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Mother's Day is past, and mothers are back to work, some in the home, some outside of the home, some doing both. And that's something to ponder.

As we might have guessed, Mother's Day is not only good for mothers, it also helps the economy. To be exact, it's worth $15.7 million to retailers, according to the National Retail Federation. But it's not as helpful to as the mothers who, on Monday, went back to work. They earn an estimated $476 billion annually.

Without women in the workplace, "it's fair to say America's economy would grind to a halt." So says Jessika Auerbach in a recent USA Today piece. So also says Carol Evans, CEO and president of Working Mother magazine: "If the 71 percent of all women with children who work lose their ability or inclination to work, then we will have a loss of economic strength in this country."

Evans edits a magazine that helps working women manage the stress of having a job and being a mother. Auerbach has just written a book—And Nanny Makes Three: Mothers and Nannies Tell the Truth about Work, Love, Money, and Each Other—that empathizes with and encourages both working mothers and the women who take care of their children. They are two of millions who recognize (1) that working mothers are a reality in this economy and (2) that this reality is hard on mothers and children.

I'm not going to preach for or against mothers working. I know some mothers who absolutely should work. I know some who absolutely shouldn't. This decision is one requiring prudential judgment not sweeping moralisms. But in this culture, Mothers Day is not only a time to reflect on mothers' relationship to their children, but also their relationship to this culture, especially it is trying its best to exploit them—to not put too fine a point on it. Working out salvation in this culture goes hand in hand with working out how and when and where we work.

We live in an economy with an insatiable appetite for consumers. Consumers are those who have money to consume goods and services. So it is in the self-interest of this economy to create more jobs to manufacture more goods and services to generate more income so that more people can consume these goods and services. Is it a surprise that this economy not only now welcomes women into the workplace but is also utterly dependent on them for its survival? And that is has exponentially grown another industry—day care and nannies—to make working mothers possible? Which group will it next suck into its vortex, and how far will they be sucked?

This would be a "So what?" if it wasn't for the nearly obvious fact that it is good for mothers to spend lots of time with their young children. I need not marshal the many social and psychological studies that support this common sense—they are legion. Fathers also need to spend time with their children, but, all things being equal, no father can match the nurturing care that a mother gives. No father had a child grow inside him for nine months; no father experienced the bonding, redemptive pain of childbirth. Thus no father has an attachment to his children as does a mother.

And yet we've created an economy in which mothers—who have this remarkable and miraculous bond with their offspring—in some instances feel compelled to turn their children over to the care of relative strangers for the bulk of every day. These mothers get to spend only a harried few minutes with their children in the morning, and then an exhausted hour or two at night. Of course, they also get custody on the weekends. If the state had mandated such an arrangement, we'd cry, "Tyranny!"

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May (Web-only) 2007, Vol. 51