Mothers Struggle for Respect on Mother’s Day and Everyday
Illustration by Heidi Stevens
In her Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Amy Henry discusses the lack of respect mothers get for being mothers. She writes, “if mothering while working outside the home is a guilt-producing juggling act, and working inside it is a job for the nonambitious half-wit, why would any of us want our daughters to have children?”
It was recently pointed out to me that the reason society devalues caregivers is because society devalues children. I’m consistently amazed by what little importance we place on children, our single most important long-term investment, and their care, our single most important societal task.
You would think this commenter had birthed himself: “The respect a job earns is based on the scarcity of the skills required to do it. Janitors get less respect than surgeons. Mothering can be done by nearly every adult female in the world. Yes, some are better at it than others, but let’s face it: cavewomen could do it.”
