The demise of child-rearing

Public Interest, Fall, 2000 by Lyric Wallwork Winik

When my baby was six weeks old, I realized that I was not going to finish my Ph.D. at Stanford while he slept on my lap. I wasn't going to get my degree while bouncing him, rocking him, or even by wearing him in a baby sling. Ezra enjoyed all these things for about ten minutes, but then his patience ran out. He would cough politely three times as fair warning, and then begin to scream. It was time to find a babysitter.

Frank, direct, descriptive, that one passage encapsulates a sea-change in how a significant segment of our culture has come to view the raising of a child. And it should be noted that in terms of family structure, Goodman's is a more conventional choice; she has not opted for the route of single-parenthood or cohabitation. She is even biologically something of an increasing rarity: a young mother, still rather fresh into her twenties when this first child was born, albeit also a young mother who works.

This is not to say that women have never worked, or that the well-to-do in the past have not liberally employed nannies, governesses, and wet nurses. Indeed, much of so-called women's work was backbreaking, and older children were often left to watch and care for their infant siblings while the mother tackled the task of running the house, beating the rugs, tending the vegetable garden, heaving the laundry up and down the washboard. One might well argue that only the rise of vacuum cleaners and washing machines has fully allowed for the development of one-on-one child-rearing and stimulation, epitomized by phonics and flash cards and trips to Gymboree. But the notion of balancing a career--as in an outside, paying job or professional vocation--and motherhood is something relatively new.

And while there is anecdotal evidence that fewer mothers may be opting to take this path and that more affluent, professional women in the fields of law and business are increasingly, without shame or regret, pursuing the previously maligned "mommy track," there isn't much, if any, hard data to back up these assertions. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the traditional family--mom at home, dad working--fell from 43 percent of all families in 1980 to 27 percent of all families with children in 1995. For 1999, the figure was solidly stuck at 28 percent. So, while a number of women (and even a very few men, 4.3 percent as of last year) may well be leaving their jobs altogether in favor of spending precious time with their kids, the actual figure appears closer to a trickle than a tidal wave. Moreover, as some will argue, not all women are economically able to make this choice, especially the growing legions of single mothers and mothers who are cohabitating but not married. For them, the stay-at-home option has been peremptorily foreclosed. Finally, there are those who simply choose to work. In some instances raised by their mothers and teachers with the words, "You have opportunities I never had," they are striving to make good on them. Educated and skilled, they have tasted the proverbial apple and don't want to go back.