As Mother’s Day is celebrated this weekend, AWARE wishes to propose a gift befitting the vocation – a set of national census questions on mothering work

Mothering is by far the most celebrated yet least paid job in the world!  Indeed most mothering work  - “helping me with my maths and English homework, looking after me, teaching me, cooking good, being as pretty as a rose” according to one child I am intimately connected to -  is unpaid work done in the home or on a voluntary basis in schools and community groups.  Such work has no simply recognized monetary value and is usually unrecorded in the national accounts. 

The phenomenon noted by Pauline Straughan, vice-dean of the Facutaly of Arts and Social Sciences at the National University of Singapore in the May 9 2007 edition of TODAY – that “domestic work including child rearing has experienced continued devaluation” – is thus hardly surprising.  Why would any one in capitalistic outcome driven Singapore put an increasing value on work that is unpaid and makes no visible contribution to the gross national product of the country? 

AWARE, the Association of Women for Action and Research, proposes that it is timely that the government takes a first step towards recognizing the value of such mothering work by including a detailed set of questions on time spent on mothering activities in Singapore.

While a supplemental questionnaire in the 1990 Population Census included a question on child care arrangements for children under the age of 12 among questions on sports, religion and art activities, AWARE is not aware of any analysis on child care arrangements or mothering work following the 2000 census. .

Inclusion of a detailed set of questions on time spent on mothering work will have the following benefits:

(1) Attach importance to “mothering work” as a productive nation building activity.
(2) Prompt thinking among policy makers and census designers on exactly what constitutes “mothering work” and how it may be measured.
(3) Provide a national database of the hours spent on mothering work and how these hours are divided among the different members of a household.

While academics such as Dr. Straughan and her colleagues at NUS have done valuable work on measuring and valuing “home work”, mothering would receive a far larger boost if it is measured officially on a national basis.  The data collected could also serve as a basis  for work life balance policies and provide a starting point for valuing the contribution of such mothering work to the national product.

Roses, photographs, spa sessions and a Sunday buffet are fine.  However, if the government wants to give all those doing mothering work a gift that keeps giving, it should begin work NOW to include a set of questions on mothering work in the next census.

Sincerely

CHIN WEI-LI AUDREY MARIE
Ph. D. Public Policy Analysis
Member, AWARE Committee for Policy Research