United States or Aruba ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
First, What is Mother-work? Second, What are the best economic conditions under which this work can be done? When we have solved this question, we shall have solved a great human problem. Mother-work includes the bearing and the rearing of children, the conduct of a home, and the placing of that home in the right social atmosphere and relations.
"That is not what I was going to ask you, although of course it ought to be considered. But you know you are only going to set common hens, and you do not intend to raise any. Now, are those four hens to do all the setting and mother-work for five years, and eventually bring up over sixty-four thousand chickens?" "Well, I DID make a mistake there," she said, coloring a little.
The problem between capitalist and laborer, however, only affects a portion of the world; that of domestic service a still smaller proportion; that of teachers affects only a class. There is another problem, which affects nearly all married women, and therefore a large section of the human race. It is the problem of mother-work. Here is where the economist should next turn his attention.
It is not only that we have reduced the play impulse in women by restricting them to one set of occupations, and overtaxing their energies with mother-work and housework combined; and not only that by our androcentric conventions we further restrict their amusements; but we begin in infancy, and forcibly differentiate their methods of play long before any natural distinction would appear.
What's the matter? who is ill? 'Oh, please come, mamma, Dolly is choking and crying in such a dreadful way, and I can't stop her. 'I give up, Lily. This is mother-work, said Miss Mohun.
As a father the male grows to share in these original feminine functions, and with us, fatherhood having become socialized while motherhood has not, he does the best he can, alone, to do the world's mother-work in his father way. In study of any long established human custom it is very difficult to see it clearly and dispassionately.
Word Of The Day