Rating: 
Summary: Excellent observations, interesting solutions
Review: A very inspiring book, Ms. Crittenden makes excellent observations about the state of womanhood and motherhood in America today and what is wrong with this picture. I can agree with some but not all of the solutions she proposes, but she gets me thinking and perhaps can help get our nation thinking about how much we have to rememedy in the world of modern motherhood. This is an especially important book for professional women planning or considering becoming mothers.
Rating: 
Summary: supply and demand
Review: An interesting topic, but the author seems to know nothing about market economics. What you get paid in exchange for your goods and services has nothing to do with your inherent worth and morality, and everything to do with supply and demand of those goods and services. Now you know why people get paid more for selling diamonds or singing opera than for selling bread or washing clothes.
If a lot more people (like middle-class women during the Industrial Revolution) supply a smaller number of services (like housewifery, teaching, and nursing) without the demand changing...the price will go down. That's why these services have been paid so little for so long. The sexism was not the pricing of "women's work" compared to "men's work", it was limiting women to selling so few kinds of goods and services in the first place.
Now that more women have access to many more occupations hopefully the people who genuinely want to be housewives, teachers, and nurses will have less competition from the rest of us and be able to charge higher prices!
Meanwhile, I do feel sorry for full-time parents who get no Social Security because they have "no income"...the same way I feel sorry for the underemployed, etc.. But accountants aren't calling you lazy, just unprofitable. Big difference. If you start a business and have more expenses than revenue (for example, a chef with expensive ingredients and few guests), you are a hard worker with no profit. Likewise, if you are your only customer (for example, a singleton who hired herself to raise a child), you are a hard worker with no profit. Doesn't watching new entrepreneurs and their small businesses go bankrupt make you sad?
As for divorce, I don't really see how that's relevant here. Simply encouaging or discouraging divorce in general won't help anything since there are many different kinds of marriages. Encouraging ambivalent parent couples to split "since it won't affect the children" is stupid. So is encouraging unloving nonparent couples to stay together "for the sake of the children".
Rating: 
Summary: An Excellent Resource for Everyone
Review: Ann Crittenden should be thanked for producing a book relevant to sociologists, women's studies scholars, and mother's everywhere. Her prose is readable; her scholarship exhaustive and convincing. Every married woman or mother (and often those who are both) has said to herself, "There's something not fair here, I just can't put my finger on it." Well, Crittenden puts her finger on it! Corporate attitudes (from often "family friendly" companies), taxes, divorce law, and rotten child care all enter her gun sight as she explains the current situation, how we got here, and what we need to do TO MAKE IT FAIR. The answers are like the problems: complex and difficult to implement. That does not mean, however, that the solutions aren't worth attempting - they are.I especially enjoyed the author's analysis of countries like Sweden and France and how they have handled issues surrounding parenting and work. The most interesting factor was the description from the member of Sweden's "Father Commission" as to why Sweden adopted such liberal and finanically supportive policy for parents. It seems that at the time of widesweeping legislation offering financial support to new parents, Sweden was undergoing a shortage of labor. Rather than relying on the importation of labor, Sweden realized its greatest resource were Swedish women who faced obstacles to working when their children were young - unreliable child care, no guaranteed job when they returned to work, lack of flex time, etc. Sweden's government decided to remove the obstacles, jack up financial support, offer great child care, and put in place crucial legislation encouraging parents (read "men and women") to spend time with their kids. Result: happier women, men who know what its like to be a parent and get support at work for doing it, and happy babies living in a profitable economy. Go Sweden! If there are any drawbacks to The Price of Motherhood, it's that Crittenden has spent so much time with the topic (both researching it and personally experiencing it) that her bitterness occasionally seeps through in prose. I think her arguments might have been stronger in some instances if she had managed to root out the sarcasm or the repeated "It's not fair...". But she's right. It isn't fair. Read the book before voting!
Rating:
Summary: Give value to mothers and protect our children
Review: Ann Crittenden's book, "The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is the Least Valued" explores the question: why do so many of our children grow up in poverty? The authors answer: because we do not value the work of motherhood. She states: Mothers shoulder most of the cost, both as labor (an 89 hour work week) and cash (mothers invest most of their money in their children). Mothers and fathers who make their children a priority are also penalized on the job, loosing income and benefits. She calls all this, the "mommy tax" and "daddy tax". Yet, she continues, ALL of society benefits from a constant supply of new citizens, including the child free, whose later lives will be supported by elder care and social security payments supplied by other people's children! She calls this exploitation of the free labor of good parents, "free riding". Ms. Crittenden blows the lid of our "at-risk" day care system. Working mothers are blamed (if anything goes wrong) for working at all! BUT, stay-at-home moms have an at-risk situation too, by a divorce system that gives no cash value to their work. She points out that our society encourages "mommy wars", as working mothers are pitted against stay-at-home moms and "first wives" are pitted against "second wives", as mothers fight over scant resources for their children. Yet, all mothers are in the same boat, she says, and our society has developed a "divide and conquer" strategy against all those who are literally "left holding the baby". She points out that having a child is NOT a lifestyle choice. Having a pet is a lifestyle choice. A society that does not have children, does not have a future. Her solution: to have ALL of society step in and share equally the responsibility and cost of raising our citizens to adulthood. A professional economist, she presents her case in dollars and cents (sense) terms. Money invested in our children now, will pay off in real economic and social profits later. She uses modern day Sweden as a working model of what could be possible anywhere. In essence: we get what we pay for. To quote the author herself: "Whatever the cries of outrage, however loud the protests against each and every one of these ideas, remember one thing: a society that beggars its mothers, beggars its own future."
Rating:
Summary: A fantastic book that we ignore or excoriate at our peril.
Review: Anne Crittenden's argument, that motherhood is given lipservice as "the world's most important job," but that the performance of this putatively vital task leaves American women at risk of poverty and marginalization, is so sensible, and so brilliantly documented, that I almost wept as I read it. Who can disagree with her points? Who in their right mind can suggest that the reigning status quo, in which mothers and their children, in the event of a divorce, should be left virtually penniless, or that women should be expected to support their children while society makes absolutely no provisions for fine, free daycare -- in fact, has effectively worked against decent daycare through its immigration policies, as Crittenden clearly spells out? Crittenden doesn't "whine," as some of the reviewers on amazon claim. She does the opposite of whine, a verb that suggests a childish narcissism and pouting sloth. To the contrary, the author lays out her compassionate, precise and thoughtful arguments, point by searing point, and then supports each position through extensive documentation and reporting. To those who think they don't need mothers, now that they're all grown up, supporting themselves, and not having children themselves, think again, and read Crittenden's book more carefully: the workers of tomorrow -- the people who will support you through their taxes, who will care for you in the hospital as you age and your needs rapidly mount, who will keep the food coming to your table and the utilities coming to your seniors housing project, and on and on, for we are and will always be obligate social primates -- well, these workers begin life as dependent infants who must be reared to the point where they can do what needs to be done when *you* no longer can. It's time we share a slice of the nation's economic pie with the people who help bake it -- mothers. Thank you, Anne Crittenden, for standing up for all of us.
Rating:
Summary: A fantastic book that we ignore or excoriate at our peril.
Review: Anne Crittenden's argument, that motherhood is given lipservice as "the world's most important job," but that the performance of this putatively vital task leaves American women at risk of poverty and marginalization, is so sensible, and so brilliantly documented, that I almost wept as I read it. Who can disagree with her points? Who in their right mind can suggest that the reigning status quo, in which mothers and their children, in the event of a divorce, should be left virtually penniless, or that women should be expected to support their children while society makes absolutely no provisions for fine, free daycare -- in fact, has effectively worked against decent daycare through its immigration policies, as Crittenden clearly spells out? Crittenden doesn't "whine," as some of the reviewers on amazon claim. She does the opposite of whine, a verb that suggests a childish narcissism and pouting sloth. To the contrary, the author lays out her compassionate, precise and thoughtful arguments, point by searing point, and then supports each position through extensive documentation and reporting. To those who think they don't need mothers, now that they're all grown up, supporting themselves, and not having children themselves, think again, and read Crittenden's book more carefully: the workers of tomorrow -- the people who will support you through their taxes, who will care for you in the hospital as you age and your needs rapidly mount, who will keep the food coming to your table and the utilities coming to your seniors housing project, and on and on, for we are and will always be obligate social primates -- well, these workers begin life as dependent infants who must be reared to the point where they can do what needs to be done when *you* no longer can. It's time we share a slice of the nation's economic pie with the people who help bake it -- mothers. Thank you, Anne Crittenden, for standing up for all of us.
Rating:
Summary: This needed to be said a long time ago......
Review: As a single parent, I have been made even more accutely aware of the work/family conflict that so many working mothers, married and single, face. One of the main points that Ms. Crittenden makes is that the rules at work are still made by men, and I know for a fact that she is not lying. This is especially true in a so-called "male" occupation, such as the computer field, even though the computer field employs a very large number of women these days. Age-wise, I am a boomer, and have sadly realized that many women my own age and older still buy into the attitude that we are darn lucky to even be employed in our jobs in the first place, and to ask for additional considerations such as flextime, telecommuting, paid maternity leave, etc., is to be "pushing it". Ms. Crittenden has got enough (dare I say "balls"?) to make the statement that this is not working and the welfare of our children is suffering. The truth is that this situation has gone on for too long, and has NOT been adequately addressed by the feminist movement. Politically what has happened is that the Democratic party has been controlled by the far left, who basically advocate that day care should be raising the children while parents are free to work 40+ hours per week. On the other hand, the Republicans for the most part are completely clueless when it comes to understanding the economic realities that many dual-career married parents face, and even more clueless about the challenges that single parents face. Many Republicans still support the concept that the man works and the wife stays home with the kids. Philosophically, I do not have a problem with this, but unfortunately, this arrangement does not work economically for many families nowadays. Hopefully, Ms. Crittenden and others are on the vanguard of a new, more balanced feminism that will address these problems. If nothing is done, guess who suffers? Families, especially the children. For all you childless people out there, be aware that these children will one day be adults that will be supporting you in your old age, through their taxes and other contributions. Childless women can now make a lot of money in the workplace (whereas mothers are marginalized, as Ms. Crittenden points out), but those who choose NOT to have children in order to boost their careers will have to face the results of their choices in their old age, when the nation's demographics will create a shrunken pool of Social Security resources. It is time that our government realizes that promoting motherhood is good for our nation's future, for economic reasons! This is not to advocate welfare-type handout programs, but to encourage business, through tax breaks, etc., to make it easier on employees (male and female) to spend more time with their families, and to make it easier to juggle the demands of work and family life.
Rating: 
Summary: More Important are the Rewards of Motherhood
Review: As a stay at home mother of 5 the title of this book intrigued me. I was interested in learning the history of how motherhood came to be valued so little by modern America. And I hoped for affirmation of my life's hardest and most important work: mothering. The beginning of the book seemed to offer both. I could relate to the instant loss of success and credibility when, despite economic and social pressures, I left my professional career to stay home with my first baby. One of my husband's married male cousins actually asked me a chapter question, "So....exactly what DO you do all day at home?" As I read through the first half of the book I became angry at maternal social injustices and was inspired by the baby-passion that encourages mothers to raise their own children anyway. But in the second half of the book I felt profound disappointment. Ms. Crittenden seems to come to the conclusion that any form of motherhood is worthy of financial remuneration, it matters not if a mother's child is in round-the-clock day care. The myths of feminism's working woman are (inadvertently?) reinforced over the unrecognized contributions and sacrifices of career mothering. There are however seeds of a greater truth scattered within the pages of this book: a mother breastfeeding her baby, a mother caring for an aging family member, a mother who manages the household, volunteers her time, and homeschools her children should be acknowledged and valued (page 66). We know the price of motherhood, the rewards are less understood, and a deeper question remains. How can we, as a society, best support, protect and value motherhood? "Labor is prior to, and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves a much higher consideration." Abraham Lincoln
Rating:
Summary: Let's add public schools to our perpetrators...
Review: As a well-educated single mother (divorced) in an intense economy (Silicon Valley), I have experienced many of the difficulties described in this book. A few additional realities make parenting hard: The Bay Area is filled with people of all ages who work hard and never plan to have children. In the five small companies I've worked for, there were never more than 4-5 people out of 50-60 employees who had kids. The culture here provides much reward, fun and activity for singles and the childless. People with kids are often considered a curiosity at work. Many of my co-workers cannot imagine how they would add children (or a relationship!) to their busy and full lives. Moreover, since most of the high-tech workers are transplants from other parts of the country, the inter-generational family structures are destroyed. People follow the work, and this destroys family continuity. It is good for the companies, but not the workers and not the communities (whose occupants are much less informed about, and engaged in their community than multi-genererational folks are). It greatly increases the pressure on the parents raising the kids not to have the support of the culture or families and traditions that are geographically bound. Also, the school system schedules are a joke! I live in a small district with one elementary school and one middle school. Both schools have different start times. In each, Wednesdays have an entirely different schedule -- starting and ending later. There are frequent "minimum days" that end at noon for staff training. The kids have two separate weeks off in the spring, two at Christmas, and eight in the summer. There is no flexibility about when this time off occurs (and it is much greater than the vacation I receive), and it never synchs up with their cousins spring breaks in other parts of the country -- further minimzing opportunities for distributed families to get together. If you have kids spanning the two schools, you will devote two hours in the morning to getting the right kids to the right schools at the right time on the right days. Furthermore, these schedules have nothing in common with the standard ways that companies provide vacation and flex time. I live in an area with the highest housing prices in the country. Except for the very rich, every family I know has two working parents. Can we please regularize the school system as well? The system needs to be re-designed to support the reality of working parents in terms of schedules, homework and flexibility. I could add my complaints about two hours of homework per night to this response, but that issue is coming to the fore in force in the media these days.
Rating:
Summary: irritatingly accurate
Review: As a woman whose daughters are already grown and persuing professional careers of their own, I recognize that the obstacles that the author addresses, will be issues for them as well. As hard as women try to compete in the business world, when they choose to have a child all the rules change and they must choose between being a very successful mother or a very successful business person. While most of us choose motherhood and continue our careers, we know our careers will suffer. Men do not have to make these choices and perhaps that is why as a woman I feel the unfairness of it all. Perhaps with books like this, the next generation of women will be able to approach both parts of their lives knowing that commitment in one area will not diminish or restrain the commitment in the other. There are some extremely useful suggestions that would help alleviate the burden and level the playing ground now. Until then, we will do the best we can, and for those of us that choose to put motherhood first, we will always know that it is still by far our most prized accomplishment.
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