Bridging the gap

When I gave birth to my second daughter, her older sister was just 19 months old. At the time, I was doing research for a small non-profit, and my income barely covered the childcare I would have needed to keep doing it. So, like a lot of mothers, I left my job because it didn’t make financial sense to continue working.

I didn’t have a problem with the decision. Thanks to my background in public policy, I’m well aware of the economic value of parenting. By providing a safe, nurturing and stable environment for my children, I am helping to mould the intelligent, creative, hard-working adults society needs. In economic terms, I’m helping to create human capital, which accounts for two-thirds of global wealth and is a key factor in the growth of our increasingly high-tech, globalized economy.

Sharpened skills

Despite all this, when I return to the labour force, I’ll have nothing but a gap in my résumé to show for it. It’s a problem many more women will have because of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the need to take time off and care for their kids. An employer may accept parenting as an understandable explanation of that gap, but few would accept it as evidence of my hireability.

This is frustrating because I’ve sharpened a wide range of skills as a parent: patience, adaptability, multitasking, communication, budgeting, problem-solving. I’ve become more efficient. I can now finish tasks that once took me an hour during the 15 minutes my toddlers eat their breakfast. I’ve become more decisive, simply because I no longer have much uninterrupted time for hemming and hawing.

Difficult and important

My ability to focus in the face of distraction has grown exponentially. I can sing the theme song to Frozen while following a 16-step recipe with one baby on my hip and another at my feet. I won’t pretend that I’m always graceful under the never-ending pressure of parenting, but there’s no doubt I am mentally, physically and emotionally tougher as a result of it.

Everyone seems to agree that parenting is as difficult as it is important. Still, the fact that we don’t mention parenting when someone asks about our work experience seems to show that we think of child-rearing as being unlike other forms of work, as if the skills they require didn’t overlap at all.

But this dichotomy dissolves under any serious scrutiny. Paid childcare positions, such as a nanny or nursery worker, count as work experience. Unpaid internships and volunteer positions count as work experience. I can see no reason why the unpaid childcare role of a parent shouldn’t count for something, too.

Thoughtful decision-making

This has never been more obvious than right now, as the pandemic has forced parents to take over caregiving duties usually outsourced to day-care centres and schools in addition to their other jobs.

While many of the tasks of parenthood are different to those in an office job, the mental labour involved is not so different. I don’t just cook broccoli for my children; I manage their diets. I don’t just take their temperatures when they’re sick; I monitor their health and development. Surely, the research, observation, coordination and thoughtful decision-making this involves have applications in other forms of work.

A double standard

Yet, the skills sharpened in parenthood go unrecognized by the working world. Every moment that mothers are absent from the labour force, our perceived value to potential employers deteriorates, as if our brains went to mush along with the carrots we’re feeding our kids.

It’s no secret that childbearing deals a serious blow to women’s earnings, resulting in a so-called motherhood wage penalty. A recent analysis of research on this phenomenon found that working mothers earn an average of 3.6 per cent less per child than comparable childless women. Much of this is explained by loss of work experience during career breaks. It’s hard not to wonder why parenting does not — at least to some degree — count as work experience.

Unfinished business

I’m not the first to point out this double standard. In her 2001 book, The Price of Motherhood, former New York Times reporter Ann Crittenden writes that “economic theory has nothing to say about the acquisition of skills by those who work with children; presumably there are none”. This, she argues, puts mothers at an undeserved disadvantage when they return to the labour force.

“Changing the status of mothers, by gaining real recognition for their work,” Crittenden wrote, “is the great unfinished business of the women’s movement.” Nearly two decades later, it remains unfinished.

Obviously, I didn’t become a mother for the pay cheque or to advance my career. Parenting is, as they say, a labour of love — but it’s still labour, and in many ways, it is not so different from other forms of work. It only hurts unpaid caregivers like me to pretend otherwise. So, while parenting may not qualify me to develop software for Google or sell bonds on Wall Street, it ought to count for something.

© Guardian News & Media 2020