Every year during Women’s History Month we reflect on the many accomplishments of women and their contributions to society. Now that the month is over, it’s time to face a glaring omission so that it’s not repeated next March. This year, I was particularly concerned that the month’s overfocus on the secular and professional accomplishments of women brought an unintended consequence to undermine mothering as valuable work equally worthy of high-fives, GIFs, reposting, and tweeting. Women’s History Month or any such celebration is not complete until women are honored for their productive work—and their reproductive work. That means acknowledging work that’s unpaid yet makes a significant contribution to society via infant health, childhood development, education, and the general ongoing existence of the human race. Instead of celebrating mothering work as an important subset of women’s work, we find it cut out of women’s celebrations and relegated to one day in May—which has become so overrun with commercial interests, it’s hard to see the true issue. This is a separating of women—of the different roles we play. Mother, wife, career person, lover, sister, daughter, friend. Instead of celebrating the complete woman, we are stuck parsing out the career woman—the woman who broke barriers against men and put her other selves aside for another time, another month.
Given the history of the suppression of women, it is absolutely important to document and note the ways we have overcome those struggles. But what about the roles that women uniquely play? Only celebrating our accomplishments in fields dominated by men and ignoring the mothering work women uniquely do feels decidedly antifeminist. If we are celebrating women, let’s celebrate the whole person—and all the roles women play in their lives. Since about 80% of women become mothers in their lifetimes, we should be talking about the structural inconsistencies. For example, a woman who devotes her time to the work of mothering cannot earn Social Security benefits for that work, whereas if she has a paying job, she and her daycare earn credits toward financial security in old age. We should be talking about living in the only industrialized nation without a federal paid maternity leave, which would give women time to recover from birth and establish their maternal rhythms.
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