Parenting Blog

Most senior citizens say they wished they had spent more time with their children, and that the years of child-raising, in retrospect, passed in the blink of any eye. Most fathers, and even more mothers, say that they want to spend more time with their children, especially in those tricky afterschool hours when kids could use supervision on their homework.

Not surprisingly, work is the most commonly cited obstacle to family time. Fathers work outside the home an average of 51 hours weekly, mothers 41 hours, and of course most people spend at least an additional five hours per week commuting.

Having most parents work is a new phenomenon in our culture. In 1950, 12 percent of mothers worked. By 1980 this number had quadrupled to 47 percent, by 1997 the number of working mothers had risen to 67%.

It is worth noting that during the same time period, the levels of suicide and other mental health problems in children rose dramatically. An astonishing 1 in 5 of our children seriously consider or actually attempt suicide before age 19. Although there are many other factors in play, could the rise in suicide and the rise in having both parents working outside the home be related? It's certainly true that parents who work outside the home fulltime when their children are young will have a hard time meeting the developmental needs of those children.

We’re asking kids today to handle a high pressure culture, not only with little adult guidance, but without the internalized security and capacity for connection that humans are meant to develop beginning as babies. Too many kids grow up without even a name for their deep loneliness, valuing possessions over people, disconnected from each other and their responsibilities as citizens.

So what’s the answer? Some people think we should send women back to the kitchen. Feminists, in response, too often downplay the cost to kids of having both parents work. But are we really so limited in our thinking that these are the only two alternatives – shortchange kids or oppress women?

Of course, the economics of most families increasingly encourage or require both parents to work, whether in one or two parent homes. And obviously, many women love working, treasure the independence a paycheck gives them, and would not dream of staying home with their children. They ask, not unreasonably, why men shouldn't be asked to give up prime career years to stay home with toddlers.

It doesn't help that parents who stay home with children are increasingly devalued and isolated, as well as penalized when they re-enter the work force. Not only is this less than optimal for both the children and their at-home parent, the result is that many parents choose to let others raise their children so they can continue to work outside the home.

Our society needs productive, responsible adult citizens, and those adults only develop from kids whose emotional needs are met as they grow. Both women and men deserve good jobs, balanced lives, and the joys of raising children IF that is what they want.

The answer is obvious, and has already been pioneered by every other "advanced" industrial nation -- because it ends up working better for their societies! The world of work needs to become more family friendly so that both men and women can work part time while their children are young, and share the demands and the rewards of that second shift.

The only way I see for young parents to swing this is with legislative initiatives such as Paid parental leave, Public Pre-K, Health care for those in part time jobs, Tax incentives for companies offering job sharing and flex-time, and Restoring the family friendly Tax code provisions this country had in the 1950s.  (In the 1950s the tax structure supported families with one wage earner, and it was still possible to buy a house on one income.) Until then, if we're all working, who is nurturing and teaching our kids?

Let's be honest about babies and toddlers.  They need us.  Developmentally, they need the concentrated loving attention of a permanent attachment figure who adores them.  (Which by definition excludes paid caregivers.)

Women in our culture are given a terrible, unfair choice:  either meet our children’s needs or meet our own. Excuse me, but why aren’t men faced with this choice?

Every few months another article shows up in the press about motherhood, usually focusing on the split between the women who choose their own careers versus those who choose to stay home with their children, or to work part time, thus limiting their ultimate professional prospects.  While some of these articles claim that children who have fulltime working parents are better off, the subtext of most of them is that kids with both parents working fulltime are somewhat gypped, and women must choose either themselves or their children.

Most women, feminists or not, want more from life than motherhood.  Most of us have to work for economic reasons.  And the economic cost to women of being mothers is huge.  We love our children, but we need to work economically, and if we are lucky enough to have a good job, we love the other rewards: self actualization, respect, good colleagues, intellectual stimulation, pride in making a positive contribution.

So we maintain that it is fine for kids if both parents work, maybe even positive.  We minimize any potential damage to children of parents working.  We participate in our culture’s devaluation of child raising.
 
I love my work.  I don’t want to give up my professional aspirations, or my commitment to use my skills to help transform our world into a better place.  I am a feminist. The idea of sending women back to the 1950s to stay home and raise kids full-time makes me almost physically ill.  Not that child-raising isn’t as rewarding, and as challenging as the work world – I have found it to be equally so – but Betty Friedan was right that for many women in our culture, full time child-raising becomes full-time house management, which is devalued by our culture.  And what a waste of the brain power that our society desperately needs! 

But in addition to being a feminist, I am also a psychologist, and a mother.   For me, research and experience clearly indicate that children need the continuity of care by parents at home in their early years, and substantial parental involvement – the kind that precludes full time employment for both parents -- for many years.  So where does that leave us?

Choosing between ourselves and our children?  What kind of choice is that?

If feminism’s goal is to advance the lot of women, the next wave of feminism must confront the organization of work and childraising in our culture that traps us in such impossible choices.  And the next wave of feminism must confront the sexism that assumes women will continue to make the sacrifice of raising everyone’s children. 

In making these shifts, the next wave of feminism will need to  stop participating in the cultural devaluation of child-raising by defending paid care for babies as "just as good" as parental care.

Children deserve parents.  Women deserve the same professional opportunities as men.  The answer seems pretty obvious.  Men and women need to share the childraising. 

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  The larger need is to change the way work is organized in this culture.  Fulltime jobs requiring a minimum of 40 hours per week plus commute and lunch, and leadership positions that require 60 to 80 hours per week don't leave enough room for family, for either men or women. 

We also need family-friendly economic policies, including tax code provisions and health care, to allow us to get by on less than two fulltime paychecks.

But why should society shoulder the economic burden of helping families? It is, after all, a personal choice to have children. Because society benefits by raising healthy children who become productive members of society. But that's another blog..

A mom asked me this week, "What can parents do to raise great kids, given that babies and even older kids need us so much, but we need to work?"

There’s no perfect solution, but many parents are navigating a way through the maze of options, putting together a life that works for them and for their children.

1. Choose professions that offer more flexibility, even if less money.

2. Arrange for both partners work part-time while children are under six so that both share in early child raising.  Later, more flexibility and fewer hours than most fulltime jobs.

3. Use technology as a servant, not a master.  Carve out protected family time.

4. Pay conscious attention to who does the work at home.  Share it.

5. Prioritize relationship and ritual. (Choose dinner with friends the first Friday night of each month over the latest movie opening.)

6. Space children three years or more apart to maximize individual parent-child relationships.

7. Consciously create home as a calm, safe, warm refuge. (Resist over-scheduling, over-stimulation and stress.)

8. Live stated values. (No grand theft auto or shoot-em-up computer/video games.)

9. Embrace individuality and nurture individual passions, which are protective for kids in the face of cultural and peer pressure.

10. Nurture the family as a whole (do things together as the default.)

Ever wonder what that decision to get pregnant will cost you financially?
 
“Social-science research is often equivocal, but on the cost of parenthood to mothers in particular a truckload of research exists to establish how it limits economic options in every class. Mothers work less, earn less, and achieve less in the marketplace than fathers and than childless women. 

Child-rearing takes up enormous amounts of time—especially mothers' time. Taking into account child care, housework, and paid work, mothers work more hours than any other group. Even when both parents hold paid jobs, the mother usually takes primary responsibility for arranging child care, caring for the children during non-work hours and taking time off when children are sick or day-care arrangements fall through.

Mothers also shoulder the greater burden among single-parent families. More than 80 percent of single- parent households are headed by mothers, and more than two thirds of children of divorced parents live primarily with their mothers.

When mothers do remain in the work force, they earn less than other women. This gap persists even after controlling for age, education, work experience, and other attributes. Over a lifetime, mothers earn about five percent less per child than they would have earned otherwise. 

Mothers' economic disadvantage during their working years has repercussions into old age. Job interruptions and lower lifetime earnings reduce their private pensions and their Social Security benefits.

Although this situation reflects continuing gender discrimination, the economics of parenthood are not simply a byproduct of gender inequality. The fundamental problem is that child-rearing requires an irreducible minimum amount of work. Whatever the division of labor between mothers and fathers, continuity demands intensive time and energy from someone."

Wow!  This incisive analysis is from: What We Owe to Parents by Anne Alstott, Yale Law School.  Well worth reading.