The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued

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Macmillan, 2002 - Family & Relationships - 323 pages
In the pathbreaking tradition of Backlash and The Second Shift, this provocative book shows how mothers are systematically disadvantaged and made dependent by a society that exploits those who perform its most critical work. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and the most current research in economics, history, child development, and law, Ann Crittenden proves that although women have been liberated, mothers have not.

The costs of motherhood are everywhere apparent. College-educated women pay a "mommy tax" of over a million dollars in lost income when they have a child. Family law deprives mothers of financial equality in marriage. Stay-at-home mothers and their work are left out of the GDP, the labor force, and the social safety net. With passion and clarity, Crittenden demonstrates that proper rewards for mothers' essential contributions would only enhance the general welfare.

Bold, galvanizing, full of innovative solutions, The Price of Motherhood offers a much-needed accounting of the price that mothers pay for performing the most important job in the world.
 

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Contents

Introduction
1
Where We Are Now
13
A Conspiracy of Silence
28
How Mothers Work Was Disappeared The Invention of the Unproductive Housewife
45
The Truly Invisible Hand
65
The Mommy Tax
87
The Dark Little Secret of Family Life
110
What Is a Wife Worth?
131
The Welfare State Versus a Caring State
186
The Toughest Job Youll Ever Love
202
An Accident Waiting to Happen
218
It Was Her Choice
233
How to Bring Children Up Without Putting Women Down
256
Notes
275
Acknowledgments
305
Index
309

Who Really Owns the Family Wage?
149
Who Pays for the Kids?
162

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About the author (2002)

Ann Crittenden is the author of "Killing the Sacred Cows: Bold Ideas for a New Economy." A former reporter for "The New York Times "and a Pulitzer Prize nominee, she has also been a financial writer for "Newsweek," a visiting lecturer at M.I.T. and Yale, and an economics commentator on "CBS News." Her articles have appeared in "Fortune," The "Nation," "Foreign Affairs," "McCalls," and "Working Woman," among others. She lives with her husband and son in Washington, D.C.

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