You're a Mommy??


I don’t think I could’ve ever understood how people leave their children in other countries to find work elsewhere. To me it always seemed like they were leaving their old life behind in search of something new. Arlie Russell Hochschild wrote the article “Love and Gold” and in this article she explains how women of foreign countries sometimes have no other choice but to leave home to help their children. Children seem to be the main motivating factor for these women. They leave everything they’ve ever known to help their child who probably can’t even walk yet. What I learned from this article was that parents don’t always want to leave their kids but they also want to give their child all that they can. The latter will take precedence over the former since most parents will put their child’s needs before their own.

This brings the question to mind: Why are women the ones who are primarily affected over men regarding their children? Why can’t a women have a family and a career?

I don’t think it’s fair how majority of the time women are the ones whose careers are affected because they decided to have a family. Before reading “The Mommy Tax” I always heard conversations of how a child changes a woman’s life but I never grasped the full concept. This article points out how women still have to fight just to get equal or near equal pay to that of men. It shows that once women have a child it’s harder for them to even maintain the same level of finances as they had before.

It’s interesting how not even having a child can be considered a mommy tax because of that void you’ll have once you can no longer have a family since you put it off too long. There’s no winning, on one hand you want a family but on the other you don’t want to destroy a career you worked hard for. Something needs to be done. Women shouldn’t have to worry about messing up their career because of their child’s needs. A line from “The Mommy Tax” basically says that for the earnings gap between men and women not to be that significant “a girl had to do was stay young and unencumbered.” This method of thinking needs to change. I believe that it is wrong to make someone feel shame for trying to help another person, especially if that person is their child.
 

 
-Tatiana F.

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