The aftermath of Hilary Rosen’s statement that Ann Romney “hasn’t worked a day in her life” has focused mainly on whether or not “mothering” is considered “work.” The Obama administration has fallen all over itself in an attempt to gain distance from Rosen’s statement, and Rosen herself has issued an apology. In fact, it would be hard to find anyone who would seriously assert that raising children and keeping house doesn’t require effort.
But the commentators are missing the real issue here. It isn’t how Ann Romney spent her time that bothers Rosen and others like her — it is the fact that Romney wasn’t paid by an outside source for her services. If she had operated a daycare center from her home, taking care of someone else’s five children for pay, or if she had gone into other people’s homes to clean and organize and drive carpool, no one would have suggested that she “hasn’t worked a day in her life.” It isn’t the nature of the work that angers them. The true, underlying objection to stay-at-home moms is that there is no way to measure the worth of their labor. We are a society that likes to keep score, and the way we keep score of an adult’s value is through dollars.
The truth is, most stay-at-home moms don’t stay at home. They are extremely active and productive. I was hoping Ann Romney would talk about some of the work she has done outside her home as well as how hard she worked inside her home raising her boys. She has worked as a teacher and as an administrator in many charitable organizations, particularly within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Mormons are a lay church, meaning they have no paid ministry. As president of a congregation’s Relief Society, for example, a Mormon woman is responsible for ministering to the spiritual, social, and welfare needs of hundreds of families. She oversees weekly classes, coordinates compassionate service projects, counsels with women who are struggling with various problems, and delegates duties to an army of women who watch over the flock, all through voluntary service. In many ways, her job is similar to that of the director of a Red Cross or Salvation Army unit in a neighborhood that experiences the equivalent of a home fire every week. But because she is not paid for her services, there seems to be no acceptable way to measure the value of her work. And without a unit of measurement, the “score” is assumed to be zero.
For many years Ann Romney served as the teacher of a rigorous daily scripture-study course for high school students. The program is administered by the worldwide Church Educational System, which requires teachers to attend monthly faculty meetings and in-service training sessions. It also requires intensive daily study and preparation on the part of the teacher. True, a “real teacher” (i.e., “salaried” teacher) would spend the entire day leading perhaps five sections of the same course, instead of just one hour-long session. But the preparation required to teach a class is the same for one section or multiple sections. Ann Romney worked just as hard at just as respectable a job as any employed teacher. But she received no credit in the eyes of the world because she wasn’t financially remunerated. There was no way to keep score.
Romney is also an athlete. Despite being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, she competes as an adult amateur in equestrian dressage at the national level. I suppose if she were a paid athlete, we would consider this a “job.” Certainly she puts in as much practice and effort to reach the national level as a professional athlete might. But since she is an unsalaried amateur, this is considered just one more example of Ann’s little hobbies as a wealthy stay-at-home mom. She has dedication and success, but it isn’t really “work,” is it?
This obsession with scorekeeping has invaded our school system as well, where it threatens to stultify the naturally creative minds of the young. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” program has turned many of America’s children into mush-headed test-takers. “Teach to the test,” once the hallmark of the worst kind of teaching, has become the new mantra of public school education. With jobs and funding at stake, school administrators chastise teachers who introduce art, music, or even spelling (which isn’t on the standardized tests) to their students. “Get those scores up!” administrators fairly bellow, and that means focusing only on the tasks that are tested. It’s all about keeping score and bringing in the money.
In an advanced economic system, where money and exchange form the basis of measuring work, it is very easy for the capitalist to start viewing the world narrowly in terms of “making money” instead of “making useful goods and services.” But value is determined by much more than money. Interestingly, the people who characterize stay-at-home moms as “not working” because they don’t get paid are often the same ones who try to eliminate scorekeeping in Little League and other youth sports. “Children should play for the love of the game!” they proclaim.
I think they have this backwards. Games require scorekeeping. Goods and services require a medium of exchange. But caring for family, friends, and community can be done for the rich reward of — merely a hug. Women who rear families and care for their homes do not need a paycheck for validation. Let’s put scorekeeping back on the soccer field, and take it out of our homes.
