This view is so common that it is easy to think that women's contribution is their duty, nature and instinct. As everyone knows, this moral elevation also conceals many real things: we are willing to praise our mother, but we don't really understand her value, especially her economic value.
Ann Creeden Deng is an American mother. She received a good education before becoming a mother. She is a reporter for new york Times Fortune and a Pulitzer Prize nominee. She is a typical "Bai Gujing" in the workplace. Perhaps because of these experiences, she has special expectations for her interests and values. After becoming a mother, she is keenly aware that in this era when it seems that women have enjoyed most of their rights, on the one hand, the status of mothers is infinitely elevated, on the other hand, the value they created is still ignored.
They play multiple roles, such as chefs, housekeepers, drivers, teachers, psychological counselors, etc., and provide the initial human resources for the society, but they don't get paid at all, and they can't even be written on their resumes as proud life qualifications. If you are a stay-at-home mother, you will often be regarded as a "foster", and you will no longer be classified as a labor force, nor will you be included in the official economic indicators. You don't even have the rights enjoyed by nannies, neither unemployment insurance after divorce nor social security benefits after work-related injuries.
For this reason, Ann Critenden was unfair and decided to show her general neglect of the value of her mother. She interviewed hundreds of parents from all over the world and studied sociology, economics and public policy for more than five years. Finally, the book how much a mother is worth was published. Through this book, she tries to reveal the amazing gap between the value created by her mother's labor and the return she gets.
Due to the differences in time and space and system, what is described in the book can't fully conform to the current situation in China, but it does tell the fact that we are also ignoring it.
Mothers who can't afford to hurt.
For many people, it is a common understanding that women nowadays are much more relaxed than previous generations. The popularity of fast food and household appliances has partially liberated many women from daily housework. This is undeniable, but Ann Creeden's book tells us that today's women are more conscientious in taking on the role of mothers than before.
The economist Arlene leibowitz and some scholars first found that, other things being equal, the higher the education level of women, the more willing they are to spend time and energy to take care of their children. Worldwide, with the improvement of women's status, they are no longer just "giving birth" to children, but "giving birth" to children. Economists even call it the "change from quantity to quality" of human production.
This is also in line with the current situation in China. Compared with the mothers who go out to work, the new mothers after 1980s in China spend at least as much time, if not more. These young mothers, like the professional women interviewed by Sharon Hayes, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, use more detailed and time-consuming parenting methods. They not only talk to their children more, but also read songs and tell stories to them, and they like to let them choose for themselves. Rather than ordering children to obey the rules, they prefer to negotiate and pay more attention to cultivating children's independent critical thinking, which takes more time than simply making rules.
For women who can't work full-time, what needs to be sacrificed is their leisure time to complete these extra "jobs", and more seriously, their sleep and time with their husbands.
Yu is the Chinese mother of a two-year-old girl. She told reporters that when the child was 1 year and a half, she had a very strong impulse to find herself. "At that time, I especially hoped to have a space. Without a husband, children and a job, I will stay alone. " At one time, she also had the impulse to stop working, or study or stay at home, but forced by the pressure of mortgage and her husband's salary was not particularly high, she chose to insist. The only expectation is that when children can run, jump and play by themselves, they can be liberated and do what they like.
Where's Dad?
Where did dad go when the mothers were busy? Maybe more men in China will answer, making money for milk powder. Even, they will feel much better than their father.
In the book, the author also describes it this way: almost everyone thinks that men nowadays do more housework and take care of their children than other parents, especially in families where their wives have considerable income.
However, a new study shows that, despite the relative increase of father's investment in general, father still does little in housework, baby care and learning from children. Even in a few high-income families, mothers spend more time on housework and children than fathers 13 hours.
Even if the wife's income exceeds half of the family income, the husband's contribution to housework and child care will generally not exceed 30%. This figure comes from men's own self-report about participating in housework, and experts also think that this figure is overestimated. Even if married men are unemployed, what they do in housework and child care hardly exceeds 30% of the total workload of the family. On the contrary, if a married woman is unemployed at home, she usually does 75% of the housework.
Moreover, whether a mother is full-time or not, she usually gives everything she wants for her children. A survey in Washington found that women stay in schools and kindergartens twice as often as their fathers on their way to and from work, and men go to bars or restaurants twice as often as women after work. According to a public opinion survey, 73% people think that taking care of children is the primary responsibility of women, followed by cooking, buying food, washing clothes, cleaning and washing dishes. In all chores, men have only one primary task: to decide how to spend money.
According to demographer Chayriguet Russell, whether parents or single parents, whether their mothers work or not, most children report that what they really lack is their father's company. Mothers "almost never" miss their important events or activities, while fathers "often" or "sometimes" are absent.
Who is paying for the children?
Mothers devote themselves to taking care of their families, which makes them give up their leisure time, and may even affect their career promotion and lose some time and ability to make money, which may deepen their economic dependence.
Usually in concept, dad is responsible for making milk powder money, but how much milk powder money really flows to child support is still unknown. Classical economic theory holds that the family is an inseparable unit. This unified family model full of fairy tales acquiesces that the family labor paid to the head of the household will automatically flow to all family members, and everyone will share it fairly. However, few people know how money will be distributed when it enters the house and what impact it will have on family relations.
Ann Critenden believes that this kind of sharing often hides something that often exists in real life, that is, the subtle balance of power in marriage always leans towards the one who earns more money.
Sociologists believe that family decision-making is subject to the so-called deterrent point-the degree of deterrence between spouses. Usually, after giving birth to children, especially women who quit their jobs will not give up marriage easily, which increases the deterrent point of men, increases the power and space they want in marriage, and reduces the bargaining power of women. Of course, money is not the only factor that determines the balance of marital power, but a woman who lives on her husband is in a weak position to argue with her husband in everything else.
If parents break up and choose to divorce, the laws of most States in the United States are based on equal income sharing, requiring parents to share their children's expenses according to their respective income ratios. This standard is to pay in proportion, not to contribute. The work of mothers who spend time taking care of their children is not counted at this time.
At the end of the book, Ann Critenden puts forward various suggestions from the government, the community and her husband to ensure that women can raise their children without pain.
She suggested that families with children should promote economic cooperation to prevent mothers from taking care of children and families, but they can't get their share from their fathers.
At the same time, she suggested that unpaid housework should be included in GDP. The proposal to promote the value of housework has also attracted the attention of Zhang Xiaomei, a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and has been submitted as a proposal for many times, which has aroused widespread concern and discussion.
She spoke highly of this book: this book is full of the author's extensive investigation, research and in-depth thinking on the mother's problems, and puts forward from a novel perspective that "women still need to strive for respect for their housework after winning respect in the workplace."