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Book Review 02-04-04

The Invisible Heart
by Nancy Folbre

Is it too corny nowadays to say that a book changes your life? Maybe. I mean, my life isn't outwardly changed. I still do pretty much the same crap every day, get up, go to work, come home. But these two books have done something to me, to the way I think about my work and my life. They've answered some questions I've had for a long time, put the pressures I feel every day into context. And that counts for something.

Invisible Heart is one of the most interesting books about economics you'll ever read, if that isn't damning it with faint praise. In a calm, well-documented, well-thought out series of arguments, Folbre deconstructs the ways we think about capitalism, money, the government, and welfare. She examines the ways in which certain sectors of our daily lives---face-to-face, human care--are completely ignored by most economists. Her basic argument is that certain essential tasks--parenting and caring for the elderly and ill--have been seen as the personal, unpaid responsibility of families, and especially, of women. Because women have been forcibly confined to the home for much of our history, denied education, social mobility, independence, or property, these tasks have mostly been accomplished without the notice or support of government or the marketplace. Women have been, in effect, slave labor, and like the slaves of the cotton plantation, have helped prop up an economy dependent on our unpaid work.

But now that those impediments have mostly been removed, the system has begun to fray. Birth rates have dropped as working women have had to wait longer to have children, which may not be an entirely bad thing. However, some women will have to continue to have children, and those that do are caught between an old system that has broken down and a new system that refuses to recognize the impossibility of working full time and raising a child without assistance. Poor families are often forced to choose between going on welfare (which they can do for only limited periods anymore), leaving children at home too young, or leaving them in the care of relatives who may or may not be up to the task of caring for them. Even many middle-class families need both parents' incomes to survive, so they end up sending their children to daycare centers that are both expensive and poorly staffed, or if they are rich enough, hiring a nanny and spending little time with their children during their crucial developmental years. None of these options is ideal.

In addition, The Price of Motherhood points out that most corporations refuse to accomodate working parents with part-time or flexible schedules, resulting in a de facto sexual discrimination--since women still shoulder most of the childcare burden. Women drop out of the work force, losing not only their immediate wages and benefits, but large amounts of future retirement income--perhaps as much as a million dollars' worth over their lifetimes. In a cruel irony, women live longer than men and yet have less to live on in their old age. And because their own children can no longer afford to stay home and care for them then, they often end up in nursing homes run by poorly-paid, indifferent staffs.

Conservatives, in their own way, have dimly grasped at the scope of the problem, but seem to think that the answer is to force women back into their former indentured, unpaid servitude. Not only is this unfair, it's impossible; most women, married or not, can't afford to stay home anymore. It's a non-solution. Conservative policies that insist moms leave welfare to go to work while providing no way to care for their small children in the meantime have resulted in homelessness (when women lose welfare by refusing to leave their children), and tragedy (when they do leave their kids and the child ends up dead or taken away by Child Protective Services for neglect).

Liberals, while understanding that government is the only entity that can deal with this problem, have not been very effective at explaining the problem's roots, and the ways in which its effects are felt by everyone, not just working moms. The fact is, lack of resources for parents and caretakers ends up costing the system more, not less. Women who are unable to work outside the home pay fewer taxes, but often end up needing more public assistance. Employers unwilling to allow part time and flexible schedules lose the contributions of experienced employees compelled to drop out when they become parents or have to care for elderly relatives. Some poor parents decide to abandon their children because they can't afford them, and those children enter the costly and often dangerous foster-care system.

As both Folbre and Crittenden point out, children are not pets--not a luxury item whose absence or presence has little effect on the society as a whole. They are a society, or will be. The work they will do as adults will pay the taxes that support their parents' generation. If they are not fed properly or have inadequate healthcare, they will have health problems as adults, which equals lost productivity. If they are neglected and isolated by absent parents or abusive caretakers, they are more likely to develop mental problems, educational deficiencies, or to take to crime, all of which will have a heavy cost to their society. And if poverty is allowed to worsen and spread to more and more sectors of the population, the result is a large, abused, uneducated underclass and a small, wealthy, elite---something history should tell us is a recipe for disaster.

While Crittenden focuses on the social realities and cost to women of our current system, Folbre takes her analysis further, and explains why the system must change to accomodate and support caring work. I actually think she doesn't go far enough in providing specifics--I would like to see a real policy platform that addresses these ideas in a workable way.

To follow up on my original thought, I would say that both of these books have been like a light going on in a dark room for me. Like a lot of women, I'm at the age where I have to weigh the costs and benefits of being a parent, and like a lot of women, I have felt overwhelmed by the size of the task. Not just parenting itself, but the hard economic realities of balancing work and life while walking on a very high wire, in a society that provides no safety net.It is helpful to understand that these difficulties are part of the system, not just my own bad luck.

I may be yet be lucky enough to figure out a way through these difficulties, but I can't ignore the fact that becoming a parent would be an enormous economic gamble. Whatever happens for me, though, books like these give me hope. Maybe our society can be changed to right these inequities. Maybe we can make it a place where choosing to have a child is neither a luxury nor a burden too heavy to carry, just a natural, useful, and joyful event.