What Mothers Really Need

Cards and flowers are nice. But what mothers really need is to not to pay such a high price in poverty, stress, and overload for the care they give. The Caring Economy Coalition is working on this. And it’s urgent!

Photo Credit: Flickr user The Greenery Nursery and Garden Shop used under a Creative Commons license

U.S. Census figures show that in our wealthy nation elderly women – most of whom spent much of their lives taking care of others in their families – are twice as likely to live in poverty than elderly men. Not only that, three out of five women over 65 have incomes that won’t cover their most basic daily needs.

Workplace statistics show that on top of the well-known gender wage gap that persists across the board, American mothers are heavily discriminated against. Mothers are less likely to be hired, and men with children earn much more than women with children, with women of color at the bottom of the scale.

Small wonder that Maria Shriver’s annual report found that one in three American women live in poverty and that a major reason is that the work of caregiving still primarily performed by women is unpaid or underpaid.

It does not have to be this way!

Unlike the United States, most other industrialized democracies (which also have lower poverty rates than the U.S.), provide paid parental and sick leave. These are the gifts mothers need!

Unlike the United States, these nations also have government subsidies for high quality early childcare and early childhood education. So in Montreal, Canada, childcare by a well-paid childcare professional costs just $7 per day – another truly useful gift for mothers!

There policy makers understand the value of care work, not only for the children and families directly affected, but as an investment in their nation’s future “human capital” – the capital economists tell us is essential for our knowledge-service global era.

Yet U.S. policies ignore even what neuroscience shows: that whether or not we have the “high quality human capital” that will determine our nation’s economic future largely hinges on the quality of care and education children receive.

Another fact U.S. policies ignore is that investment in caregiving and good early education of children is one of the most cost-effective investments a nation can make. Studies show that children who had the benefits of high quality early education grow up to earn more, are much less likely to end up in prison, or even to smoke – leading to huge local, state, and national tax savings for crime, mental illness, drug abuse, and lost human potential.

Here’s what you can do:

1. Get our representatives to adopt more accurate ways of measuring economic success that show the enormous financial return from investing in caring for people, starting in early childhood. The problem is that policy makers still use Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the measure of our economic productivity. But GDP is not an accurate measure of our real wealth. It actually includes work that destroys rather than nurtures life: making and selling cigarettes and unhealthy illness-producing foods, along with the resulting medical costs and funeral costs, all swell our GDP. In addition, and this takes us straight back to really honoring mothers, GDP does not count as “productivity” the work of caregiving in families – even though there would be no labor force without this work, and that both our short and long-term economic health depend on the work of care. This is why a major goal of the Caring Economy Campaign is developing new Social Wealth economic measures to provide policy makers and the public the information needed for our nation to invest in what really counts: caring for and educating children.

2. Use this information to get our national and state lawmakers to adopt sound policies like those of other developed nations. Contrary to the notion that we cannot afford these policies, what we cannot afford is not investing in caring for an educating our children: our nation is falling ever farther behind other developed nations in human capacity building.

The way to honor mothers in reality, not just rhetoric, and at the same time build a strong economy, is to see to it that the essential work of care is valued.

Riane Eisler is co-founder of the Caring Economy Campaign (CEC) and author of the international bestsellers The Chalice and the Blade andThe Real Wealth of Nations.