Oh, Mom, Poor Mom - working women and motherhood

Women's Quarterly, Summer, 2001 by Jennifer C. Braceras

A FRONT-PAGE ARTICLE in the New York Times recently bore this headline: "Women Are Close to Being Majority of Law Students." Yet, instead of focusing on the good news that women made up 49.4 percent of students entering American law schools in the fall of 2000, the Times concentrated on "obstacles" to a woman s achieving parity in the legal profession after graduation.

The relatively low number of female judges and partners in major law firms furnished the primary evidence that barriers to women remain. (Women now make up only about 20 percent of the federal bench and around 14 percent of partners in New York law firms.) The Times attributed the disproportionately low number of women in these positions, in part, to the burdens of motherhood.

Many women lawyers, of course, enjoy successful careers as in-house corporate counsel, legal policy analysts, law professors, or as attorneys for the government or public interest groups. Such jobs may pay less (and arguably carry less status) than partnerships at large metropolitan firms, but they also require a shorter work week, and usually allow for flexible or reduced-time schedules. Nevertheless, the Times portrayed the success of women in these sectors not as cause for celebration, but as cause for concern.

Ann Crittenden, a former reporter at the Times and author of a new book that attempts to quantify the costs of child-rearing, shares this concern. In The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued, Crittenden argues that the decision to become a mother is not only a career-buster, but also the worst possible economic choice for a woman. Crittenden maintains that mothers, particularly well-educated women with high earning capacities, pay a "Mommy Tax" in the form of slowed career advancement and lost earnings. According to Crittenden's calculations, the typical female college graduate forfeits $1 million in lifetime earnings if she has a child.

Exhibit A is Crittenden herself. Before the birth of her son in 1982, Crittenden "lived the unencumbered life of a journalist [and was] one of the boys in a gender-neutral environment that represented enormous progress for women." All that changed when, in her early forties, Crittenden became a mother. After taking maternity leave, she resigned her job at the Times to work part-time from home as a freelance journalist. Crirtenden estimates that this decision cost her more than $700,000 in lifetime earnings, not to mention the loss of a pension. This, she writes, "seems a high price to pay for doing the right thing."

Reading this section of The Price of Motherhood, I could not help but think that Crittenden is a woman who sees her glass as half empty rather than as half full. Since leaving the Times, she has not only raised a son, but has authored numerous articles and written several books. Still, Crittenden feels cheated. Her former colleagues don't respect her the way they used to. (Several years after leaving the Times, she ran into an acquaintance who jokingly asked, "Didn't you used to be Ann Crittenden?") And, of course, she is not earning the salary she would have earned had she continued to work at the Times. Apparently, the joys of being a mother and having the professional independence of an author and freelance writer don't compensate for these losses.

Crittenden is correct, of course, that all parents--those who work at home taking care of their families as well as those who are part of the paid labor market--pay a financial price for parenthood. But they also reap extraordinary rewards that are impossible to quantify. This is not to say that our public policy should ignore the needs of families and working parents. To the contrary, Crittenden is right that government should provide the proper incentives for families to flourish. She is also on target when she argues that working mothers should band together to demand more flexible arrangements from employers. But the current state of affairs is not as bleak as Crittenden would have us believe.

Although Crittenden complains that most workplaces are inflexible and unfriendly to mothers, more and more employers are allowing parents to work part-time or to job-share with another part-time employee. Employers have some very real market-based incentives to accommodate motherhood. Women now make up a majority of college graduates. And, as the Times article on law students makes clear, women are earning an ever-greater share of professional degrees. Employers who want to attract and retain the best and the brightest will find it to their own advantage to offer schedules and benefits that appeal to women.

Technology is also on our side. A decade ago telecommuting was virtually unheard of, but today we live in a world of fax machines, cell phones, and high speed modems--the advent of which has made it more difficult for employers to deny parents the choice of working from home. In the twenty-first century, the options (at least for college-educated women) seem limitless. Most can choose to work full-time, part-time, or not at all after they have children. And it should be noted that, for all the talk of "stay-at-home Dads" and "Mr. Mom," very few fathers believe that they have as many options as those available to their wives. While Ann Crittenden and the New York Times grieve the dearth of female partners at major law firms, most of the male attorneys I know would give their eyeteeth to escape the drudgery of law firm life in favor of part-time government service or public interest work. But, alas, somebody has to pay the mortgage, pay off the law school loans, and put the kids through college.