The meaning of full time mothers

When I first started this blog, my intention was to encourage women who share the same conviction to be stay at home for the sake of children and family. In the course of studying on family and women history, however, I discovered that the notion of “full time mother” was associated with socially and cultural constructed ideology which painted with social inequality and class antagonism.

In North America society, the ideal type of nuclear family structure was promoted in 50s, where mothers were encourage being at home to raise children during their early or formative years, and fathers to be solo breadwinner. The employment for mothers outside home was seen less important or secondary to their domestic duties. Despite the ideological impetus to mother at home, over half of all women with children work for wages, and most of them are “under class”. The studies by many sociologists and historians showed that throughout history, women from unprivileged social groups were had little choice but work, no matter whether they had children or not.

On the other hands, except the minority upper privileged women (“TaiTai,” some are called, who have conspicuous leisure and don’t need to work), many women do have struggling in work and home.

There are two dominant theoretic models in explaining women choices to work:

1. Rational choice model, suggests that motherhood represents a prominent social force behind women’s job decision. Becker and Polachek, argue that women’s preference to mother is maximized in jobs that exact fewer penalties for interrupted employments, such as part-time, seasonal, or clerical work. According to this view, women’s pursuit of their rational self-interest reinforced their occupational segregation within low-paid jobs and underrepresentation in higher-paying, male-dominated jobs that typically required significant employer investments such as training. Employer may be reluctant to “invest” into women who could not guarantee commitment. This perspective views motherhood as a major impediment to employment and mobility. But it fails to consider that the organization of production has developed in ways that make motherhood an impediment.

2. Hegemonic power of patriarchy, some feminist scholars view this particular development of women’s choice between motherhood and employment as consistent with the hegemonic power of patriarchy. This view suggest that it was patriarchy, not personal preference, shapes the organization of production resulting in economic, political, and social subordinate of women to men. Many economists fail to consider the power of ideological constructs such as “family” and “motherhood” in shaping behavior among women, employees and the organization of production itself. Within feminist analyses, motherhood as an ideology obscures and legitimates women’s social subordination because it conceals particular interests within the rubric of a universal prerogative (reproduction). The social construction of motherhood serves the interest of capital by providing essential childbearing, child care, and housework at a minimal cost to the sates, and sustains women as a potential reservoir of labour force, or “reserve army of labour”. This view reviews the real dilemma that women continue to try to reconcile the competing urgencies of motherhood and employment despite the lack of supportive structures at work or within family.

Today, there are apparently “care deficit” among many working mothers family. Many working mothers in order to work outside home, they have to hire domestic workers from third world countries to take care of household duties and child-cares, many of these domestic workers themselves are mothers with young children. By doing so, they transfer “care deficit” into the third world countries. The say thing is, though the age of slavery seems forever gone, some of these domestic workers work in a slavery condition and without accessible legal protection.

What do we see from here? As least we could draw three conclusive remarks:

1. Not all “full time mothers” are “Tai tais”, they choose to be a full time mother with financial and material sacrifices, and they adapt the simple and frugal life style, resist the consumer culture and instant gratification.

2. Full time mothers support institutional and organization changes in supporting working mother, but do not agree by exploitation domestic workers from third world countries. If we do need them, provide them with decent living condition, legal protection.

3. Full time mothers urge the government to consider subsidies to women with children should be expanded in the recognition that full time mothering is work and should be properly rewarded. Mothers should be seen as civil servants and provided with pensions as compensation for their services in nurturing future citizens.