When I think of the women in my own family I am struck by how many variables exist.

For example:

One stay-at-home stopped working because her husband was in a high-stress job that required lots of overtime and lots of travel.

One working mom lives near her family home – and could not continue working if not for the generous support from the mom.

More than one stay-at-home mom has difficulty finding and retaining because of health problems.

The real questions that impact health are not likely to be work vs. not-work, but questions of support, access to resources, etc.

I am inclined to believe that healthier women, with better access to resources and stronger “networks”, are more likely to return to the workforce after their children are born than women who suffer from poorer health, lack of resources – especially inadequate support – and inadequate ‘networks’.

Another question I’d be interested in seeing relates to maternity leave and re-entry difficulties. A woman who stays away from the working world more than a few months is going to increasingly find herself stigmatized on both a career level and emotionally. How many stay-at-homes wanted to be forever-stay-at-homes, and how many would have re-entered the workforce when the children were school age, but for some reason had difficulty getting a job in line with their needs or expectations?

When I was reading Chantal Delsol’s Icarus Fallen, I was reminded of this discussion, and I think her analysis strikes a deep chord. My initial thought was that, assuming the article is true, perhaps this is a result of the atomization of neighborhoods and the isolation of care-givers. I think that is plausible as a factor but I think Delsol’s analysis goes deeper and broader. She notes the depreciation and derision for care-giving, especially unpaid care-giving, in our society. As David Nickols  points out must grapple with these findings if true but it seems the secularists, liberals and anti-religious must reckon as well with them. The depreciation of unpaid caregiving in society results no doubt in great stress of many kinds for such caregivers, both in psychologically and in the bereftment of resources and relational support and financial stress. Permit me to quote Delsol at length: 

“The access women have gained to social success is part of the spread of knowledge to everyone, and of the substitution of status based on merit for status based on birth. But this sort of revolution, the consequences of which we have yet to see play out, is also a response to the depreciation of caregiving activities. The women of yesterday were the guardians of immeasurable values and, as a rule, found in these values their essential reason for being. But if they were able to work without wages or social recognition, it was because the society of their time gave so much importance to their activities…through a shift in interpretation the ‘useless servant’ has become a ‘superfluous man,’ to use a term from nineteenth century Russia. An entire population given over to activities of care-giving, and especially child-rearing mothers, suddenly found themselves de-valued. And so this population, in order to avoid contempt, was eager to enter the world of production. The values of care-giving disintegrated and seemed to lose their intrinsic importance…For the past century, our desire to detach ourselves from religion’s constraints, and our concomitant depreciation of spiritual values, have led us to transfer more and more care-giving activities to salaried employees…Nothing today…is more depreciated than the care-giving activities that still go unremunerated, which are simply considered the occupations of the idle. This is why the dream of our contemporary is to have a society in which all care-giving activities are exercised by wage-earners…Never before has society been in so great a need of solicitude toward human beings, and yet never before has it held this solicitude in such contempt, especially when it goes unremunerated.”

-Chantal Delsol, Icarus Fallen, (2003), pgs. 154,155,156

Evidence of this depreciation for care-giving I think can be found in the current clamor to redefine marriage, the most child-friendly institute on the planet,  in such a way as to remove  the biological nexus to children altogether from the essential idea of marriage.

Yes and no. That ought to be the case, but my own history (when I had small children) does not bear it out too well. I lived hundreds of miles from my extended family, and moved to a new city while I already had very small children — thus limiting my ability to form new relationships that would form that support network. I was involved in a church — where the other women were a combination of similarly situated with myself, working full-time outside the home, or quite busy with their own adult children and grandchildren. My kids weren’t old enough, at that time, to permit me to be involved in any kind of homeschooling network.

It was sort of a Catch-22 — since I didn’t already have the kind of social contacts that would give me support in that situation, I couldn’t form them. And I’ve no doubt that it affected, or at least potentially affected, my overall physical well-being.

I think we have to be careful when asserting that full-time motherhood *need not be* isolating and lacking support (which is certainly the case), not to deny that it very frequently, because of particular circumstances, *is.*

Children whose fathers are absent are at risk as are mothers who must manage on their own. I hope that David Nickol does not place the blame for the recent increase in broken families, absent fathers, and births outside of marriage to any type of conservative thinking.

References to Ayn Rand seem anachronistic and an attempt to fit conservatives of many different points of view into one mold. Paul Ryan at one time during his education apparently read Ayn Rand and was for a time impressed by her thought. (Those of us who comment here are perhaps fortunate that no research is being carried out into our personal forays into various philosophical and theological systems.) His life speaks for itself as to how much of her thought had enduring effect. Perhaps you mistake his understanding of the meaning of “creative work”. The creative work of his mother, his wife, his friends, and that of Mitt and Ann Romney are encompassed by his comprehensive understanding of those words.

Linda Wolpert Smith,

And separation of children from their mothers. Whatever the reasons, let’s not pretend that there’s no irony in the group that praised stay-at-home motherhood was basically the same group that wanted “welfare mothers” to leave the kids at home and get to work.

And here in this thread we have people resisting the idea that it might be healthier for mothers to work outside the home, as if working outside the home was not to be encouraged.

Part of the conservative ethos is that work is the important thing in life. Certainly this is found in Ayn Rand. It has been years since I read Atlas Shrugged, but I am quite sure there are no hymns to motherhood or stay-at-home moms in it.

“Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live–that productive work is the process by which man’s consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one’s purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one’s values–that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind…”
— John Galt

Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,020)

It doesn’t sound like Ann Romney staying at home and raising five boys.

Very well known is the fact that well-intentioned policy decisions can have unintended consequences, some of them terrible.

The situation of mothers and children, particularly those who have been abandoned by the children’s father or, for any reason, do not receive support from the children’s father, whose numbers greatly increased in the recent past, had to be attended to quickly. There is no time for deliberation to be carefully carried on while children suffer. People of good will of both political parties (I emphasize people of good will) developed plans that seemed to provide answers. Almost all were flawed in some way.

Massive sums of money were spent on public assistance and housing, health services, etc.
This provided temporary relief and solace. But very few think that they provided long term solutions for the best well-being of all concerned.

Other solutions were proposed and decided upon by members of both political parties. Welfare without responsibility had harmed many recipients. Long term public assistance did not provide ways to develop a sense of “agency” (as the wonderful Mia Love has said). The recipients often felt deprived of a sense of themselves as “acting persons.”

Another solution was proposed – a kind of earned welfare. I am not familiar with the details but understand that this plan was put into place under President Clinton and was until recently considered to have been of some good.

In any event, people of good will, conservative, liberal, Tocquevillian liberal conservatives, neo-conservatives, progressive, do not have the selfish, disrespectful attitude described by David Nickol.

In this time of upheaval regarding parenthood, marriage, family, individual responsibility, and the role of government, it is not surprising that confusion reigns.

The unintended consequence of welfare was diminution of personal agency; the unintended consequence of workfare was separation of mothers from their children.

Harsh words and calumny have no place and no positive role to play – not, that is, among those striving for the best well-being of all concerned.

Fair enough.

Ms. Tushnet did a fine job of provoking thought.

Good job Eve!

:)

It is a little disingenuous, I think, for conservatives to object to a study that purports to show the benefits of work when it has been the conservative agenda preach the advantages of stay-at-home motherhood when for decades they have been trying to make sure that poor mothers don’t get help to stay at home and raise children but instead must get out of the house and work. Stay-at-home motherhood is is apparently recommended if you are well off enough to afford it, but if you need assistance to stay home and care for your children, that’s too bad. Get out and work!