelligent women and prefer, for the most part, to leave things unchanged.  Ms. Crittenden's hope is that motherhood can be exalted not with empty rhetoric but with concrete legislation and government programs.  It has worked in other countries, so she thinks it will work in the U.S.

In summary, I found this book to be extremely well researched and well written.  The saddest reality that emerges from this book is that parenting conditions are pathetic.  The quest to seek ideal parenting is buried amidst the harsh realities of living in a society that neglects and disrespects motherhood.  We live in a society that praises money and the power associated with money, but there is little opportunity for women to enjoy such money or power unless they abdicate motherhood. 

The majority of women are not abdicating their maternal roles, so society should help families by rewarding and respecting the job of child-rearing.  As it stands, many women are working extremely hard inside and outside the home so that they can become the poorest members of society.  This is wrong and disgraceful.   It is clear that women deserve a safety net because there is no longer any work, including child-rearing, that should not be compensated in our money-oriented society.

Revised April 12, 2006