as most of you who are reading this probably already know, i'm on a term-long leave from teaching and have started a new research project. my blurb for the faculty newsletter went something like this:
Carrie is working on a new research project that will examine the transition to employed motherhood for women returning to paid work after the birth of their first child. US Census data indicates that over half of employed women who become first-time mothers return to work by the time their infant is three months old. The "fourth trimester" is a time of great change and adjustment for women and their families, and for many new moms this also includes the physical, emotional, social, financial and organizational challenges of integrating mothering and paid work. This interview-based ethnographic research will redress the lack of in depth, qualitative investigation into this transition and seeks to understand how employed women make child care decisions (writ large) pre-natally and whether/how they implement those decisions post-partum, as well as the meanings new moms attach to their strategies to integrate their lives as mothers and workers.
these past few weeks, i've been doing a ton of reading that has been, in equal parts, fascinating and exciting and frustrating. social science research on motherhood and mothering emphasizes the personal, relational and emotional triumphs and joys of being a mom while embedding all of these experiences in harsh political-economic realities--mothering is widely acknowledged to be the most important job in the world, but is still the least valued (to paraphrase ann crittenden). i love that this new project resonates with (and frankly, completely grew out of) my own experiences of being a mom and working for pay.*
i was recently reminded of advice from my friend sarah via another friend, lexi. sarah advises those of us who should be writing to start the day by writing something. anything. this feels like the perfect venue to share some of what i'm learning, as well as my own reactions and reflections. again, as when i started this blog, i can't promise myself that this will be a daily practice, but i know it will be a valuable one to help me process some of the stuff i've been thinking about. so here's my morning writing exercise:
yesterday i read about divorce. it was not fun. i grew up having very few friends whose parents were divorced. i always chalked it up to living in a predominately catholic neighborhood and attending parochial school through 12th grade, but now i see something i had been unable or unwilling to acknowledge.
divorce makes women and children poor.
divorce certainly can be emotionally devastating, but it's the financial part that can be the real killer. in my middle-class childhood neighborhood, most moms were at home full-time or worked part-time jobs. in many american families, it is women who are cutting back on hours or leaving work altogether because they want to provide a greater level parental care to their young children (why it is women who are overwhelmingly doing this is another massive can of worms, and i'm sure you can guess many of the reasons why). lots of the moms i knew were college-educated (that's where they met their husbands) but left their teaching or office jobs or stopped working full-time when they started having kids. a few sobering facts (paraphrased from crittenden's the price of motherhood):
-part-time workers (65% of whom are women) in the US are not entitled by law to earn as much per hour or receive proportional benefits as full-time employees, and on average earn about 40% less per hour than full-timers (p. 97).
-a survey by catalyst found that employees who reduced hours to part-time (most of whom were mothers) reported no change in their workload. 10% reported that their workload had increased (p. 97).
take home message: part-time employed moms make far less per hour of work than full-time employed dads and are expected to do just as much work, or more, in a shorter amount of time.
and as we know, neither non-employed moms nor employed moms get any compensation for the family work they do at home that allows children to be nurtured and thrive and allows husbands/dads to function as the ideal workers the marketplace demands--those who are unencumbered by domestic/family responsibilities, can work long hours, don't need to take time off to care for sick kids, etc.
but what about divorce? if the marriage ends, how are women compensated for functioning as non-ideal workers outside the home (and dramatically cutting their own earning potential in the process) in order to work more at home as primary care-giver for the child/ren and manage family responsibilities in a way that (presumably) both women and their partners think best? some more facts:
-neither a married spouse nor children have any legal claim to the other spouse's income aside from basic provisions of shelter, clothing and food for the kids (p. 111).
-no state court requires an equal standard of living for all members of a household after divorce (p. 151).
-though a survey of women indicated that 80% thought they would be able to get alimony if they divorced, only 8% are actually awarded any (p. 156).
-a 1992 survey conducted by the department of education found that only 6% of custodial (post-divorce) parents (mostly moms) expected any support from exes in paying for their children's college tuition (p. 126).
-when ann crittenden interviewed california state legislator bill morrow (R) about his opposition to that state's 1988 legislation to increase child support payments (where even high-earning dads were paying no more than $300 per month in support despite CA's high cost of living), he said, "my parents were children of the depression...they didn't have anything, and they got ahead. you don't have to be middle class to succeed. we can't guarantee that every child can be middle-class or upper-class even if dad is. that's not necessary or even desirable" (p. 174, emphasis added).
-approximately 40% of divorced moms end up living in poverty (joan williams, unbending gender, p. 115)
moms love their kids. sometimes women make decisions that greatly reduce their economic power (really, the only sort of power that matters much) both in and out of marriage to do what they think is right for their families, and especially their children.
women are smart. the moms in my neighborhood were smart. even if they didn't know that their chances of receiving any alimony or adequate child support were slim if they divorced, or that despite their college degrees that they'd likely end up poor, i am sure they sensed that their lives, at work and at home, would be radically changed if they divorced. to what extent did these women put up with ungrateful, unloving, cheating or even abusive spouses because they knew that they couldn't leave the marriage and know for certain that they, and their kids, would be able to make ends meet? i never thought to ask that question. now i do.
*it's sometimes tough to find the right words to describe women who are conventionally known as "working mothers." i was raised by a working mom who wasn't employed and was never remunerated for any of the countless hours of family work she did to care for me and support my dad. i am also a working mom, but one who does get a paycheck for her (non-caregiving) work.
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3 comments:
Thanks Carrie for this. (So glad to read what you have written - that you're writing again!)
I agree with your assessment, many women end up poorer after a divorce and are not able to provide for their families/children.
Without question, I think women should be encouraged to become educated and career minded in addition to becoming a wife and mother (if they so choose). In some religious communities, women are discouraged from getting an education and thinking about a career - as it's assumed that they will become wives and mothers (working in the home). In other words, strict traditional gender roles are encouraged.
This is changing, but not fast enough in my opinion.
I'm interested in the concept of an equal standard of living, or the amount of enumeration (is that the right term?) for upper class families. I think this is a topic worth exploring. Because I believe it should be on an individual basis and really have more to do with the specific family situation. How long has a couple been married? How many children do they have, etc.
Where a father puts luxuries like a boat, cabin in his second wife's name to avoid paying additional child support - I obviously disagree with that.
But with that said, I also find some of the more outrageous wealthy divorce settlements troubling - where one person receives thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars per month to keep up with necessities like "spa treatments", "Caribbean cruises" and "monthly clothing allowances". Perhaps I am merely troubled by wealthy lifestyles in general and what I consider frivolous/unnecessary expenses.
I don't mean to discount the real work that a spouse may have done in order for the couple to make the money that has been made.
I just believe it's a balance and needs to be addressed within reason. It doesn't make sense, necessarily, to have one set of standards for the wealthy and another for the middle/working class. Of course it's also more complex if children are involved. I don't want to go back to the time when fault in divorce had to be proven. Great post. -rachel
you are correct-- there is no great term for motherwork outside of career moms... maybe this will be part of your contribution?
I think my own family life reflects much of the statistics you describe above. yet, tough as it was at times, I learned a lot through those trials.
rachel--thanks for your comment! re: your point about high-profile divorce cases where ex-wives have sued for half of their husbands' substantial income and property, i agree that it's challenging to see the value in awarding an ex-wife the financial means to afford spa treatments because it's challenging to see why *anyone* deserves the right to spa treatments.
i was reading yesterday about wendt v. wendt (the mother of all high-dollar divorce cases). lorna wendt saw her three decades of marriage as a partnership with her husband, for better or worse. his $100 million fortune was certainly for better, but her court claim was that this fortune was also built on her unpaid labor at home--raising their two children and managing their home (no, she didn't iron her husband's shirts, but what millionaire's wife does?). giving some weight to this claim, ann crittenden cites a study of men who received MBAs in the 70s that found those who had non-employed spouses made from between one-quarter to one-third more per year than those whose wives worked outside the home (all else being equal between these groups of men). the non-employed wives take on the domestic work that allows their husbands to become insanely wealthy and have very little claim to that wealth should those husbands choose to leave them for another woman (as was the wendt case). lorna wendt argued in court that since she saw her marriage as teamwork and a shared partnership, she felt that she was entitled to a half-share of what her husband had brought home. in the end, this court battle won her twice as much as she had originally been offered by her husband, but he still kept more than half. she used some of that money to establish the institute for equality in marriage (now defunct), a non-profit that worked for divorce reform.
though i think the excess wealth in this case made it newsworthy, and i agree that no one *needs* hundreds of thousands of dollars to live on per year, i think the principles of fairness in her claim are sound. courts do not ask what is "enough" for husbands to live on the way they do for wives. certainly lorna wendt didn't *need* $20 million, but neither did gary wendt (who walked away with far more than that amount).
you're also right about young women in religious communities that encourage early marriage (and therefore, implicitly or explicitly discourage higher education)--they are far more likely to end up as destitute single moms (i could give you research references if you're interested!).
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