Mommy Track

By the 1990s, “mommy track” had become a common idiom for a career path in which mothers choose work arrangements that are compatible with bearing the main responsibility for having children. Women may benefit from certain work arrangements, such as flexible hours, diminished responsibilities, or the ability to work from home, but usually at the cost of professional disadvantages, such as fewer opportunities for advancement, less responsibility and authority, and reduced income. Mommy track, however, has also come to include women (typically in white-collar career positions) who choose to leave the workforce in order to have children. In both its definitions, mommy track refers to ways in which women have been liberated and yet mothers have not. It offers some solutions but still remains a concept that raises many economic and social questions. For example, the argument exists that women are discriminated against for choosing to have children; therefore, society should force private enterprises to make allowances for childbearing (e.g., job and wage protection, maternity leave, child care, and improved medical coverage). The rejoinder holds that having children is a lifestyle choice, and therefore businesses should not be forced to compensate those who have not invested the same time and effort as their coworkers. This view does not take into account, however, that women still carry most of the burden of child care and household responsibilities, even when they are employed outside the home. Another consideration involves the “self-fulfilling prophecy” that arises in the way employers recruit and place employees and can create a no-win situation for mothers. For instance, men who choose to have children have been found to be viewed by employers as more responsible and are therefore rewarded by promotion and salary. On the other hand, if a male employee does not have children, employers may think they will get more time and effort out of him because he will not be committed to child care. While women opt for the mommy track, by contrast, men are more likely to be placed on a “fast track” that offers accelerated advantages, such as promotions and increased responsibility, in exchange for their relatively all-consuming commitment to an employer.

In regard to previously qualified and working women stepping out of the workforce altogether to have children, the question of cost becomes one of individual loss in earnings and savings to the family and/or single mother—and thereby of stress placed on this segment of society as well as on publicly financed social services. Research shows that college-educated women pay a “mommy tax” of over a million dollars in lost income for having a child; mothers are legally deprived of financial equality in marriage; and at-home mothers and their work are left out of the gross domestic product, labor force, and social safety net. A movement for more-flexible working arrangements for parents has been gaining momentum in the United States, based on the premise that companies and institutions cannot afford to lose qualified mothers (or fathers highly committed to child care) because of lack of alternative professional modes of support.

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