More, New Research in Praise of Mothers
In the most basic sense, moms make families. Certainly, a man cannot make a family without a woman. And it is not a wise idea for a woman to try to start a family without a man. But a mother is the central and necessary ingredient of family formation, for she is the one that gives life to the next generation. And families, by definition, are always about the next generation.
Our friends at the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) have just published a very thoughtful array of articles on the status and importance of marriage and mothers that are worthy of our attention as we roll up to Mother’s Day.
The first is by Erica Komisar, a Jewish psychoanalyst in private practice in Manhattan and the author of Being There: Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters.
Komisar notes a fundamental human truth: “Healthy mothers are not extraneous, fungible, or interchangeable with fathers—they are unique, critical to a child’s emotional security and future mental health.” Mothers are powerful because of their femininity and that they are notably distinct from father.
She explains that mothers, “Provide sensitive and empathic nurturing, which is the foundation of compassion for others. They are selfless, which models the ability to sacrifice for one’s own children in the future. Their unique brand of unconditional love is unlike any other love you will ever feel in your life.”
Komisar wisely observes, “We have forgotten so much wisdom about the importance of mothers in a time when women are only seen as valuable for their contributions to the economy of the household rather than to the emotional capital of the family.”
As Mother’s Day approaches, she encourages all of us to “remember that a mother’s love is unique and critically important to the development of a child’s sense of themselves as valuable and loveable — but also to their empathy, their capacity to think about and feel for others, and their deep emotional ability to relate to and be intimate with others.”
The second great article from IFS on mothers is a research-based piece answering Chappell Roan’s silly comment that motherhood is a hell scape. This article explains that despite occasional ill-informed negative reports about mother’s happiness, it turns out that married mothers are actually quite happy with their lives. Much happier than any of their peers. IFS data shows “Married parents are over twice as likely (37%) to report being very happy as unmarried parents (16%).”
When we look specifically at moms, the numbers are even stronger. Seventy-five percent of married moms with kids report being either “very happy” or “pretty happy” while only 57% of unmarried women without kids report the same thing. Married moms were more than twice as likely than their unmarried, no-kids peers to say they are “very happy.”
IFS explains that gold standard social science data, the General Social Survey (GSS), shows that from 2018 to 2022, married parents reported higher levels of happiness than all of their peers in other relational situations. The GSS also showed that married mothers are more than twice as likely to report being “very happy” compared to unmarried parents, a differential of 37 and 16%.
The third article on moms from IFS shows how moms are using technology and remote work to enhance their life experiences as mothers. Clearly more mothers with young children are working either part- or full-time, an increase from 8% of all moms in 1940 to 68% in 2024. Much of this rise is found in full-time work. Those working part-time have remained generally steady at 15% since 1980.
The other big change is where mothers actually work. More of them are doing full-time employment work – but doing it from home. The IFS authors explain,
“Between 2019 and 2023, the share of mothers working mostly in-person decreased by 7 percentage points, while the share working mostly at home rose by 7 percentage points. That’s a change of nearly one million mothers moving from in-person to remote work. “
The overall decline in out-of-home work versus at-home-work growth for moms looks like this.
Not surprisingly, they report, “We found that moms who work from home spend significantly more time with their young children compared to moms who work in-person.” They also spend triple the time with their spouse compared to moms who work outside of the home, an average of 3.6 hours a day compared to only 1.6.
IFS explains, “The flexibility from remote work allows a family unit to better handle the inevitable but unpredictable shocks of family life and generally operate more smoothly.” They note, “Technological change has often been, historically, injurious to the family. But for many, remote work is a welcome exception.”
The final motherhood article from the IFS scholars address how poverty among single mothers has remained persistent even as women have gained more benefits in society. This article is an excerpted section from sociologists Nicholas Wolfinger and Matthew McKeever’s new book, Thanks for Nothing: The Economics of Single Motherhood Since 1980,published by Oxford University Press. They find that “women who give birth out of wedlock suffer from pervasive disadvantage that cannot be explained by their basic social and demographic attributes.”
The income differentials for married, divorced and never-married moms from 1980 to 2020 look like this:
Never married moms have shown almost no gains in household income over the last forty years compared to dramatic and consistent gains for married mothers, with divorced mothers sitting somewhere in between.
A key theme in each of these articles is how married motherhood is benefiting women, their children and society in deeper and richer ways than most in society fully appreciate.
This means our appreciation for our moms this Mother’s Day can be more fully informed for the blessing they are to each of us.
Related Articles and Resources
A Uniquely Christian Understanding of the World-Shifting Power of Motherhood
No, Chappell Roan, Motherhood is Not Hell
The Important Parenting Differences Between Moms and Dads
Image from Shutterstock.
