Motherhood is one of the most exhilarating human experiences. It is also one of the most difficult, and being a mother while trying to cope with a career is becoming even more difficult. Up to a few decades ago the choice for most employed new mothers was quite simple: they took a career break until their children were old enough to cope with the hassle of living in a household where both parents were out at work for most of the day.

The need to support motherhood is becoming a top economic and social priority

Those mothers who eventually decided to return to work faced two equally bleak options: the more skilled mothers find it hard to reintegrate in the workplace at the same level that they left; the less skilled end up in poorly paid jobs with little support for child care. Many attribute this sad state of affairs to an ingrained sexist mindset of many employers who fail to appreciate the talent of women raising a family. But the reality is more complex than this.

Research in the US proves that childless women earn almost as much as men and often compete with men for the top jobs in business. Mothers with partners earn less while single mothers earn much less.

This is undoubtedly the cost of motherhood. We are not short of rhetoric on how important the family is for our society to prosper. Economists are equally unequivocal in declaring that the birth rate in countries like Malta needs to improve if we are to avoid serious economic growth problems as a result of negative demographic trends.

Finding the right mix of incentives to support motherhood in a social and economically friendly way is not easy. Different countries have adopted different strategies with varying degrees of success. Countries like Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland and Hungary provide up to three years of paid maternity leave as they believe that the first few years in a child’s life need to be characterised by the continued presence of the mother in the home.

Others countries like New Zealand and the Nordic countries prefer to provide kindergarten facilities so that mothers can return to work as early as possible.

Countries like Britain, Germany, Japan, Switzerland and the Netherlands encourage mothers to work part-time. Scandinavian countries now encourage fathers to share in the task of raising children by increasing incentives for them to stay at home and substitute the mothers who decide to return to the workplace.

All these systems have merits. But there are also costs involved with every option. Increasing paid maternity leave can impose an economic burden on employers, and in the end could be counterproductive if employers decide not to recruit or to prefer recruiting men. In Malta, many of our enterprises are already facing difficult competitiveness issues and any further employment-related burdens can prove economically unsustainable.

Others, especially employers, argue that the state should pay for the extension of maternity leave of all women, both in the public and private sector, who have children. With our public finances already facing structural sustainability challenges, increasing the social benefits and services paid for by the taxpayer is not really a feasible option.

Child psychologists argue that shifting children at a very young age to kindergartens so that their mothers can go to work is potentially dangerous as it increases stress both on the mother and the children. The guilt that most mothers feel when they leave their toddlers with staff in the kindergartens is palpable. Better solutions need to be found to promote the wellbeing of both mothers and their children.

More recently the idea of providing after-school facilities for the children of working mothers has found support from employers and many parents. But not everyone agrees that this is the best way forward as they argue that, with limited budgets these after-school facilities can hardly provide the right environment to encourage these children to use their after-school time productively.

With more relatively young mothers facing an additional challenge of dealing with aging parents while caring for their young children, the need to support motherhood in becoming a top economic and social priority for our political leaders.

The way forward is for business, political, and social strategists to go back to the drawing board and redesign the way we work. We need a new paradigm that achieves a balance between the priorities of employers and those of mums at the workplace.

jcassarwhite@yahoo.com