Should the Government Compensate Women for Childrearing?
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| Yes. Childrearing is devalued
in our society because there is no financial compensation for such work.
Women’s role as mothers has been used timelessly to validate their exclusion from and subordination within public society. Childrearing is derogatorily labeled as “women’s work.” But, childrearing is undoubtedly one of the greatest pillars upon which our society stands. It is how a civilization’s morals, principles, and values are handed down through the generations. It is a tool for change and progress. Most importantly is how our children grow up to be healthy, happy, educated, and productive members of our society. As feminists, we recognize that motherhood is a noble occupation that deserves the utmost recognition in our society. But as a culture, we have yet to appreciate the vital role mothers play. In a capitalist society, the first and most logical step toward giving mothers the respect they deserve is through compensating their work in the home as childrearers. Money is power; by supplying mothers with monetary compensation we are raising motherhood to the political and economic status it deserves. We are saying that we recognize motherhood as a critical occupation in our society. And motherhood is an occupation. Its employees may not have timesheets and their hard work and accomplishments may not hang in museums or run Wall Street, but they make as valuable a contribution to our society as the artists and stockbrokers. Many women decide not to be mothers, and their contributions to the public working world are rising on a daily basis. Paying mothers for their work in the home does not take away from the women trying to gain respect and recognition in the working world. It simply gives women the option to stay home with their children without the worry of not having an income. Why should women have to join the work force in order to have an income if they want to be with their kids? Why should they be forced to leave their children? In many lower-income homes, families cannot afford to pay for childcare, and mothers who do work outside the home have to leave their children in someone else’s hands or are forced to neglect them. If mothers are obligated to stay home with the children because no other childcare is available, the family needs some kind of monetary compensation. It is for this reason that compensating mothers is so important. For many women, the sad dilemma is often between being with their children but not having an income and finding work outside the house and having little time with their children. If women’s work in the home as childrearers was paid, we could eliminate this painful and important choice women often have to make. Susanna Coates |
No. Compensating childrearing
would essentially amount to a policy that pays women to stay out of the
workforce.
Childrearing represents perhaps the most valuable contribution to our society that remains uncompensated and almost exclusively the domain of women. When women choose to forego their careers temporarily or permanently in order to raise children, not out of necessity but out of the belief that children become more productive members of society, the country as a whole benefits. However, whether the government should financially compensate women who would otherwise earn a decent living poses a difficult question for feminists. Even if feminists ignore the question of what population of people would realistically bear the financial costs of governmental compensation for childrearing and could set forth a policy workable under a capitalist society, the issue of the power imbalance between men and women lingers. If women who choose both motherhood and a career (as opposed to wage work out of necessity) are currently relegated to the “mommy track,” what effect would a governmental incentive for women to stay at home and raise children have on women and power in this society? The likely consequences of this type of governmental policy introduces a picture as equally problematic for women as the current practice that does not financially recognize women’s work in the home. Women who reside in both the paid workforce and the unpaid domestic sphere already serve as the target of blame for everything “wrong” with the nation’s children. Furthermore, too many girls, particularly girls who grow up under conditions of poverty and limited opportunities, believe that motherhood constitutes their only value to the world and learn to expect little more from life. Making motherhood a paid career, although it sounds quite reasonable and almost indisputable from a feminist perspective, would effectively reinforce the one-dimensional role that too many women have learned to accept. Women continue to struggle to gain recognition, acceptance, and respect in male-dominated areas of the working world because of the belief that motherhood is naturally the primary role for women and the perception that women’s reproductive capacity takes precedence over all other aspects of their lives. A governmental policy of compensating childrearing would inhibit women who choose a career, and reserves the bases of societal and economic power for men. Feminists are wiser to leave motherhood an individual choice and to focus efforts on elevating the economic status of women through policies under which women can derive money along with power, rather than to advocate policies that could conceivably lead to compulsory motherhood. Christi Fanelli
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