Child care: Love, work and exploitation

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Forum. Vol. 14. No. 6. pp. 551-536, 1991

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CHILD CARE: LOVE, WORK AND EXPIQITATION UTA ENDERS-DRAG&ER Frankfurter Institut fur Frauenforschung. Elbinger Str. 3, D 6000 Frankfurt 1, Germany

Synopsis-In Western countries child care is considered the private affair of parents, but it is in fact the responsibility of women. Thus child care is intimately linked with the sexual division of labour and leads directly to inequality and manifold discrimination against women. The situation of mothers with school-age children in western Germany shows that changes are more a question of ideology than of economic resources. Personal convictions and values on the subject of motherhood and femininity, as well as attitudes toward social structures supportive of these, lead to paradoxes which confuse women’s perception and slow down change. This article contends that the discussion of child care must take account of the situation of mothers and that the ideological notion of the “normality” of motherhood has to be made visible as fictitious.

In his recent survey on child care in the 12 member states of the European Community, Peter Moss shows that public provision is still inadequate in most member states of the European Communities. He also shows “that in reality there is an unequal sharing of responsibilities and work in connection with children in the great majority of households, with mothers doing far more than fathers” (Moss, 1988, 1991). Although child care seems to be the parents’ responsibility, normally it is in fact the mothers’ obligation to carry the two-fold burden of child care: mothers-not fathers are held responsible for their children’s wellbeing and life options; mothers, not fathers, are held responsible for physical child-care work. Mothers, not fathers, are expected to give this priority in their lives’ concepts. Thus, mothers are expected to be available at any time during the early years of childhood, and because of this in most European countries full-time day care is considered to be solely for those in need or at risk. Existing kindergartens (nursery education) are mostly understood as a complement to the family and not as social agencies in their own right. And the child-care needs of school-age children are simply ignored. Therefore, mothers have to work out individually how to provide care arrangements whether they work for pay or not, regardless of their children’s ages. Mothers face the long-term problem of how to combine their child-care obligations with their aspirations in other fields such as employment, politics, the sciences, or arts.

In Western societies, the care of children and the development of child-care institutions is intimately linked to the question of the sexual division of labour. Thus, childcare obligations lead directly to inequality and manifold discrimination against mothers. This seems to apply generally to all of Europe. On the other hand, child-care obligations and child-care provision differ considerably from country to country (Moss, 1988). The question is what these considerable variations in an overall pattern stand for. We have to be aware of what they indicate to be the crucial points for change. With the situation of mothers with school-age children in western Germany in mind, I contend that they stand for personal and collective convictions, values and biased perceptions on the subject of motherhood and femininity, in short, of ideology and not of economic resources. FAMILY EFFECTS OF THE GERMAN SCHOOL SYSTEM Germany is one of the most affluent countries in Europe, but a high standard of living and a progressive technological development go hand in hand with an exceptionally inadequate infrastructure of child-care provision. Furthermore, these inadequacies are linked with a very effective ideology of motherhood, the “new motherliness” (neue MNterlichkeit). For German mothers, a new period of life begins when their children start school. They 551

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have to reorganize their child-care routines in order to accommodate the hours of school attendance. This is difficult enough since the German school system is not organized as a 1Zyear full day-school system but a 13-year morning school system whose hours from day to day are not regular, but between the hours of 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., at least at elementary level. Thus, there is no fixed time schedule as there is in kindergartens. Moreover, the children’s school year dictates a mother’s schedule not only in terms of apportioning hours, but also in its requirement for her to do regular afternoon monitoring of homework or even teaching her child at home. This is because the highly selective German school system requires a large amount of additional tutoring for school lessons. As a result, after school the children are supposed to spend much time at their homework, either at home with their mothers or relatives or in public care provisions organized by welfare and youth organizations or in various commercial schemes. In 1980 an estimated 80% of all mothers stated that they felt obliged to monitor the homework of their children regularly (Enders-Dragiisser, 1981, 1987; Zweiter Familienbericht, 1975) as compared to 1% of all fathers. Since then the situation has not improved. In addition, most professionals or volunteers in the “homework business” are women. Besides the usual chores of child-raising, supervising homework necessitates a constant additional level of responsibility, work and stress, labeled “parental input,” for which mothers are held solely responsible. In other words, extensive homework assignments, expected to be completed outside school hours, create additional work and additional obligations for mothers. Thus, after school, children are to be regularly motivated, monitored, even taught. In the afternoon, they are expected to practise for hours, and repeat lessons learned in the morning in a manner differing little from their experience in the classroom. This monitoring of homework is an educational procedure whose content and goals are precisely defined, and whose quality and results are controlled and judged by the teaching staff. In other words, actual lessons take place outside the framework of government financed schooling: a large amount of

education thus has been privatized and deregulated. This obviously saves the state a great deal of money for teachers’ salaries while also placing responsibility for academic success solely on the “parents,” that is, mothers. In terms of organisation, homework supervision seems to be independent of the institution. This is in fact an illusion, since the school always determines homework goals, content and time requirements. The framework of home supervision is thus prescribed. As a result, a new system of inequality of opportunity has taken root for both children and mothers. For children disadvantage or privilege occurs in the domestic sphere, allegedly separate from the school. For this mothers are held responsible. Dividing school work into a publicly financed and a privately organized part actually disguises a hidden full time school day based on the school’s exploitation of and discrimination against mothers. Moreover, given their differing educational and social backgrounds and the degree and type of homework expected, mothers cannot help but contribute to the maintenance of class, sex, and race discrimination. Mothers themselves are then divided into performance levels such as “satisfactory, ” “good” or “excellent.” These categories encompass mainly mothers of German origin who themselves had a good middle-class education, as opposed to the “failures”: the “inept,” the “bad mothers” who “fail” to give their children enough support because of their social class, education, different ethnic origin, economic situation, health situation, and so on. Critics seem not in the least interested in knowing whether a particular woman is unable to fall back on the financial means of the middle class; whether she is a single parent, or an immigrant who has to work long hours for poor pay, whether she is part of a scorned ethnic minority and hence “doesn’t belong,” or whether she is handicapped or must overcome the effects of illness. The federal ministries of education presuppose, on the contrary, that all mothers are flexible and available enough to accommodate their children’s school schedules and can, therefore, do homework tutoring. In total contradiction to reality, the idea prevails that mothers with school-age children are

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not in the paid labour force, despite the present factual increase in the number of mothers entering the labour force as part of the general increase in female wage earners. In 1985, 63% of all women in western Germany between the ages of 25 and 45 were in the paid labour force, as opposed to only 48% in 1970. By comparison, the number of married women with children under 15, between 1950 and 1981, rose by a factor of six (Engelbrech, 1987; Statistisches Bundesamt, 1987). In addition, many mothers are currently trying hard to enter the labour force (Engelbrech, 1987; Kriisselberg, Auge, & Hilzenbecher, 1986). The proportion of mothers with children under 18 employed full time, however, is still much lower than the total number of women employed full time. This means two things: because substitute public care is difficult to obtain, where school-age child care can’t be organized and financed privately - especially with regard to homework tutoring-the affected children and young people find themselves educationally disadvantaged and discriminated against. They quite simply have less schooling, fewer lessons, and insufficient opportunity and time to grasp the material and to practise it. And when these children fall behind, an unfair advantage for the others results, an advantage, however, that will not be considered as a result of a selective and unjust school system but will be credited to the efforts of the “parents,” the “good family background.” Thus in the most grotesque way, the scholastic disadvantaging of a rather large group of students, as well as the educational and political responsibility for it, comes to be read solely as their own and their parents’ personal failure and responsibility. Discrimination against students is practised and covered up at the same time in a very effective way. Thus a state with powerful economic resources can deregulate the educational system by privatising segments of it and ignoring the fact that a significant number of children are locked out of important portions of the educational system. There is one important reason for the tenacity of this unjust system of education: an articulate middle-class minority, which speaks out determinedly in support of the system, hopes, not unreasonably, to see their children’s skills

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and status boosted. But this in turn results not so much from an increase in knowledge as from the exclusion of other children and young people from the kind of tutoring that complements the work of the schools. Therefore, most mothers realize the importance of homework and try to do as much tutoring themselves as possible. Teachers, often both mothers and professionals themselves, rather than support the mothers as professionals, expect mothers to sacrifice their own professional aspirations and stay at home with the children. The reigning ideology of motherhood renders invisible the child-care problems of mothers with school-age children and the enormous inequality of opportunity inherent in this situation. There is strong resistance to understanding that this constitutes a deregulatory privatisation and individualisation of schoolwork. So far, there is not enough awareness of the problems involved here, nor is it accepted that child care, needed well into a child’s school years, is the responsibility of the community, over and above times when emergencies arise. There is neither enough public criticism of the school system nor of the fact that mothers are systematically required to make time within the framework of their family responsibilities for daily, unpaid, regularly scheduled work monitoring teaching. The school’s claims on mother’s unpaid work can be seen as a widely accepted norm in western Germany. Women in the labour force have to organise child-care arrangements privately and individually. The need for child care is shown by the expansion of homework supervision services, financed by public, private and commercial sources, often used to replace other forms of child care which are not available. Decisive is the fact that the ideology of motherhood makes it possible for schools to default on their responsibility for children’s scholastic success and well-being, deflecting it onto the “family,” that is, the mothers who are then placed under enormous social and psychological pressure. As a result, it is far from self-evident in western Germany that mothers ought to be full-time salaried workers. Large segments of the population expressly disapprove of this, an attitude which not only exacerbates mothers’ feelings of

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guilt and resignation but also keeps them on the defensive in terms of their politics vis-avis educational and women’s issues, hindering them in their drives for an increase in, and improvement of, child-care facilities, including moves to extend school hours to a full day. Historically speaking, the present situation has to be considered as an expansion of unpaid women’s work as well as a cementing of the sexual division of labour, in a highly developed affluent Western society, as a result of deregulatory effects within the state school system. Given the fact that increasing unemployment has eroded the image of the father as the principal breadwinner, mothers in western Germany have begun seeking paid employment in numbers unimaginable a short while ago. And the birth rate is so low that discussion has begun to focus on the relationship between this fact and the burden of child care on mothers. This encourages more and more mothers to publicly voice their need for relief. Consequently, there is more attention given to this problem. Since the number of children attending school has dropped, due to the low birth rate, schools have to look for ways to attract clients in order to keep their staff. Therefore, some elementary schools have drafted a new concept, the Betreuungsschule (“care school”) guaranteeing that children will be supervised at school for at least half a day from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. This is contrary to the present reckless practice where even school starters are quite often simply sent home without notifying the parents when lessons have to be cancelled due to a teacher’s illness, for example. It remains to be seen whether the coming years will witness a change of convictions and values concerning the school system, moving it towards a full-day system with better teaching and better care provisions. This will most likely depend on the extent to which women are willing to abandon the reigning ideology of motherhood and take over the responsibility of initiating changes in the German educational system. Reliance on the unpaid work of mothers is only possible as long as women, nonmothers as well as mothers, support the ideology of motherhood: an ideology which holds the mother as the irreplaceable nurturer of her own chil-

dren, who can only be replaced by others in emergencies and then never satisfactorily. This transforms the unpaid work of mothering into that magical “mother love” without which the child’s door to the world’s happiness and success will allegedly never truly open, the consequences of which, however, result in discontinuity in women’s work history and poverty as they grow older. Mothers’perceptions Ever since Western feminists began to reassess women’s tasks which are ostensibly motivated by love, nurturance, and a sense of responsibility and to name women as socially unrecognized and unpaid workers, one of the movement’s major goals has been the elimination of the sexual division of labour. For many women, this has meant a significant transformation of consciousness and a reorientation of personal goals. However, in most cases this awareness has not yet led to the political transformations hoped for. It indicates that women’s knowledge of the exploitation of their reproductive powers is still incomplete. Western women in particular, despite their double burden and responsibility, find it especially difficult to recognize exactly how much unpaid work they do for family members in terms of offering material and psychological care. They have great difficulty admitting that their labour is neither perceived nor appreciated as “work” when performed within the framework of “family responsibilities,” “household tasks,” and so on. Rather, seen as a manifestation of “mother love,” this ideology encourages family members to claim maternal services as their right. Whether an activity is called work or is thought to be done “out of love,” whether or not it is important and worth mentioning, whether or not it should be paid for, is not decided on the basis of that activity’s nature, but on the basis of the acting person’s sex and the expectations others bring to her role. Corresponding to this on the level of social life and praxis is the fact that a societal field’s visibility and importance depends on whether it concerns men and their masculine world. It follows that producing and caring for children are neglected areas because they have to do “only” with women. As a result of the ideology of motherli-

Child Care: Lme Work and Exploitation

ness, mothers find it difficult to relate their daily difficulties raising children to the fact that their burdens are not shared with men and that they are unpaid; it is difficult, too, for them to oppose the situation and not feel that they are depriving their children of love. And whenever mothers do complain about the chores of child-raising, they are not told that the problem lies in unjustified claims on women’s services, but rather that they feel the burden because they don’t love their children enough. Mothers are then forced into continual self-justification without being able to rid themselves of guilt feelings and fears of failure. Thus, the perception of women is constantly confused because their social world is ideologically divided into a reality which is at least devalued if not denied and into a rather abstract and fictitious “normality” (EndersDragtlsser, 1981, 1988). The factual reality of women’s lives, women’s work, responsibility, strength and competence is hidden behind the ideological veil of a “normality” which consists of role-specific expectations and assumptions defining women as caring, subordinate and decorative but insignificant: conflicting attributes which are also illusory. In addition, the often misogynistic, discriminatory or even violent character of such expectations is not easily recognized by women. Such a split brings about paradoxes (Enders-Draglsser, 1981, 1988) whose confusing nature makes it very difficult for women to come to terms with their personal perceptions and the individual and societal consequences of maternal ideology. Mothers experience guilt and fear, reacting to what they perceive as husbands’ and childrens’ intense expectations of nurturing. This ideological split also divides women: the daughters insist on receiving their mothers’ ministrations, refusing to acknowledge these as work and exploitation. The mothers, on the other hand, exhaust themselves trying to be “caring,” trying to fulfill everybody’s expectations. And when almost inevitably they fall short of satisfying everyone, they also perceive themselves as “uncaring,” “egotistical” mothers, and “failures.” These paradoxes, caused by the patriarchal ideology of motherhood and femininity, in the form of personal convictions and values for the most part unquestioned, are victimizing Western women, veil-

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ing the exploitation and making their daily work for others invisible. Without awareness of these realities change cannot be brought about. Even the most striking examples of women’s exploitation can remain obscured. This is particularly so where the nurturing, care and education of children is concerned, for only by making it appear self-evident that mothers owe the community their “loving services” can the community rest assured that the children will be looked after. For this reason the question which is asked is: to what extent does a mother’s work outside the home endanger the development of her children? Of much lesser interest is the question: to what extent can mothers cope with their burden of child care and how does this affect, in turn, their professional development, social security, their aspirations and life options? As long as a mother’s work can be considered to be solely love, and the laborious dimension of educating and raising children goes unrecognized, child care will continue to be regarded as a private problem which each mother must handle alone. The failure to see their labour for what it is invites the (mis)appropriation and exploitation of women’s unpaid “work,” with claims on maternal services often made by other women. Women professionally trained to work with mothers and children, especially nursery school teachers, schoolteachers and social workers, not seeing through the veil of ideology surrounding motherhood and femininity, often cannot or will not understand that raising and caring for children is indeed work, regardless of who is doing it and whether or not she is paid. In western Germany it is this group of professional women in particular who have the greatest difficulties accepting the material reality of unpaid maternal child care. And they are equally unprepared to take up the question of their own responsibility vis-a-vis a situation which divides women, and which, furthermore, allows professionals to appropriate mothers’ unpaid work while at the same time considering it to be “non-work .” Such ideological distortions surrounding the reality of women’s labour cause many difficulties for German women who try to combine profession and family. Middle-class women especially often appear

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unable to engage in a rational discussion of mothers as bread-winners and professionals, and see child care as not only a motherly but also a most central societal obligation. CONCLUSION We must criticise the underpinnings of personal conviction and values on the subject of motherhood and femininity as well as the attitudes toward social structures which support them. Only in this way can the ideological condition be overcome and a lasting change in child care practice be realized. Particularly with regard to school-age children, the discussion of child care must take into account the situation of mothers, if an inadvertent increase in their burden is to be avoided. For the sake of mothers and of their children, the traditional notions of motherhood, especially as they relate to the schools and social services, must undergo rigorous critical examination in order to be transcended. REFERENCES Enders-Dragiisser, Uta. (1981). Die M2tterdtessur. Eine Untersuchung zur schulischen Soziallsation der Mtitter und ihnenFolgen, am Beispiel der Hausaufgaben, Basel: Mondbuch Verlag. Enders-Dragbser, Uta. (1987). Mothers’ unpaid schoolwork in West Germany. In Patricia A. Schmuck

(ed.), Women educators. Employees of schools in Watern world countries. Albany: State University of New York Press. Enders-DragBsser, Uta. (1988). Women’s identity and development within a paradoxical reality. Women’s Studies International Forum, 11(a), 583-590. Engelbrech, Gerhard. (1987). Erwerbsverhalten und Berufsverlauf von Frauen: Ergebnisse neuerer Untersuchungen in iiberblick. Mitteilungen aus der Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschunsz, 20, Jg. 211987. Krttsselberg, Hans-Gttnt&~ Auge, MichaeLT& Hilzenbecher, Manfred. (1986). Yerhaltettshypolhesen und Familienzeitbudgets- Die Ansatzptqtkte der “Neuen Haushaltsbkonomiknfur Familienpolitik, in Zusammenarbeit mit der Familienwissenschqftlichen Forschungsstelle im Statist&hen Landesamt BadenWtiritemberg. Bundesministerium fur Jugend, Familie und Gesundheit, Schriftenreihe des Bundesministers fiir Jugend, F&lie und Gesundheit, Vol. 182. Stuttgart Berlin KBln Mainz: Kohlhammer Verlag. Moss, Peter. (1988). Child care and equality of opportunity. Consolidated Beport to the European Commission. Brussels: Commission of European Communities. Directorate General Employment, Social Affairs and Education. Moss, Peter. (1991). School-age child care in the European Community. Women’s Studies International Z%rum, 14,539~549. Statistisches Bundesamt. (1987). Fmuen in Familie. Beruf und Gesellschqft. Wiesbaden: Statistiches Bundesami. Zweiter Familienbericht. (1975). Familie und Sozialisation - Leistungen und Leistungsgnmzen der Familie hinsichtlich des Erziehungs - und Bildungsptvzesses der jungen Genemtion. Erster Teil: Stellungnahme der Bundesregie-rung. Zweiter Teil: Bericht der Sachverstttndigenkommission. Bonn-Bad Godesberg: Bundesministerium fuer Jugend, Familie und Gesundheit.