response 3

Crittendon’s “The Price of Motherhood” discusses the ambivalence Americans have towards motherhood: it is glorified as the most important job in the world, yet it is still considered a non-productive, immaterial job. In our culture, work is that which produces capital. Since motherhood produces human capital (good workers and consumers for the future), she argues that mothers should get more concrete benefits. She suggests changing policies to reward mothers for their work by granting them income support (treating stay-at-home mothering like any other job) and not denying them benefits because they don’t hold a paying job. She says we should avoid “free-riding” on their labor.
The Budig article was a rather technical analysis of several studies on the wage penalty that seems to affect mothers. According to the article, mothers may take a earnings cut because they lose job experience, are less productive at work, take lower-paying jobs if they are more mother-friendly, or are discriminated against by employers. The conclusion was that mothers, especially married ones, take a 2/3 wage penalty, and earn less with each child. The article proposed the collectivization of child-care (everyone pays into it) as a solution to this problem.
The Budig and Crittendon articles brought up a similar point: American society puts mothers in a real bind. Women still feel like they as mothers should still be the main caregiver, and they feel responsible for creating the workers/people of the future. Yet they now must holdfull-time jobs at the same time. As of right now, a woman can’t give both tasks her all, even though they feel like they should. I agree will both authors suggestions that society give mothers more support by providing them with monetary benefits (like the English parental stipend, which gives parents a sum of money to help with childcare or expenses) and employers should make work more flexible to accommodate people’s family responsibilities. The collectivization of childcare seems like a good idea, especially if the state made it a priority to have quality child care. But Crittendon’s discussion of how mothers have the job of raising human capital so should be rewarded as if they did another job made me kind of sad; it just goes to show how capitalism and its emphasis on production, consumption, and efficiency has become more than just an economic system. It infiltrates how we view the individual as a person and hence how we set up our families. I guess that family and the economic system are always closely intertwined. It just seems sad that people value mothers for their ability to produce workers and consumers, and that it is so clearly all about the dollar bill.
The Rothman article was an interesting essay on how the patriarchal system and its emphasis on the genetic “seed” producing the child and the father owning “his” child has influenced our current notions of parenthood. Now that women are become more equal in status to men, they have adopted this notion of providing the seed to produce their “own” child. Women are gaining freedom, though still under the context of a male-created system of power and worldview. But with new reproductive technologies, like surrogate mothers and test tube fertilization, it is hard to determine who a child “belongs” to. Is it the genetic parent, or the person who raises and loves it? Nannies are the new mother in the sense that they are powerless and devalued, despite their responsibility. She suggests a new way of looking at childcare, that whoever is minding the child is not a replacement for a parent, but a parent in themselves and therefore has rights.

“Black Women and Motherhood” argues that, despite the glorification of the self-sacrificing mother by the black community (especially men), motherhood is still oppressive for black women in many respects. She discusses five themes that have persisted throughout the history of African-American mothering: women-centered kin networks and “othermothers” have always been responsible for childcare; mothers had to socialize daughters for survival, even if it meant teaching them to degrade themselves; the language of motherhood and family has been used in political activism; motherhood had been a symbol of power in the community; motherhood both empowers and oppresses black women, often because they have to mother in such terrible conditions. The author thinks that the verbal affirmations of mothers by their children are good, but they must be given more actual support by men and society at-large.
I found this article quite informative. It is rare that the literature about feminism and family issues explicitly addresses cultural differences. Many articles mention cultural differences, but most do not concentrate exclusively on minority culture unless they are comparing it to the mainstream. It is important to acknowledge that other cultures, such as African Americans, can have totally different ideas and experiences of mothering, even though they mother in a culture that has very different notions. Understanding how a culture does something so essential as mothering/parenting is helpful because policymakers hopefully will take the differences into account when designing plans. It is always a shame when a policy doesn’t take into account how a group of people traditionally do things, like the system of “othermothering”, so they essentially force the minority to conform to their notions of how things should be. For example, the othermothering structure may begin to dissipate because it is not legally recognized as a parent-child relationship. This connects to what Rothman brings up about our society’s emphasis on genetic parentage. Though I think her theory was at times extreme (she seemed to be stretching the facts a little bit to fit the ideology), it was certainly an interesting take on our current notions of parenthood and how it connects to the patriarchal system. I can think of a lot of examples of how women becoming equal means taking on traditionally masculine roles (such as taking on “masculine” traits in the workplace). If you looked at everything through a gender-power lens, it makes sense that now hired nannies are equivalent to “mothers”, the powerless ones. But I do think there is something to be said for the instinctual connection that exists between genetic parent and child. To my knowledge, no society exists where the raising of children is completely collectivized such that nobody cares who is genetically related to whom. I think a society like that would go against our basic biology, though I agree that things are changing. As more and more families are organized in ways other than genetically, policy must change to recognize these relationships. People are starting to be more open to the group-raising of children. But I don’t think genetics will or should seize to matter at all, like she seems to suggest.