Homemaking
Women's work in the home is romanticized as a labor of love, its economic importance swept under the rug.
The Industrial Revolution altered women's role in the family, and the family itself, by undermining the economic importance of domestic work. It emphasized individual wages over familial earnings and competitive self-interest over collective sensibility. More than ever, money was the measure of productivity and it was given mostly to men, who worked for a boss, rather than himself.
Women still spend more time providing unpaid caregiving than men, but sharing this responsibility is one route to more equality. There is a heavy financial penalty for anyone who chooses to stay home and take care of kids. A so-called mommie tax represents the costs of big opportunity or the loss of substantial lifetime income through forfeited upward mobility in the job market.
The Mother’s Movement sheds light on a blind spot in modern economic thought where what counts is solely the production and sale of commodities and services for the market. Also it suggests we search for ways in which altruism rather than, or in addition to, self-interest propels economic growth.
Poverty is highest among women and children in all racial and ethnic groups, and motherhood is one of the leading risk factors. Psychohistorians often draw a definitive connection between childhood trauma and societal traumas.
We need better understanding of how a caregiver's activities contribute to our national, global, well-being. Why should child-rearing take second place in market exchange when human capital, peoples' skills, knowledge, personality attributes, enterprise and creativity is the greatest asset we have?
in The Me in We
Psychology Today
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