The Challenge

Caregiving and Market Work

Two different but equally important types of work are fundamental to the structure of our society and the growth and stability of our economy: market work, which centers on the production of material goods and profit-making, and caregiving, which maintains the health and well-being of the population.

Even though the work we describe as "caregiving" frequently requires an exceptional investment of human effort -- including time, labor, resources and mental focus -- the activity of caregivers remains largely unstudied and unmeasured as a meaningful contribution to society. Caregiving is almost universally underpaid or unpaid, and those who have significant caregiving responsibilities in the home are often excluded from either public or private systems of support that might protect them from undue hardship.

Workplace standards that require unlimited work from employees exclude mothers, fathers, and other individuals who wish to be actively involved in caring for their families from good jobs with good pay. Part-time work is often proposed as an ideal solution to balancing paid work with the responsibilities of family care, but most part-time jobs available in the existing market are poorly paid and offer no benefits and limited possibility for advancement.

Mothers are the ones most hurt by this imbalance because we are the ones who do the bulk of the caregiving work and often perform both market work and caregiving work. Both are vital to society, and both require time, energy and resources.

Mothers, and all citizens, deserve workplace practices and public policies that respect and reflect all the work that is central to the strength of our society.

Where We Stand

Mothers & More champions the value and necessity of all mothers' work to our society - paid and unpaid, within and outside of the home. By uniting mothers to act on our own behalf, we seek to eliminate policies, practices and attitudes that unfairly impact mothers as caregivers.

We believe that fundamental to our efforts is redefining what “counts” as work in our society and reorganizing all types of work and policies to reflect that new definition. Work needs to be redefined so that there is a broad acceptance that the work of caring for others is valuable and vital work that is essential to our families, communities, economy and society as a whole. In addition, work needs to be reorganized so that public policy, private practices and cultural attitudes reflect that definition of unpaid caregiving work as equal in value to paid work.  See our plan for accomplishing, and the activities Mothers & More engages in to further, these goals