Return of the stay-at-home mother? Paying women to bring up their children

“I loved my previous job, but as women we have to make sacrifices for our families sometimes,” Marianne Mercieca, a working mother of four, says. For 14 years she worked as an LSA, having previously worked as an administrator at a law firm. She decided to make a career change in order to have more family-friendly hours.

Sacrifice. Time. Family. Much of the first and not enough of the second for women who double up as the main caregivers in families.

But the family affairs committee of the House of Representatives has proposed that assistance be given both to single parents who work outside the home, including single fathers, as well as compensation to stay-at-home mothers who take care of the family while being unemployed.

The proposal comes at a time when the female labour participation rate in Malta has risen after free childcare was introduced by the Labour government, with the highest female activity rate ever recorded in 2014, at 52.1 per cent.

But Malta remains the EU country with the biggest gap in the percentage of working men and women. While 81.4 per cent of men in Malta aged 20-64 are employed, a mere 53.6 per cent of women are – a difference of 27.8 per cent. Italy has the second-widest gap, with a 20 per cent difference.

Despite being far behind many other EU states, Malta has made significant inroads in increasing its female workforce participation rate. In 2005 just 36.4 per cent of women aged 20 to 64 were employed.

Compensating mothers is a proposal whose origins also lie in calls from the Maltese church, back in the 1990s, when Archbishop Joseph Mercieca suggested mothers be paid to care for their families. At a time of low female participation in the workforce, it was a proposal met with suspicion from his audience.

It is no surprise that the issue of compensation for mums was brought up early last month by Fr Charles Attard, director of the Church’s marriage preparation unit, Cana, who is in favour of stay-at-home mothers receiving compensation. To him the work that stay-at-home mothers carry out is as valuable as mothers who choose to work.

“Mothers who work carry out an important job, but mothers who remain at home are sometimes treated as mothers of a ‘second division’. I think this should be a priority,” Attard told MPs in the family committee.

In 1979, an older woman divorcing her husband of 39 years argued that her role as housewife was worth more than $40,000 a year. Her lawyer argued that on the replacement cost approach – a valuation method determining what it would cost to perform each one of Mrs Gallagher’s tasks – would be $48,698 (€43,977) in today’s currency. 

Closer to our time, back in 2014 a prominent pair of campaigners in Italy brought forward a proposal to pay a salary to women working in the home, saying that it would boost equality and fight domestic abuse. The Guardian, reporting the story, described Italy as “a country with an estimated five million housewives, a moribund jobs market and a lingering patriarchal culture.”

But the proposal received criticism by some for supposedly being retrograde, unworkable and potentially counterproductive. But former centre-right MP Giulia Bongiorno, said the proposal was born out of Doppia Difesa, a domestic abuse charity that noted many victims of domestic violence were not reporting their abuse to the police because of economic reasons.

“We have [in Italy] many women who die inside household walls because they do not have economic independence,” Bongiorno had said.

Mothers who work

“I don’t regret my decision – I wouldn’t have coped with balancing my work and family responsibilities had I continued working such long hours,” Marianne Mercieca says, whose children’s age distribution was spread out and allowed her to experiment with different possibilities of child rearing.

LSA teacher and mother of four Marianne Mercieca: “Women with older children who are able to be left alone for a few hours can cope without such assistance. So it is not necessary to put that financial burden on the country. These women have options.”

“I experienced all the possibilities women have in motherhood. With my first daughter, I had a lot of help from my mother and I continued to work. When I had my second and third daughters, because I had them so close to each other I took a four-year break from work and decided to have a career change in order to be more flexible with my working hours. With my youngest, I went back to work, but I had shorter hours with my new career. However, I did make use of nurseries when I needed to.”

She says families benefit more when the mother stays home, but she still has mixed feelings about compensating housewives.

“If she has small children with no help when it comes to childcare, and her hours at work are not very flexible, it would be a good idea to stay home and still be able to provide financially. Compensation would help the women who are entitled to it, as most families wouldn’t be able to cope with one wage.

“But women with older children who are able to be left alone for a few hours can cope without such assistance. So it is not necessary to put that financial burden on the country. These women have options,” she said, noting that people will always find a way to abuse the system.

Unlike Merceica, married mother-of-two Alina Maria Mizzi had her children soon after tying the knot, and has not worked since.

“I have no one to help me with the kids,” she tells MaltaToday. “My family lives abroad and my husband’s parents are quite old.”

Having children has required a lot of sacrifices from both her and her husband because of financial strain.

“My husband works on shift-basis and puts in a lot of extra hours. We couldn’t cope otherwise with just one paycheck. I used to be a nurse, but because it has been so long since I worked, I lost my licence. And if I take up a part-time job, my husband will have to pay more tax and I would still need to pay for childcare, so I am not motivated to go back to work straight away because it’s not worth it for me at the moment.”

Stay-at-home mother Alina Mizzi: “I used to be a nurse, but because it has been so long since I worked, I lost my licence. And if I take up a part-time job, my husband will have to pay more tax and I would still need to pay for childcare, so I am not motivated to go back to work straight away because it’s not worth it for me at the moment.”

But when Mizzi got married she knew that the children would come first and says she preferred to give up holiday and material possessions like clothes in order to give them the best. “For me staying at home with the children was important.”

In fact, Mizzi says she would not turn down compensation for her role as stay-at-home mother. “I would not say no, but we have survived on one salary for 10 years without being compensated for my role in the family.”

“It should be seriously considered by the government, because it gives women a choice when considering how to go about raising their children.”

But motherhood cannot always be a straightforward affair. One News journalist and unwed mother Janice Bartolo has been a dedicated career woman for as long as she can remember, but she discovered she was pregnant when she was still studying at university. Balancing motherhood with education and work was difficult.

“In my case being a career woman had a lot to do with the way I was brought up. My own mother always worked and she always valued her work. For me there was never any other option. In fact, I felt ill at ease when I had to stop working completely for a short while. My work is an essential part of my life, rather than as something that must be done.”

But early motherhood and her career was a daunting juggling exercise for Bartolo, seeking to further her professional career while also being a good mother. “I could no longer just up and leave because I had to see that my son was in good hands,” she said referring to her son’s father and her family being her support system during this time.

When she stepped down from her part-time job at the radio newsroom, she was worried she would not find her way back on the scene. “I was constantly worried it would be impossible to do the same thing while raising a child,” she said, having changed career path for a couple of months. “I felt that my life was back in order the moment I joined another newsroom. There was to be no happy mother in me without there being a happy worker.”

One News anchor Janice Bartolo: “My life was back in order the moment I joined another newsroom. There was to be no happy mother in me without there being a happy worker.”

Bartolo however says that her career has also made her a better parent. 

“I respect women who choose to focus exclusively on motherhood. Some do not have the amount of family support that I have. Others believe it is best to be there for their children at all times. In my case, I felt better at work. I needed a place to go to where I had to make an effort to look presentable, where I was expected to deliver, where there was a sense of structure that needed to be adhered to… I found a lot of refuge in the normality that work provided. This made me a calmer, better mother.”

Being so keen to work outside the house, Bartolo finds it difficult to understand how the option of compensation would keep women away from gainful employment.

“Even if there was a significant amount of compensation available for some married women to stay at home, they would opt to go to work, because it satisfies them and because it is probably financially more rewarding than compensation.

“The way I see it, staying at home is rarely the only option, keeping in mind the amount of incentives this government is offering, such as the tapering of benefits, in-work benefits, free child care services, breakfast clubs and after-school clubs.”

Confusing messages

Marianne Mercieca says the issue of compensation for stay-at-home mothers should not be a matter of embarrassment.

“Compensated housewives shouldn’t feel degraded. They are giving a great contribution to society by giving their children as much time. Being compensated for this would mean that their role is appreciated.

Bartolo points out the gender stereotype in the family commission’s recommendation:  

“Whilst the Committee mentions single fathers, which is refreshing, there is no mention of married fathers who choose to stay at home, which I find to be very old-fashioned,” she said. “Some women earn much more than their husbands. Others are simply more keen to work than their male counterpart.”

She also says compensation for mothers is somewhat confusing, especially in a climate where the push is for women to get out of the house and into the workplace.

“I think women are receiving mixed messages. The various services available encourage them to venture out into the workforce. Women are constantly being told that they have a place in the workforce. At the same time, society greatly encourages parents’ presence in their children’s lives. This can leave women in a sea of guilt,” she said, pointing to adverts that rarely feature a child being accompanied to school by his or her grandmother rather than with their mother or father.

“To a certain extent, the very fact that the Committee of Family Affairs is now proposing compensation for housewives is confusing, when one considers the massive drive that the government is rightly promoting for women to maximise their potential in the workforce.”

Bartolo also warns of negative attitudes towards women who choose to enter the labour market in a society that offers compensation to women staying at home. “In this sense, I fear a kind of regression in the Maltese mentality,” she said.

“Women who stay at home may not be realising their full potential and putting their talents into the workforce. Much has been done in order to ensure that women have an equal standing in all spheres of society… Having both sexes, and both parents and non-parents at work means that the work environment becomes more adaptable. The more parents and women join the workforce, the more employers are encouraged to come up with new schemes and facilities that enable everyone to work.”