Mama Nomics, Part I: The Problem

An economics that cannot and will not account for the work of creating society's citizens and labour force is not a suitable basis for said society.

Jan 07, 2024

From “March of the Weavers”, of the series A Weavers’ Revolt, by Käthe Kollwitz. Notice how the central figure keeps pace with her male counterparts, but does so under the full weight of a tired child.

So there’s this book I’ve been trying to write. It’s about how the most valuable work we do as humans is not in our so-called profession lives, but in our home lives. About how home, and the way we make homes for ourselves and others, and the extent to which we feel at home in our lives, is a hugely complicated, ongoing process, that underpins all that we are and relate to in the world.

I’ve been thinking about this project, on and off, since 2018 - the year I became pregnant with my son, and took on the formidable responsibility of being and creating home for a brand new human being. I’ve read hundreds of books and articles in my research, and written thousands of words in notes, outlines, and drafts. Yet I still have no book to show for it. Things get in the way. Like the exhaustion of round the clock breastfeeding. Like daycare closures throughout the pandemic. Like the brutal onslaught of diseases when those closures ended. Other work that demanded my limited attention. And the simple fact that I didn’t know how to write the damn thing.

Part of the hang up was just struggling to pin down what exactly the problem was that I was trying to address. There were many aspects of home I wanted to write about, but there was some deeper, more irksome factor underpinning the whole thing, and while I could feel it lurking there, I couldn’t articulate clearly what it was.

That much I can finally do. The problem is this:

The work of motherhood - of forming and fostering every person ever to walk this earth - is unvalued. In my society, certainly, and seemingly in all the others I look to. The work I have organised my life around since I set out to get pregnant nearly six years ago, is seen as having almost no importance in the economic and other ego-centric structures that govern status and resources in this world. I myself did not value it much until I took it on, and discovered how consuming and unrelenting a job it truly is when taken seriously. And how frustrating it is to try to reconcile that job with any of the other work I sincerely need and want to do. Yet I have no question that doing everything I can to give my son a healthy foundation in life (which includes reliably being there for him when he needs me), is the priority that trumps all others. I feel it, viscerally.

It’s not just a feeling though. It’s a conviction born of everything I have read - about pregnancy, childhood development, evolution, biology, history, and psychology - since I first took an interest in becoming a mother. The work of creating and raising a child is massive, and genuinely shapes the future of our world. The efforts of all parents and caregivers who contribute to this work are vital, but mothers’ most of all. Because we are the first homes. The first sources of sustenance, of shelter from and information about the world beyond. The first, most primal, most foundational.

Yet virtually every economist since the field’s founding has persisted in categorising all work done within the home as ‘unproductive’ and of no value to the economy. And in the nation state as it stands today, economics dictates politics, which dictates the fates of all us citizens. Which means that the problem I’m trying to deal with is: the work of mothering is the most valuable at both the personal and societal level, yet is the least financially prudent task a woman can undertake. And this mismatch creates a really ugly bottleneck in the lives of individual women and their families, and in the collective development of our species and our societies. This has been true for every generation since industrialisation began, and it is palpably the case right now.

Finally being able to articulate the problem clearly is of course a big step forward. But I remain daunted by the problem; not only because it is so vast and systemic and ossified, but because it carries a huge number of sub-problems nested within it, like an enormous Russian doll of misogyny. Recently, sleepless and mulling it over, I decided to try making a comprehensive list. What I came up with is certainly not complete, but here are a condensed 40 to start:

The problem is that, as Sarah Blaffer Hrdy explains so well, humans evolved to live in uniquely social groups because our offspring are so exceptionally needy and vulnerable. They need more care, and for much longer, than those of other animals. Our species could not have survived without evolving an exceptional capacity for theory of mind, or without evolving to live in groups where others support mothers while they rear their small children. Therefore, the human animal, and human society, evolved for the purpose of caring for our young.
The problem is that even with all of our marvellous inventions and innovations, humanity still depends on intensive care work that requires intimate physical and emotional presence to be done in a manner that is sufficiently, well, human. It isn’t just the care work required for basic bodily health and survival (though that alone is plenty); there are important feelings and stories and other modes of exchange that are primal to human and cultural processes, that require physical proximity to be transmitted effectively.
The problem is that the industrial revolution began a violent fissuring of work from home about 250 years ago, and we’re still struggling to come up with an adequate way to compensate for this forced division.
The problem is that capitalism is and always has been entirely reliant on social reproduction labour (i.e. the work of creating and maintaining all the members of society, including the entire labour force), yet has been allowed to evolve these hundreds of years without developing any clear mechanism for counting or valuing such labour, let alone prioritising investment in the infrastructure and mechanisms to actively support it.
The problem is that we have centuries of traditions the world over in which girls are seen as having no value - of being a burden in spite of all that they do and are. And we in the Industrialised countries have not actually broken with that line as thoroughly as we like to think.
The problem is that women are still taught not to value their bodies, needs, desires, skills, time, and effort. Which allows others to devalue them, and exploit them to suit their own desires and profits.
The problem is that we are trained to believe that emotions are categorically irrational, and this makes trying to speak about and prioritise love seem irrational. And that is a dreadful way to live. Labours undertaken out of genuine love - and maternal love above all - should be a source of pride, not apology. In every facet of one’s personal and professional life.
The problem is that denying our feelings dulls our instincts, and renders us ineffective in the face of our most serious dilemmas - as individuals, and as collectives.
The problem is that giving women access to abortions, and helping them prevent pregnancy, is seen as sufficiently giving them ‘choice’ over their reproductive lives. And it really is not. Family planning means - or should mean - being able to plan for children as well as preventing them. Genuine control over our reproduction would mean having the number of children we each want - no more, and no less. And that is not the situation we find ourselves in.
The problem is that generations of young women have now been lead to believe they can run their live on the same timeline as men, and they just can’t. Not if they want to be moms. Men and women are built for very different reproductive roles. And if women want to prioritise their chances at motherhood, they need to plan their lives accordingly. Which means not pretending they are interchangeable with their male classmates and colleagues.
The problem is that at this point the ‘gender’ pay gap in most Industrialised economies is primarily comprised of the motherhood penalty. Women graduating from college without children tend to be paid as well or better than their male counterparts in many places. It’s when women become mothers that they take the hit. One that men who become fathers do not experience. This gap is much more about sex than gender. And it serves no one to misname or obscure this important distinction.
The problem is that women have been offered a supposedly ‘feminist’ blueprint for competing in the workforce, which more or less boils down to a choice between either a) sterility or b) outsourcing maternal labour to women of classes, races, ages, and nationalities that could be under- or unpaid for their labour (see Ehrenreich & Hochschild on “the female underside of globalization”). Both options enable and sometimes necessitate a denial of all that the work of motherhood is, by the very women who do manage to get into positions where they might have some say on such issues.
The problem is that we are increasingly unable to make use of the kin networks that families used to rely on to survive. Thanks to a whole host of societal changes that might be called ‘progress’, those networks are now too geographically scattered, too small, and too brittle, for most mothers to rely on for the help they need.
The problem is that even when we do outsource or socialise the care work that would historically have been done within the family (for the young, the ill, the elderly…), the people paid to do it instead are not paid well. Largely precisely because the work is understood to be of little to no value, and believed to be ‘unskilled’.
The problem is that quite a lot of mothers do not have partners that help and support them. And even when they do have partners who support them, it is still the mothers who do the bulk of the unpaid, household labour. Largely because men prioritise paid work. And hey, it’s fantastic if that paid work goes towards providing for their family. That is a great and unequivocally admirable thing to do. But knowing that one parent is ‘kept’ by the other can cause quite a host of problems and unhealthy power dynamics - even in good partnerships, and especially in abusive ones. Which is precisely why women have been seeking access to money and resources that are theirs, all these years.
The problem is that it’s a very hard sell to get men enthusiastic about sharing work that has ‘no value’.
The problem is that women in every known society do the vast majority of unpaid labour. And these primary-yet-unpaid responsibilities often necessitate that women take on paid labour in precarious, low-paid, and part-time roles, meaning that they accrue less benefits and less power, and remain more vulnerable to exploitation and harassment and poverty. Which imposes acute stresses and limitations on their lives and those of their descendants. (
Invisible Women
’s epic book offers a phenomenal rundown on all these dynamics.)
The problem is that Keynes was predicting we’d all be on our way to a 15 hour work week by now, and instead we’re expected to pull something more like 50 hours a week to be gainfully employed. And many still struggle to make keep the bills paid even with that.
The problem is that, while a lot of the work women have done within the home might be thankless drudgery, a lot of the work they are expected to do in offices and shops and hotels and factories is also thankless drudgery. Yet the work at home remains. So rather than fulfilling the dream of being ‘liberated’, huge numbers of women find themselves in a state of double drudgery.
The problem is that actually, it isn’t even just that women have the ‘second shift’, (as Arlie Russell Hochschild famously named it). Because little ones wake up in the night a lot (breastfeeding, bad dreams, leaky diapers, coughing and vomiting…) and so mothers of small children are on the night shift, too. At no point in their circadian rhythm do they actually fully clock out.
The problem is that discussions of women’s struggle to combine their unpaid responsibilities with paid employment tend to conclude that the solution is to relieve women of their ‘burden’ of unpaid labour as completely as possible, so that they can spend the maximum number of hours possible in the paid workforce. And hey, any chance of improving the provision of care and social infrastructure, we should absolutely pursue. But these folks so in favour of getting women maximally participating in the workforce tend to gloss over the fact that women might actually want to do a certain amount of their unpaid labour. That they might not actually want to be absent from home for all their children’s waking hours. That some of the paid jobs they have to do to put food on the table might be more of a burden than the unpaid task of feeding their babies. And I’ve found pretty much no one at present suggesting that since the unpaid labour these women are up to their elbows in every single day contributes a lot to society, it’s the fact that this work is unpaid that’s the problem.
The problem is that our minds and bodies begin learning about and reacting to our environment from within our mothers’ wombs. Before we can even remember. Before we’ve even developed skulls to house any memories. Our mothers’ contributions to who we are are thus far beyond what the thinky thoughts of grown men can account for.
The problem is that the process of breastfeeding is a hugely important part of infant development. Formula doesn’t do the same jobs as breastfeeding, and even pumped breastmilk doesn’t fulfil all the nutritional, emotional, and immunological functions that nursing directly from the breast does. Yet nursing is a 24/7 occupation, incompatible with fulfilling the professional expectations of this post-agrarian era. Brushing this loaded issue aside as a matter of ‘personal choice’ for each mother to grapple with ignores what we know to be inarguably best for the babies in question, and undermines the prospects of advocating for a society that supports this vital process the way it bloody well should (with adequate, paid maternity leave, for example). And instead favours those looking to make a buck out of separating infants and mothers at the exact stage they most need to be together.
The problem is that children cannot properly develop their emotions, resilience, or sense of self without consistent adult caregivers to mirror, share, and contain what they experience. Psychologists have been stating this plainly in their resources for parents, from Donald Winnicott on through to Philippa Perry.
The problem is that we have a wonderful understanding of what the developmental needs of children are (it’s not that complicated), yet aren’t putting that knowledge at the heart of how we organise society and its many resources.
The problem is that we have a socio-economic model that would rather create endless industries of things and services that can be sold to plaster over people’s wounds, rather than invest in maximising their chances of just developing soundly in the first place.
The problem is that we could slash quite a lot of our social and environmental ills - our overconsumption, violence, waste, addiction, self-harm - if we had an overarching metric that promoted secure attachments rather than insecurity at every life stage and every strata of society.
The problem is that over 17% of families with children in the US experience food insecurity, and that number doubles to over 33% for families headed by single mothers. It’s estimated that nearly a quarter of families with children in the UK are food insecure. And these numbers don’t address the fact that many of the children who do get fed live on ultra-processed materials that are food-like rather than food (see: Michael Pollan), and thus are not being nourished in the proper sense of the word. The richest and largest and most ‘advanced’ economies in the world haven’t even figured out how to feed their own children adequately. What kind of economic ‘success’ is that? What kind of citizens and citizenship are we fostering?
The problem is that communities are only as robust as the households that comprise them.
The problem is that all the incentives in capitalism are to turn households into sites of consumption rather than creation. The logic of the market is to outsource everything that makes us human. To buy our lives and sell our humanity.
The problem is that you cannot delegate or buy love.
The problem is that, as Mariana Mazzucato says, corporations succeed for themselves, but share their failures. Our current hyper-capitalist system treats everyone as though they are expendable. It is the antithesis of belonging. And we can feel it.
The problem is that, as bell hooks says, even privilege and material reward are not the same as love.
The problem is that every time something comes along that seems to offer a real challenge or alternative to misogyny, it ends up being eaten from within and hijacked by misogyny - like that zombie fungus that takes over ants’ brains.
The problem is that even people who consider themselves very progressive and ‘inclusive’ throw around opinions that are plainly anti-natal, and don’t seem to realise that this is a kind of simultaneous loathing of women, children, and humanity itself. And therefore a kind of self-loathing, too. And what kind of vision of progress can that offer?
The problem is that when you have generations raised to be afraid of love, and to have contempt for the labour of looking after those you love, it’s hard for them to recognise the value of this work.
The problem is that the framework of modern economics has been built around scarcity and stasis and alienation, and cannot reflect the actual abundance and flux and interconnection that the world is always unfurling before us. And so much of what those limited metrics fail to capture goes squandered. And it is a very personal and very collective loss for everyone.
The problem is that there is a severe lack of imagination of what kind of lives we could actually be living. Our current standards of living are entirely novel in the scheme of history, and are changing even as we speak. The old social/ global order is crumbling before our eyes, yet there is no great vision of what we might actually want to succeed it. Mainly, there is worry about where the world is going. And quite rightly. But it is also a time of possibility. And we should be putting together strong visions of what we actually sincerely desire, not just racking up a list of things we don’t.
The problem is that modern economics has been built around homo economicus, the figure of the impeccably ‘rational’ economic man, who always acts to maximise his individual self-interest. He is, frankly, a corporate shill. And an economics built around his self-serving maths and motives is unfit for understanding the choices of those of us who prioritise our caring commitments, or for designing systems that prioritise human welfare. Or any species’ welfare.
The problem is that every single person, as Adrienne Rich stated with such strength and clarity, is of woman born. And the earliest years of life, from conception through toddlerhood, are the most potent in our development, laying the foundation of all that we might become throughout the course of our lives. So if we claim any interest in promoting the wellbeing of the species and societies we belong to, we need to organise our affairs in a way that suitably supports the women growing and forming every single one of us, one fragile skull at a time. This requires an economics that seeks to understand and adapt society not to the uniform and selfish motives of some homo economicus, but the interdependent and often contradictory demands made daily on a figure I call mama economica. We need a kind of mama nomics.

From the See Red Women’s Workshop. 1976. I love this SO much.

Obviously, it’s not much good pointing out problems without at least trying to come up with some solutions. I’ve been doing a great deal of rummaging through the internet and many stacks of paperbacks, in search of other people’s ideas as to how to address the problem(s) above. In Part II I will be sharing my findings thus far, and which bits seem strong, and which bits still seem lacking. In Part III I will lay out my own ideas. That’s the plan at least. And I could really use some help making that happen. Let me know what you think, and if you’d like to add anything to this already lengthy yet incomplete list, or can recommend anyone I should be reading or listening to or connecting with. I’m well aware how much I still don’t know, and every drop in the bucket counts.

Mama Dentata

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