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

Bold and galvanizing, full of innovative solutions, The Price of Motherhood reveals the glaring disparity between the value created by mothers’ work and the reward women receive for carrying out society’s most important job.

In this provocative book, award-winning economics journalist Ann Crittenden argues that although women have been liberated, mothers have not. Drawing on hundreds of interviews from around the country, as well as the most current research in economics, sociology, history, child development,. and law, she shows how mothers are systematically disadvantaged and made dependent by a society that celebrates the labor of child-rearing but undervalues and even exploits those who perform it.

The price of motherhood is everywhere apparent. College-educated women pay a “mommy tax” of more than a million dollars in lost income when they have a child. Family law deprives mothers of financial equality in marriage. Most child care is excluded from the gross domestic product, at-home mothers are not counted in the labor force, and the social safety net simply leaves them out. With passion and clarity, Crittenden dismantles the principal argument for the status quo: that it’s a woman’s “choice.” She demonstrates, on the contrary, that if mothers had more resources and respect, everyone — including children — would be better off.

Bold and galvanizing, full of innovative solutions, The Price of Motherhood reveals the glaring disparity between the value created by mothers’ work and the reward women receive for carrying out society’s most important job.