The Mommy Tax

Is motherhood a boon or a burden for women today?

Cathy Young from the June 2001 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

That's a glib dismissal of a complex issue. In one couple I know, the father had to drop out of a graduate program in music when he learned that a baby was on the way; he finds his current corporate job boring and exhausting and hates the long hours away from his son. The mother, who quit an office job she never much liked, seems to be enjoying her time at home. Who's making the sacrifice?

Crittenden's blindness to men's disadvantages is especially glaring when it comes to divorce. Her discussion of this issue is based on the fallacy that it's nearly always men who desert their families -- in fact, two-thirds of divorces involving children are initiated by mothers -- and focuses on women's economic losses while ignoring the emotional pain of fathers who lose their children. She also ignores recent studies claiming that taxes and other factors equalize the financial burdens of divorce on mothers and fathers.

Revealingly, Crittenden has much to say about shared income after divorce and nothing about shared parenting, even though it would lighten women's bur-dens. Take one of her tales of maternal victimization: A lawyer who won a custody fight with her ex-husband ended up losing her job because, as "a single mother of two small children who could not afford to lose their mother as well as their father," she was no longer able to put in the hours at her law firm. It never occurs to Crit-tenden that it might have been better for everyone if the children didn't have to lose their father -- who had actually volunteered to raise them.

This anecdote illustrates a larger point. One way to reduce the "tremendous costs of caregiving" for women is for fathers to share more in child-rearing. Crittenden claims that "most men have dragged their heels" yet acknowledges only in passing that women often balk at surrendering the role of primary parent.

It is likely that women's overall greater involvement in hands-on child care will persist due to innate sex differences (which means that, like it or not, so will men's overall higher level of achievement outside the home). Still, many fathers are able -- and, in a friendlier climate, would be willing -- to take over as caregivers, freeing mothers to advance in the marketplace. Even in more traditional arrangements, good fathers not only play an important role in raising children to be healthy adults but provide the financial support that allows mothers to spend more time with the family.

Crittenden pays lip service to equal parenting, but most of the time her attitude toward fathers ranges between dismissive and venomous. She explicitly suggests that men don't love their children as much as women do. While grudgingly admitting that "two parents are better than one," she also speculates that children may often be better off in female-headed families where "no man is able to challenge maternal priorities," since women are supposedly more inclined to spend resources on the children and not on their selfish needs. At best, a devoted father is treated as a minor supporting player in the story of the "conscientious mother."

True gender equality would mean recognizing that both parents are equally responsible for -- and equally important to -- their children, however they decide to divide their responsibilities. Instead, Crit-tenden believes that "society" should take responsibility for children so that women can have it all. What she proposes is entitlement masquerading as rights, female chauvinism posing as anti-sexism, and a vast expansion of government power under the guise of empowering women.

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