The work of caring for young children: priceless or worthless?

breastfeeding her baby in her home in an Australian country town when a stranger burst in and abducted her two children. Nearly 20 hours later, the children, distressed but apparently unharmed, were reunited with their parents. Melbourne’s premier daily newspaper, The Age, reporting on this horrific act of random violence, quoted Mrs Drum’s brother: "The fellow came in the back door, she tried to fight him off, but his target was obviously the kids. " He said his sister told him the man began talking about religion before allegedly assaulting her. "When he was beating her, she asked him to stop because he was scaring the kid. He then picked one girl up under each arm and ran out. " (Hewitt & Tippet 1996:1) The reporters seemed unsurprised that, while being viciously attacked, the mother’s main concern was that the attack was frightening her child. Because mothers regularly transcend self interest in protecting and caring for their children, the mother’s heroism went unremarked. The general community awareness, even expectation, of the heroic within mothering leads to the perception of mothering as priceless. The intangibles of human relationships are indeed priceless, but the social construction of mothering contains a contradiction. On the one hand, mothers are ascribed an almost holy status, providing some recognition of their contribution, but locking them into expectations of extreme self sacrifice. On the other hand, their work is considered non-work, is not economically rewarded, and is not generally respected. Mothers who care for young children have their time and energy fully occupied with socially useful and necessary work, but find themselves defined as dependants within the society rather than as either workers or full citizens (Bryso