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

TLDR: The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued as discussed by the authors is a review of the current social scientific research documenting the fact that raising children may be the most important job in the world, but you can't put it on a resume.

Abstract: The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued Ann Crittenden New York: Metropolitan Books 2001 323 pp ISBN: 0-8050-6618-7, $2500 (cloth) When I saw the book jacket endorsements from well-known authors like Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Hochschild, I figured this book would be well-researched, pointed, and persuasive It is, although not without its limitations Ann Crittenden has crafted an eminently readable and informative review of the current social scientific research documenting the fact that, "raising children may be the most important job in the world, but you can't put it on a resume" The early chapters of the book deftly draw upon a who's-who list of social scientists regarded as leaders in the research of women's persistent wage inequality-Claudia Goldin, Barbara Bergmann, Paula England, Suzanne Bianchi, Jane Waldfogel, Felice Schwartz Refreshingly free of jargon and pretentious in-text citation lists, the book introduces these academics and not just their work Indeed, the text makes clear that Crittenden met with and is able to directly quote many of the researchers The book takes to task simplistic economic arguments, pointing out the inadequacies of earlier economic theorizing about why women and mothers are not financially rewarded by society (Chapter 4) The author pushes the issue of how mothers' household labor is kept out of the market although that same labor produces much of the human capital that their children will bring to the labor market as adults To explain why the "hand that rocks the cradle" has been rendered as a truly invisible hand, she turns attention to larger social processes and institutions such as marriage, law, and politics The middle part of the book focuses on wives' economic dependency on husbands, divorce law, and divorce settlement Each chapter relies mostly on one or two anecdotes or on individual legal cases and interviews of plaintiffs, supplemented by research statistics Chapters 10-- 12 take the government to task, decrying the lack of publicly funded childcare, the lack of social security payments for stay-at-home mothers, and the weak enforcement of child support law and settlements Crittenden concludes with a collection of familiar policy suggestions, including calls for businesses to pay for a year of paid parental leave for all workers, for the federal government to fund universal preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds, for states to regard all family income as evenly divisible for husband and wife upon divorce, and for communities to change their attitudes and actions in ways that support people who decide to focus on parenting …