The Dilemma of Middle-Class Family Mother

The Dilemma of Middle-Class Family Mother

            Compared with the rich people in the United States, the poor are relatively weak, but they have a relatively sound social security system, as long as the poor have legal status, even if they do not work to maintain their daily livelihood. It is not the poor who have the most robust and most stressful lives in the United States, but the middle class, which makes up about 80 per cent of the population. At present, the impoverishment of the middle class has aroused widespread concern in American society. We know the middle class is engaged in mental labour,  technical, and necessary manual labour. They’re mainly by wages to make a living; on the other hand, they usually have well-educated, and professional knowledge and ability; so, they can correspond to family consumption capacity by their salary. Thus, the growing middle class is the foundation of a nation’s economy. Some middle-class mothers quit their job to take care of the child; Therefore, middle-class mothers are facing the issue of low income and unemployment after their child is born. I will use the work of Crittenden to talk about the lives of low-income middle-class families, and also use Desmond’s work to reveal how hard it is for low-income families to take care of their kids.

Without a stable job will be a challenge for mothers. Whether mothers stay in the Labour market is a troublesome decision, and it is an important social issue. Motherhood is an invisible job. It can be a barrier to working in society. Raising children may be the most critical job in the world, but moms can’t put it on their resumes. Today, the inflexible working environment ensured that many women had children and had to cut their jobs even if they did not quit. As a result, the income gap between mothers and childless women is more significant than that between young men and women. The Pamela piece entitled “Fast-track Women and the “Choice” to Stay Home” explores the most women with professional degrees work, but they are three times more likely than men to leave the workforce. Most people believe that the reason why women give up work is because of their families. (Stone 2011:636). Mother giving up the jobs because they can’t balance between family and work; therefore, finding stable jobs is one of the challenges for middle-class mothers.

The cost of taking care of children is enormous for stay-at-home mothers. The United States is the only developed country in the world without a national law on paid maternity leave. But workplace pregnancy discrimination still exists, with starting salaries lower than for non-mothers; Thus depriving women of the right to support the family financially(Schulte 2014). Raising children is the responsibility of every family, so parents work hard to earn money to give their children a better life. Crittenden notes that bringing a child into a complex society, and parents need to require years of painstaking and patient work to develop the infant into an imaginative individual. Children need to find their rightful place in a competitive world, and they need the confidence to fight for themselves and the discipline to plan for an uncertain future. (P50). Therefore, middle-class working mothers were punished for spending time in the family; because they were forced to devote their time to their children. They are often forced to give up their commitment to their jobs, and so are often forced to forgo income and job opportunities and finally lose the income for supporting their children.

Although some mothers give up their jobs for the sake of their families, it doesn’t mean they haven’t done something for their families. In Ann Crittenden’s work The Price of Motherhood, she points out that the costs of bringing up a child in a family generally include the costs of bringing up a child from conception until the child can support himself or herself. For a college-educated American woman, the forgone income amounts to a vast “mommy tax,” often more than $1 million(Ann). So it’s not just their time that middle-class mothers are paying for their families; it is also the money that they use their life to exchange.

Although the United States is the most influential economic country in the world, there is still a part of the family income in the society that is relatively low; so, low income makes their life very difficult. In the Severe Deprivation in American, Desmond states that in the United States, about 30 per cent of the workforce works at “poverty wages,” and most low-wage workers are not teenagers but adults, including many parents(P625). On other hands, In the Briefing Paper, Stephanie concluded that a mother with two children has a minimum wage of $5.15 an hour, so her annual income is only $10712. Even though the government has a policy called Earned Income Tax Credit(EITC), therefore the mother can get almost $4000 back to support the Children’s education(P187). Therefore, family income is mainly dependent on the parents. Children’s education expenditure is closely related to the family income.

The proportion of low-income families receiving benefits from the US federal government has fallen sharply in the past 20 years. So America has Temporary Assistance for Needy Families(TANF), a national scheme that provides cash handouts to families with children in need. Eligible families are eligible for up to five years of assistance under the hardship assistance program. According to Enforcing the Work Ethic, Hays points out that TANF helps independent women find work so they can be independent, self-sufficient, and participate in the paid labour force; Thus increasing the family’s income(Hays). Some middle-class mothers need public assistance because they need money to take care of the family. If an unemployed mother stays at home to take care of her children, her life will be more and more hard; because without income, it will be challenging to give her children a pleasant experience. Even if low-income mothers can apply for financial aid from the government, it is not a long-term solution.

Government policy is one of the best ways that support the middle-class stay-at-home mother to have a stable income. Under TANF,  some states in the US no longer receive unlimited federal funding. They can only accept a fixed amount of money from the federal government. If actual expenditures exceed the federal government’s allocation, state and local governments must bear the additional costs themselves, or they can reduce assistance to beneficiaries by; for example, cutting subsidies, reducing the duration of benefits, and adjusting the terms of benefits. When public resources are scarce, the impact of TANF is enormous. Decreasing and controls to welfare programs are bound to exacerbate child poverty. For the work and moral requirements of welfare recipients, some people will try to change their behaviour to meet the policy requirements. Since the welfare of the government is limited, some people are doomed to fail even if they work hard. Government assistance not only helps low-income mothers economically but also helps them find stable jobs through relevant policies so that mothers can achieve a balance between work and family.

Whether to stay at work is a dilemma for some mothers. When a family has children, parents should give them a good living and educational environment. After giving birth to children, some middle-class mothers choose to quit their jobs and focus on their families, while others are dismissed by the company and lose their stable income. Every middle-class family wants a stable environment for their children to grow up, so one of their parents will give up her job and become a full-time mom. When mothers lose their jobs, the family’s income decreases. At the same time, some companies will discriminate against mothers, which makes it very difficult for mothers to return to work again. Therefore, the government should not only provide financial assistance to mothers but also provide jobs for mothers after childbirth. Mother is the most challenging job in our family, even though the family never pays the salary to them, mothers still spend a lot of time on that.