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

Abstract

The Price ofMotherhood is a compelling book, so well documented as to be virtually unimpeachable. It should be required reading for every first year college student, or better still, part of the high school curriculum. Maybe then we could look forward to an honest public discussion about the dangerous ideologies and policies that work against mothers and children in America. We could begin to focus on valuing the instead of bludgeoning women with the hollow club of family values. Crittenden argues that women who mother face discrimination and she illustrates the myriad ways in which that discrimination has been institutionalized and perpetuated by public policy, the legal system, and the values of turbo-capitalism. In particular, she shows how mothers and children are devalued by the childcare industry. Crittenden debunks myths that have worked to further complicate and denigrate the work ofmothers, such as the myth that children necessarily suffer when mothers work outside the home (mothers today spend as much if not more time with their children as mothers did in the 1960's (19); the myth that

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