Making mothers count: the fiscal value of nurturing.

• Author: Maschka, Kristin
• Position: American Thought

WE ARE A COUNTRY in which paid work is valued above all else, and with women doing the overwhelming majority of uncompensated caregiving, mothers are paying the price. Most women--81% in the U.S.--become mothers during their lifetime. Over the years, women have won access to the paid workplace, but they have yet to win the social change that truly acknowledges the contributions of unpaid care to the economy and society. Women cannot secure financial and social equality until caregiving is defined as a valuable and vital contribution.

We don't have to look hard to find evidence that mothers are not social or economic equals, whether they toil for pay or not. The wage gap between men and women is 76 cents on the dollar. Yet, among childless females and males, women earn 98% of men's wages. Mothers, on the other hand, make 73% or less of the wages of their male counterparts, whether the men are fathers or not. Married mothers see a five percent decline in wages upon the birth of their first child, while fathers see a nine percent increase.

Our entire system of basic protections from economic risk is linked to paid labor, leaving behind those who do uncompensated chores or cut back on paid work to care for family. For example, Social Security determines eligibility and benefits by the amount of paid work performed over a lifetime. Women spend an average of 11 1/2 years out of the labor pool seeing after children or elderly parents, and receive no credit toward Social Security benefits for those years. Combine that with lost private retirement savings and income from taking lower-paying jobs, and it's no surprise that elderly women endure twice the poverty rate of elderly men.

When offered at all, access to affordable health insurance nearly always requires full-time, full-year paid employment. State disability insurance programs determine eligibility and benefits based on salary. Unpaid caregivers cannot obtain private disability insurance. If a nonworking mother becomes seriously ill, the family will not have the insurance to pay for childcare and other work she was providing in the home.

In the House of Representatives, a body of 435 people, 62 are women and 48 are mothers. If mothers were represented in proportion to their percentages in society, there would be at least 176. Just this year, The New York Times published an article about the four female senators who have school-age offspring, marveling at their mere presence in Congress. No one writes articles about fathers in the Senate because our expectations of them differ. Moreover, they are not a rarity. These trends are...