Re: Critenden's "Mommy Tax"

In Critenden’s “The Mommy Tax”, it becomes apparent that women who decide to have children are more likely to suffer from a wage gap than those who remain childless and pursue their career. Critenden notes that this wage gap between childbearing women and childless women is surprisingly larger than the wage gap between men and women.  Furthermore, women in the US are much more susceptible to this disparity compared to women in other countries.  In Sweden, for example, a woman gets a years worth of full pay after having a child, shorter hours until the child reaches primary school, and a stipend from the government to pay for child-care expenses (Critenden 108).  These benefits for women in Sweden significantly reduce the “mommy tax” and give women more freedom to have children if they so please.  In America, on the other hand, these benefits are pretty much unheard of, raising the “mommy tax” for any woman who decides to have children.  Thus, more women in America are not having kids or are having fewer. 

What is interesting to note though is that many women in America want to have kids and are disappointed if they don’t, which suggests that there are other factors surrounding women, the workplace, and the family.  Many women are probably not too concerned about the “mommy tax” at first because there is an expectation that regardless of their career path, they will eventually get married and start a family of their own.  However, there seems to be a disconnect between the changing times and the expectations of women.  Women are no longer settling down as young as they used to, yet they still feel pressured to settle down at a relatively young age.  I think that the workplace can be held somewhat responsible for these pressures because as Critenden points out, there are very few benefits for childbearing women in the workplace so having kids later in the midst of a more serious career is not ideal.  Critenden uses Susan Pedersen as an example of the “be a man” mentality because Pederson decision to hold of childbearing until a later age when her lifetime earnings were higher worked for her, but it does not work for every women.  Many women fear that waiting will reduce their chances of being able to have a child and they don’t want to risk that by “being a man” like Pedersen until they are forty.  The workplace is in part defining what success means for a women while putting restrictions on women at the same time.  The patriarchal nature of the workplace screams the nuclear family, but does nothing for women to actually support that family.  Success for many women has come to mean a relatively balanced life, consisting of a good family and a decent career.  If a woman’s career were too taxing on family life, she would probably choose her family over her career to avoid the disappointment many women are facing—a compromise that men hardly ever have to make.