National Association of Mothers' Centers

Hats off to Dr. Katherine Abraham for telling a US Senate sub-committee that standard indicators of economic strength leave out core elements of our national wealth and well-being. For example, women have been streaming into the paid work force since 1970, and their income is reflected in the gross domestic product (GDP). However, the loss of the unpaid work they used to do doesn’t show up on any balance sheet. Or perhaps one cuts back on work hours, or quits the paid workforce altogether, to be an at-home parent, or care for an aging father. Such efforts could be a long term investment in a child’s life or the protection of the health and welfare of a parent. Definitely productive work on both counts. Definitely valuable to one’s family, one’s self, and the common good. But visible on any measure of nationally produced goods and services? Nope.

 

All kinds of activity of obvious worth are left out of our national economic accounting system. Environmental assets and services are not reflected. Uncompensated household production, including child care, elder care, housework and similar activities are similarly ignored. Work done not-for-profit, volunteering, and community-building are not regarded as economically significant. Improvements in personal health or in pursuit of education, clearly positive offsets to the costs of disease, early death, or ignorance, get no credit. All of these activities fall beyond “monetized interactions” of the market economy, which is all economic indicators of national wealth.

 

Dr. Abraham made the limitations of our current system clear. A different set of measures is sorely needed. One such system, the American Time Use Survey, reflects all uncompensated activity undertaken in a given period. This is how we know that fathers are spending slightly more time on childcare, and that mothers continue to do more carework even when working outside the home. This is the data that will convince employers that workers must have the leeway to address critical family concerns with flexible scheduling and family leave. This is the data that will convince policy makers that voluntary universal preschool is an investment we simply must make. This is the data which will establish that adult sons and daughters, boomers themselves looking retirement in the face, are still in the workforce and dealing with their own time-consuming health issues at the same time as those of their spouses and parents. (We may benefit from significant increases in longevity, but it won't be cheap.) Alarmingly, the American Time Use Survey is not included in the President's Budget for the next fiscal year. This is exactly how carework, just beginning to be seen as a national economic asset, becomes invisible and devalued.

 

Also on the Hill, the US Joint Economic Committee heard testimony on how the federal government must make paid maternity/paternity leave available to all federal employees to remain competitive with employers in the private sector. The new bill, sponsored by Carolyn Maloney from New York, would give new parents 8 weeks of paid leave for the birth or adoption of a new baby. Mrs. Maloney noted the irony of a country constantly promoting "family values", but offering not one single day of paid leave under federal law. We hope Mrs. Maloney's and Dr. Abraham's voices are heard through Congress and all across the country. After all.....motherhood isn't rocket science. It's harder!

'Til next time --
Your (Wo)Man in Washington