{"id":47478,"date":"2012-05-22T10:42:40","date_gmt":"2012-05-22T15:42:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=47478"},"modified":"2012-05-22T02:49:43","modified_gmt":"2012-05-22T07:49:43","slug":"she-works-hard-for-no-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/05\/22\/she-works-hard-for-no-money\/","title":{"rendered":"She Works Hard For No Money"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The politics of motherhood reared its head again last month when Hilary Rosen, who the news identified as a \u201cDemocratic strategist,\u201d said that Ann Romney (Mrs. Mitt) had \u201cnever worked a day in her life.\u201d (A NY Times article is\u00a0here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\u201cWorked\u201d was a bad choice of words.\u00a0 Raising kids and taking care of a home are work, maybe even if you can hire the kind of help that Mrs. Romney could afford.\u00a0 Rosen\u2019s comment implied that family work is not as worthwhile as work in the paid labor force.\u00a0 That\u2019s not such an unreasonable conclusion if you assume that we put our money where our values are and reward work in proportion to what we think it\u2019s worth.\u00a0 Mitt\u2019s supporters use this value-to-society assumption to justify the huge payoffs Romney derived from those leveraged buyouts at Bain Capital.*<\/p>\n

Even Mrs. Romney apparently felt that there must be some truth to the enviability of a career.\u00a0\u00a0 Why else would she refer to stay-at-home motherhood as a career?\u00a0 \u201cMy career choice was to be a mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, regardless of the truth of Rosen\u2019s remark, it was insulting.**\u00a0 Stay-at-home motherhood is work \u2013 a job.<\/p>\n

But is it a good job?<\/p>\n

A recent\u00a0Gallup poll<\/a>\u00a0provides some more evidence as to why stay-at-home moms might be both envious or resentful of their employed counterparts.\u00a0 Gallup asked women about the emotions, positive and negative, that they had felt \u201ca lot\u201d in the previous day.\u00a0 Gallup then compared the stay-at-home moms, employed moms, and employed women who had no children at home.
\n\"\"<\/a>
\nThe stay-at-home moms came in first on every negative emotion.\u00a0 Some of the differences are small, but the Gallup sample was more than 60,000 so these differences are statistically significant.\u00a0\u00a0 The smallest difference was for Stress \u2013 no surprise there, since paid work can be stressful.\u00a0 Worry and Anger too can be part of the workplace.\u00a0 The largest differences were for Sadness and Depression.\u00a0 Stay-home moms were 60% more likely to have been sad or depressed.<\/p>\n

Gallup also asked about positive feelings (Thriving, Smiling or Laughing, Learning, Happiness, Enjoyment), and while the differences were smaller, they went the same way, with stay-at-home moms on the shorter end.\u00a0 Still it\u2019s encouraging that 86% of them had Experienced Happiness 86%; so had 91% of the employed moms.<\/p>\n

Money matters.\u00a0 As Rosen said,<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t about whether Ann Romney or I or other women of some means can afford to make a choice to stay home and raise kids. Most women in America, let\u2019s face it, don\u2019t have that choice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gallup found a small interaction effect.\u00a0 The stay-at-home mom-employed difference was greater for low-income women.
\n\"\"<\/a>
\nThe Gallup poll does not offer much speculation about why stay-at-home moms have more sadness and less happiness. One in four experienced \u201ca lot\u201d of depression yesterday.\u00a0 That number should be cause for concern.<\/p>\n

Maybe women feel more uncertain and less able to control their lives when they depend on a man, especially one whose income is inadequate.\u00a0 Maybe stay-at-home moms find themselves more isolated from other adults. Maybe they are at home not by choice but because they cannot find a decent-paying job. Or maybe money talks, and what it says to unpaid stay-at-home moms is society does not value your work.\u00a0 Nor, in comparison with other wealthy countries, does US society or government provide much non-financial support to make motherhood easier.<\/p>\n

The late Donna Summer sang,<\/p>\n

She works hard for the money
\nSo you better treat her right<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But how right are we treating women who work hard for no money?<\/p>\n

——————————-<\/p>\n

* For example, Edward Conrad is a former partner of Romney.\u00a0 In a recent\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0in the Times Magazine, Adam Davidson writes, \u201cIf a Wall Street trader or a corporate chief executive is filthy rich, Conrad says that the merciless process of economic selection has assured that they have somehow benefitted society.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

** Hillary Clinton committed a similar gaffe twenty years ago in response to a reporter\u2019s question about work and family \u201cI suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog. The politics of motherhood reared its head again last month when Hilary Rosen, who the news identified as a \u201cDemocratic strategist,\u201d said that Ann Romney (Mrs. Mitt) had \u201cnever worked a day in her life.\u201d (A NY Times article is\u00a0here.) \u201cWorked\u201d was a bad choice of words.\u00a0 Raising kids and taking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,329,55,272],"class_list":["post-47478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-emotion","tag-gender","tag-marriagefamily"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47478"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47485,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47478\/revisions\/47485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}