It’s Mothers that Are Leaving The Workforce, Not Just Women
In 2018 I made the choice to leave my career to support my husband’s promotion that required a move across the country. We decided it was a good time in our family for me to stay home; I could help the children acclimate to a new school and community, slow down our lives down and refocus on what was truly important. I was lucky to have this choice, and yet I still struggled mightily with the loss of identity as I made the switch from working mother to stay-at-home mother.
In September, the US Labor Department released official numbers that confirmed what many of us suspected - about 865,000 women had left the workforce, compared to 216,000 men. Many news outlets blamed the persistent gender wage gap - if there are two working parents and one needs to stay home to be with kids, it makes sense for it to be the one who earns less money - and in a heteronormative family unit, that’s typically the mother.
Words Matter
But pay attention now, because this is all about semantics. Words matter, and the words the media is using here are shaping the perception we have about the issue. Nearly every single article I found about this story had the word “Women” in the title...but none had the word “Mother.”
Vox: "The Great Recession was called a “mancession.” This one could be devastating for women."
World Economic Forum: "Why COVID-19 could force millions of women to quit work - and how to support them"
USA Today: "865,000 women left the workforce last month"
New York Times: "Why Did Hundreds of Thousands of Women Drop Out of the Work Force?"
Washington Post: "Opinion: Women are bearing the brunt of the economic crisis. They must lead our recovery plans."
Bloomberg: "The First Female Recession Threatens to Wipe Out Decades of Progress for U.S. Women"
If speculation (and common sense) tell us that the reason hundreds of thousands of women are leaving the workforce is to care for children...why not call them mothers?
Mother vs Woman
At first interpretation, that makes sense. It’s harder to quantify how many of the women who left the workforce are also mothers, and then to directly link the care for children as the cause of their departure. But I think it goes deeper than that. Mothers bear the burden of being the ultimate target for everything wrong with society...but no one wants to admit it. We spend billions of dollars in therapy every year to deal with mental health issues, of which many people would admit that they have issues with their mother. We have such a complicated relationship with the role of motherhood in modern society, that it’s just easier to blame any discrepancies between working men and women on gender.
But when we put the word “Mother” in these headlines, instead of “Woman,” a different image is conjured. See how much more painful it is to read these reimagined headlines:
“Why Did Hundreds of Thousands of Mothers Drop Out of The Workforce?”
“Opinion: Mothers are bearing the brunt of the economic crisis.”
“Why COVID-19 could force millions of mothers to quit work - and how to support them.”
We’ve already accepted the idea of the gender wage gap, accepting the devaluation of women in the workforce. But these reimagined headlines paint a picture of a society that doesn’t care about mothers. As feminist academic Jacqueline Rose writes in the opening of her latest book Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty, “Motherhood...is the ultimate scapegoat for our personal and political failings, for everything that is wrong with the world, which it becomes the task - unrealisable, of course - of mothers to repair.” We expect our mothers to come in and fix everything in a world that completely devalues them.
Working Mothers
We still hold such a conflicted view of mothers holding a career. The media gleefully labels it the Mommy Wars, an abhorrent and misleading depiction that conjures images of a working mother in a tailored suit dutifully “leaning in,” and a slightly rumpled stay-at-home mother sitting on a park bench glaring at each other. But the truth is more insidious than that. Neoliberalism and second wave feminism has loudly praised the career woman for decades, insisting and demanding that women can have it all; while public policy around working mothers is abysmal: the lack of affordable childcare and the complete absence of a national paid maternity leave give mothers at work the clear message “We don’t want you here, you should be at home taking care of your children.”
We want women to be able to work, but we want mothers to be at home caring for children. The conflict is then laid bare. The idea of the “working mother” becomes a contradiction in terms - women at work are supposed to leave the mothering at home. There isn’t room for them to think about their children while at the workforce. And while mothers at home are told with saccharine sweetness “You’re doing the HARDEST job in the WORLD,” it’s hollow comfort in a society that prizes productivity and profit over people.
This puts many mothers in an untenable situation. Without the ability to work for a living wage, many are unable to pay back student loans, save for retirement, or are left dependent upon their partners, preventing many from leaving unhealthy relationships.
After my own personal crisis, I had to come to terms with the understanding that the role of motherhood is devalued in our country. It took years of spiritual study and deep self-work to develop a reconciliation within myself. We’re now in a society where 865,000 women, the majority of whom were working mothers, are faced with that same personal crisis. We need acknowledgement that this goes far beyond the effect it will have on the economy, it will define how we support mothers in the years to come.
Are you a mother struggling with a loss of identity?
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