Soccer Mom: Unplugged

According to last week's The Economist, women workers are making up an increasingly higher percentage of the labor force.  "A Guide to Womenomics" suggests that the change is due in some measure to the shift of the class of work required in developed nations.  With the expanding number of jobs in the service sector, more women are employable on an equal footing with their male counterparts.  Apparently, girls are proving to be better students, more women are getting college degrees than men, and women are filling most new jobs.  "Arguably, women are now the most powerful engine of global growth."

The most interesting segment of the article, in my opinion, was a section discussing the relationship between fertility rates and the percentage of women workers. While some argue that encouraging women to enter the workforce will result in a fertility decline, the numbers seem to prove the exact opposite.  The nations with the highest percentage of women workers also enjoy the higher fertility rates.  Personally, I don't know how you can make a direct correlation because averaging the number of children born to working women and the number born to stay at home moms seems very disingenuous.  According to the national average, I have born my share and another woman's as well.  But I certainly wasn't thinking of carrying some other lady's statistic when I was in that labor and delivery room. 

The article makes the assertion that countries that make a concerted effort to make motherhood compatible with a career will see marked improvements in national prosperity.  "This may mean offering parental leave and child care, allowing more flexible working hours, and reforming tax and social-security systems that create disincentives for women to work."  The countries that offer less support for working mothers find lower rates of working women and lower birth rates because many women postpone childbearing.  "Japan, for example offers little support for working mothers: only 13% of children under three attend day-care centers, compared with 54% in America and 34% in Britain."

The article also suggests that as women grow in number and value in the labor market, they can provide "a sounder base for long-term growth" and help to finance rich countries' welfare states.

My take:

Okay so women are supposed to have children turn them over to day-care centers and then public schools to raise so that they can fund the lifestyles of people on the welfare roles?  And 54% of American toddlers and preschoolers in day-care is a good thing?

I would argue that if we paid men enough to support their families, then fertility would rise because women would have the liberty of raising their own children.  I would also argue that the welfare roles - and by this I mean all of those government subsidized handouts to people who ought to be working - would be a lot shorter if mother's were educated and skilled women who chose to stay home because they saw the wisdom in teaching young human beings to be self-reliant, responsible and prosperous with the work of their own hands.  Furthermore, if women were at home to teach their children and took that task as the most significant opportunity available to any human being, there would be fewer sons and daughters living out their lives in prison cells.  There would be fewer junkies in need of government funded treatment and services.  There would be fewer runaways and child prostitutes.  There would be substantially fewer social ills requiring government money made on the backs of women who have abandoned the most sacred duty afforded them by God, evolution or the universe.

But that's just the opinion of one educated, skilled and capable woman, who has chosn to see the long term value in walking away from a paycheck in exchange for something of much greater worth.