Joanne M. Friedman, MEd
From the dawn of time through the early 1970's, Mom was where home was. Cave or cabin, house or hotel, if there was a roof and a cook pot, there was a mom there as well. Children who lost their mothers were often mothered by neighbors. Girls in particular were thought to be in dire need of a mother's attention. Fathers were busy hunting and protecting the territory. Mother's job was to keep the home fire burning and care for the children.
There is a sociological basis for these role patterns. Women breastfeed babies. Men can't. Simplistic, but natural and easily understood. Until fairly recently, breastfeeding was a given. If a woman couldn't provide breast milk on her own due to injury or illness, a neighbor with an infant would share hers. "Wet nurses"Ñnursing women hired to breastfeed infants belonging to wealthy womenÑwere available under those circumstances to women who could afford their services. Women who couldn't find an alternate watched their babies die of starvation.
With the invention of infant formula in 1867 by the NestlŽ Company, women were allowed to make a choice between breast feedingÑand its attendant requirement that they be somewhere near their infants every couple of hoursÑand bottle-feeding, which could be done by anyone of either sex. Babies, in turn, gained freedom from starvation. No longer dependent on the earning power of their parents to assure their survival, babies who did not have access to breast milk thrived.
So it was that women were given the option to return to the workforce. In the 19th century, this was still a relative rarity, but during World War I it became a necessity. Wartime stretched on into the 1950's, and women continued to seep into factories and businesses. In 1974 the number of women employed outside the home topped 50% for the first time in history. By 2004, 68 million women of the total estimated 116 million aged 16 and over in the US, were working outside the home. The percentage has remained reasonably static over the years, and it is predicted that that trend will continue for a decade or more at least.
To say that absent mothers cause juvenile delinquency and the downward trend in literacy statistics is to oversimplify two very complex social problems. It is not unreasonable, however, to suggest that the absence of a nurturing maternal figure is likely to contribute to such precursors as:
• Less reading and more television viewing
• Less in-depth conversation about world events and more dependence on rumor and hearsay from questionable sources
• Less instruction on social mores and more reliance on media-source imagery
• Less modeling of safe and responsible behavior and more influence from the peer group
Recent research by the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) as reported by the NCES (National Center for Educational Statistics) indicates clearly that there is a link between oral reading among fourth graders (9 and 10-year-olds, approximately) and fluency in the language as measured by the 2002 national reading assessment. Furthermore, additional research has determined that a freshman in high school needs a vocabulary of roughly 70,000 words in order to survive the rigors and challenges of grade-level subject matter. Many arrive in 9th grade with less than 16,000 words at their disposal. It is impossible for that number of words to be learned by rote. Exposure through reading and conversation with adults are the key to vocabulary growth.
Should mothers give up their jobs to stay home with their children? Not necessarily. Mothers and fathers, should, however, be aware that the maternal role must be filled. Ten children in the care of a daycare worker will not receive the exposure that one or two children with intensive access to a loving parent will receive.
Children who commit crimes most frequently (62% of non-violent juvenile crimes) commit them against other children. Will a commitment to staying at home with the children eliminate the possibility that those children will neither perpetrate nor become victims of crime? Absolutely not. The quality of care is as important as the quantity. There are 72 inmates on death row who committed violent crimes when they were 16 or 17 years old. Would a stay-at-home mom have been able to prevent those crimes? That's impossible to say.
Has an entire generation lost its self-esteem because moms went to work in the morning? No. In fact, research has shown (and books have been written to attest to the fact) that the self-esteem movement is a causative factor in much of the antisocial and irresponsible behavior of children. What has been lacking is the firm voice of reason. Both parents are capable of producing that. It is not solely the responsibility of Mom.
Mom's guilt at leaving to go to work is a very distinct contributor to the problem. A guilty parent will make bad decisions in an effort to assuage his or her own sense of failure. The teen whose pair of lawyer parents buy her a new HUMVEE to drive to school without setting any particular performance criteria for earning such an extravagance may not be making decisions with the child's best interests at heart.
The signals we are sending to children are vitally important for the future of our society. It is not necessary to become rabid enforcers of the pre-enlightenment concept of motherhood in order for our children to thrive. It is, however, necessary to do a simple task analysis, determine what is necessary for children to thrive physically, emotionally, and educationally, and make sure those needs are being addressed by someone. Mom is the most likely candidate, but not the only one. Perhaps there is a real need for a closer look at our mobile society with an eye toward more focus on the extended family as a viable alternative to our current trend of families scattering before the winds of whim and desire for new territory.
Joanne M. Friedman received her undergraduate degree in psychology from Clark University and her MEd in special education from the University of Hartford. A past member of the Council for Exceptional Children, she has spent twenty-five years teaching special education at all levels, elementary through high school to learning disabled, emotionally disturbed, physically handicapped and developmentally disabled children and served on the Learning Disabilities Advisory Board at Sussex County College for six years. Joanne Friedman is a freelance writer living in Sussex County, New Jersey.
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