Abstract
More than 80 percent of women become mothers during their lifetimes. Many of these women must make a number of difficult decisions about childbirth, their workforce participation, and their families. In her impressive mixed-methods study of mothers and their concerns, fears, and desires, Jocelyn Crowley argues that workforce flexibility might be the rallying issue to unite diverse groups in a unified mothers’ movement.
The percentage of married women in the paid labor force has skyrocketed from 27.6 percent in 1960 to 71.3 percent in 2010, yet they continue to take on the lion’s share of housework and child care even in dual-earner couples. In response, mothers turn to one another for support and many join organizations that offer strategies for dealing with work–family challenges. In Mothers Unite! Crowley focuses her attention on mothers who participate in five different support groups for mothers: Mothers of Pre-schoolers, Mocha Moms, Mothers & More, the National Association of Mothers’ Centers, and MomsRising. These five groups “share the same fundamental goal: making the lives of their members and of their children more meaningful” (p. 13). Because mothers serve as advocates for their family members through their role as caretakers and providers, Crowley identifies mothers as powerful figures in an emergent women’s movement.
Crowley’s project gives voice to a diverse group of mothers and their primary concerns. She asks mothers in these organizations if they believe they are participating in a social movement and whether they believe there is a need to develop one. Among those in favor of a mothers’ movement, Crowley seeks to ascertain unifying issues and shared interests. Crowley identifies the issue of workplace flexibility as a rallying factor, and in doing so she implicitly calls for collective action that might transcend racial, economic, or geographic divides. Unfortunately, because the groups sampled were predominantly middle-class and white (besides Mocha Moms), the complexities and challenges of workplace flexibility for women in lower social classes (e.g., wage-based or service occupations) were not given the same attention in discussions of workplace flexibility options. Crowley defines workplace flexibility as a combination of (1) flexible work arrangements (e.g., opportunities to control the timing or location of the workday); (2) short- and long-term time-off options; and (3) career exit, maintenance, and reentry pathways. Although these issues pertain to fathers as well, when flexibility policies are offered, mothers are more likely to use a subset of these policies, most notably “job sharing, telecommuting, part-time work, and flextime when there are young children in the home” (p. 8).
Crowley argues that the notion of a “Mommy War” between stay-at-home moms and moms who work for pay oversimplifies many of these personal struggles. The decision to stay home or work for pay is not as clear-cut as the media characterizes it, and many mothers are empathetic and supportive rather than judgmental of other mothers’ choices. Nevertheless, Crowley’s survey and interview data indicates that understanding of other mothers’ desires is often mediated through this artificially constructed divide. For example, more than half of all mothers stated that flexible starting and stopping times, compressed workweeks, advance notice of overtime and shift schedules, and the option of part-time work were very important to them and 86.4 percent identified guaranteed short-time off as very important to an ideal job (pp. 99–104), yet only 23.2 percent believed that “workplace flexibility can benefit all mothers” (p. 163). This proves problematic when considering the development of a mothers’ or women’s movement, in that mothers may not have access to the perspectives of mothers on the other side of the Mommy Wars.
Crowley argues that “workplace flexibility” is the central issue uniting mothers, though the feminist movement catch phrase “the personal is political” might reflect the shared concerns of these women more adeptly. Crowley points out that mothers, more frequently than fathers, organize in American politics in their role as parents (p. 9). She cites the organization Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and the Million Mom March as examples of political activism mediated through the role of motherhood. Workplace flexibility seems like a particularly timely and powerful issue to rally around in that it directly affects both fathers and mothers, yet it is not clear from this research that the mothers themselves believe this is an issue requiring unification. For example, more than half of the women in Crowley’s sample argue that they are not part of a movement. Instead, they participate in mother’s groups “to help them with the challenges of everyday life” (p. 148). As such, it appears that for these women, their shared political concerns as women are directly tied to their private roles as mothers.
Mothers Unite! is an important and timely contribution to social policy and gender scholarship and would make a great addition to a public policy related graduate syllabus.