The Economics of Motherhood: Why Some Women Still Choose Large Families

Johann Kurtz, in an essay called "It's Embarrassing to be a Stay at Home Mom," argues that lower fertility tracks closely with the status drop women experience when they become mothers. Status is your perceived standing in the group. It shows up as deference, access, inclusion, approval, acclaim, respect, honor – or their opposites: rejection, ostracization, humiliation. An educated woman who leaves a career for motherhood has, in the culture's view, wasted her education and deprived the workforce. "Unfortunately, 'I'm a mother' is not a good answer to this question [what do you do]," Kurtz writes. "This conveys little status within a success framework."

And yet a small percentage of women choose motherhood as their vocation anyway. They are not immune to the social demotion. They simply find something deeper: meaning.

After my first child, I felt I had unlocked some of the meaning of the universe. I rejected the lie that my value came from my career. I rooted it in the unseen labor of shaping my child's character. That work shaped my own character too. The shift happened after birth, not before.

Motherhood as a vocation is not prestigious. It is exhausting, with long hours and rewards that sometimes take years to arrive. The daily grind offers an intimacy unlike any other human relationship, though, except perhaps with a spouse. That intimacy builds secure attachment. Secure attachment is ground zero for every other relationship a person will have. The cost of separating mother and child in the first three years is often permanent. It affects all future relationships. It affects society.

Psychoanalyst Erica Komisar, in Being There: Raising Resilient Children, argues that mothers are biologically unique in their contribution to healthy child development. A mother's contribution cannot be outsourced to a nanny, a daycare, or even a father. Komisar writes that "we have deprioritized family and delegated raising our children to strangers so we can pursue work outside the home." She says that when it comes to spending undistracted time with children, "more is more." Quality time matters less than quantity. Children need their mothers in the mundane. That is where the deeper meaning lives.

I feel sad when I think about how many people forgo the experience of becoming mothers. No career substitutes for it. The state cannot subsidize it. No incentive other than one equal to the sacrifice and meaning would suffice. If you want to know how large families happen, look beyond economics. Look at the women who are, as Pakaluk puts it, "defying the birth dearth."