Motherhood and Other Low-Status Positions
How Can We Value a Mother’s Work When We Don’t Value Children?
As someone who has inhabited various low-status identities over time (think unemployed, think disability, think mixed-media visual artist), I’ve long been curious about the criteria for deciding who deserves status in our society and who doesn’t.
But generally speaking, proximity to money is key.
It sounds harsh but if your daily activities are bringing in little by way of financial reward, you are doing something society doesn’t value a great deal and being paid accordingly.
That is not to say your work isn’t necessary and important. It’s not to say you are not made of metaphorical gold. It is simply a reflection of our current, somewhat arbitrary, value system.
Which naturally brings me to motherhood; that being the most perverse example of the value system underlying our existing social order, one can think of. Motherhood, with its stubbornly low social status. Motherhood with it’s affiliation to quiet, inconsequential suburbia.
Dowdy, boring, unpaid motherhood.
On some level, you know this already. But let it sink in for a minute. Motherhood — the work of raising well-adjusted children who will eventually make…
