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Carework

The term carework (specifically, here, maternal carework) refers to the physical and emotional labor invested by mothers in caring for and nurturing dependent children. In the labor market, carework refers to services delivered in a market-based economy, as opposed to care giving, which is generally provided without expectation of payment. The same type of work (e.g., caring for a child) may receive either label: the point is that carework recognizes that it is actual work, which costs the provider in terms of time and effort. The question of whether mothers should be primarily responsible for carework, especially during children's infant years, has been a focus of feminist scholarship for over 100 years. Even today, motherhood and the issue of maternal carework remains a site of intense sociological and political debate.

Motherhood and the Labor Market

At the turn of the 20th century, the American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman railed against the bodily confinement of (by implication, middle-class) married mothers within the home. Gilman noted how women's capacity for motherhood led to social assumptions that women were “naturally” suited to bear and nurture children. She contested embodying expectations about the gendered nature of “duty,” which involved the provision of hands-on maternal carework, and which excluded mothers from the labor market.

The mid-20th century brought signs of social change in relation to maternal carework. During World War II in Britain and America (1939–45), while men were away fighting, women entered the labor market. Mothers were encouraged to combine the child rearing with paid work. Childcare was provided by the government, and during the War, the notion of outsourcing maternal carework was constructed by officials as good for children and useful to the war effort. When the war ended, however, women were expected to withdraw from the labor market, allowing homecoming men to reclaim available jobs. Mothers found themselves firmly back within the home, with maternal carework and domestic labor at the forefront of maternal identity.

Challenging Gendered Labor Norms

During the 1950s, the influential sociologist Talcott Parsons portrayed a social norm whereby the division of labor within heterosexual households was gendered. Paternal identity was associated with paid employment and the external world, while maternal identity was seen internally within the family home. Women were expected to become mothers, to provide emotional and physical care for their children, and to undertake housework. Maternal carework and care of the home were thus seen to be almost indistinguishable, and were regarded as fundamental to the adult feminine role.

In 1963, Betty Friedan's seminal feminist text The Feminine Mystique questioned the social and embodying convention that a woman's place was in the home. Friedan challenged social assumptions that mothers should take sole responsibility for maternal carework and housework. Friedan's text led subsequent feminist writers to focus on the question of how far the bond between mother and child was biological (with mothers supposedly programmed to undertake maternal carework), and how far mothering could be seen as a socially constructed, institutionalized role.

Controversial Assertions

During the 1970s and 1980s, maternal carework was a central focus of feminist research. Sociologists of motherhood explored women's work in relation both to birth, maternal carework, and paid employment. In 1970, the feminist scholar Shulamith Firestone argued that women should be freed from what she described as the “tyranny” of their biology. Firestone asserted that children should no longer be regarded as biological extensions of their mothers. She questioned the legitimacy of social assumptions that mothers should undertake the carework involved in nurturing and rearing children. Firestone suggested that maternal carework should be shared between groups of adults (not necessarily children's biological parents) within nationally regulated household units. Under this regime, mothers would no longer be obligated to perform maternal carework for their own children, but would join the labor market as paid workers.

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