The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued » (REV)

Ann Crittenden is the author of Killing the Sacred Cows: Bold Ideas for a New Economy. A former reporter for The New York Times and a Pulitzer Prize nominee, she has also been a financial writer for Newsweek, a visiting lecturer at M.I.T. and Yale, and an economics commentator on CBS News. Her articles have appeared in Fortune, The Nation, Foreign Affairs, McCalls, and Working Woman, among others. She lives with her husband and son in Washington, D.C.

In the pathbreaking tradition of Backlash and The Second Shift, this provocative book shows how mothers are systematically disadvantaged and made dependent by a society that exploits those who perform its most critical work. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and the most current research in economics, history, child development, and law, Ann Crittenden proves that although women have been liberated, mothers have not.

The costs of motherhood are everywhere apparent. College-educated women pay a "mommy tax" of over a million dollars in lost income when they have a child. Family law deprives mothers of financial equality in marriage. Stay-at-home mothers and their work are left out of the GDP, the labor force, and the social safety net. With passion and clarity, Crittenden demonstrates that proper rewards for mothers' essential contributions would only enhance the general welfare.

Bold, galvanizing, full of innovative solutions, The Price of Motherhood offers a much-needed accounting of the price that mothers pay for performing the most important job in the world.

Ben Dickinson

A bracing call to arms . . . a mind-blowingly sensible alteration of America's present parenting arrangements. —Elle

Introduction ..... 1

1: Where We Are Now ..... 13

2: A Conspiracy of Silence ..... 28

3: How Mothers' Work Was "Disappeared": The Invention of the Unproductive Housewife ..... 45

4: The Truly Invisible Hand ..... 65

5: The Mommy Tax ..... 87

6: The Dark Little Secret of Family Life ..... 110

7: What Is a Wife Worth? ..... 131

8: Who Really Owns the Family Wage? ..... 149

9: Who Pays for the Kids? ..... 162

10: The Welfare State Versus a Caring State ..... 186

11: The Toughest Job You'll Ever Love ..... 202

12: An Accident Waiting to Happen ..... 218

13: "It Was Her Choice" ..... 233

Conclusion: How to Bring Children Up Without Putting Women Down 256 Notes ..... 275

Acknowledgments ..... 305

Index ..... 309