<A woman (or a man, for that matter) devoting full time to raising and teaching a child is manufacturing one of the most incredible things in the world, a living human being, which will go out and take her teachings and heritage into the infinite future.

Can the CEO of an electronics company ever say as much?



A CEO of an electronics company can retire in comfort, can afford medical care, can count on having a place to live. A CEO has an income derived from the investments purchased during a lifetime of working for an income.

Can a stay-at-home mother ever say as much?

A parent who has devoted her (or his) life to raising children has produced plenty, but has no income or employment history to show for it. Try going to the bank and borrowing based on your parenting career.

Our way of life treats stay-at-home parents (who happen to be primarily mothers) as if they do nothing, as if they produce nothing. They get a card on Mother's (or Father's) Day. Children are not obligated to support them in their old age, and they are considered "unemployed", and so receive nothing for all their years of hard work except the satisfaction of a job well done. That and 75 cents will get you a cup of coffee. If they have no income because they "haven't worked", or have a reduced retirement because they "haven't worked" enough, well, that's OK. Gratitude is lovely, if you get it, but you can't eat it and it doesn't buy insulin or blood pressure medicine.

I'm glad you think of your mom. Social Security and Medicare will still be around for the GI generation because they will bludgeon both parties with their political power.

The man who's working his ass off to support his kids still has a pension at the end of the day, doesn't he? What about her?

My litany of pain is what I see around me, thank you very much. These are people I know. Well, not the concubines.

I am very grateful that, unlike my grandmother's generation, women don't have to give up their jobs once they get married. (That's why my grandmother had to stop teaching.) The Mommy Track is still very much with us, however. And sure, why should a business want to develop a person professionally when she's going to spend all that time at elementary school parties? Hell, that's, what -- eight or ten hours a year they could be spending on business! I also have a colleague who, after informing her board that she expects to be full-time after she gets her master's degree, was told -- no kidding -- "You don't need that much money. You have a husband. He can support you."

Think about this for just a minute: We have children who are in substandard day care arrangements this very hour because their mothers have to work because to be on welfare is equivalent to the sin of sloth. The care is substandard because the clients are too poor to be able to pay for professionals to look after their kids and not able to stay home to do it themselves. On the other hand, we are saying that to stay home with one's children is so sacred that one shouldn't cheapen it by putting a monetary value on it.

These are two ways of saying "We don't want to pay child care workers what the work is really worth."

Incidentally, I know of situations with two-parent families where both parents are working just to stay in their apartments. They can't afford home ownership. One of these families can't even afford a phone. The kids spend a lot of time where I work, and I turn a blind eye to this even though it's way out of policy. Talk to your local library for a while about the problem of "dumping" -- both of children and of the elderly.

Women's labor is worth a great deal. I would like to see it treated as if it were.

Regards--
Mary Anne