Well it can't be too new, I wrote this about a decade ago, but this is a paper that even my professor was surprised that I chose as a topic.
Motherhood
Deserves Just Compensation
In
1891, when Pope Leo XIII issued the Encyclical Rerum Novarum[1],
beginning the social justice movement in the Church, the just wage principle
has been a major issue within social justice teaching. This topic has reappeared in the Church’s
social justice teaching for the century following the issuing of Rerum
Novarum, including Pope John Paul II’s Encyclical Laborem Exercens[2](which
was written for the ninetieth anniversary of Rerum Novarum), in which he
proposes a new idea based on the just wage principle. This new idea proposed by Pope John Paul II
is just as laborers deserve just compensation for their labor, as labor is a
mission to man (and woman), motherhood, as it is a special mission particular
to women, also deserves just compensation.
In a discussion of
this topic it seems necessary to explain the just wage principle, sometimes
referred to as compensation, as proposed by Pope Leo XIII and expanded upon by
Pope John Paul II. The Popes have based
the teaching on compensation on two Biblical passages, Genesis 3:19, “By the
sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat,”[3]
and Matthew 20:1-16 the parable of the workers in the vineyard. Pope John Paul II uses the verse from Genesis
in Laborem Exercens as the basis for the necessity of men’s labor. Labor is the means by which men earn the
money they need to be provident for themselves and their families. In the parable of the vineyard, the employer
goes into the market in the morning looking for men to work in his vineyard
that day; at noon the employer goes back to the market place to find workers;
and he repeats this again toward mid-afternoon.
At the end of the day, it is time for the employer to pay his workers,
as instructed by the Law of Moses in Leviticus 19:13, “You shall not defraud or rob your neighbor. You shall not
withhold overnight the wages of your day laborer.” When the employer dispenses wages, he calls
forth those hired last to be paid first and he pays them a full day’s wages,
seeing this, those hired earlier in the day are expecting they shall be paid
much more than a single day’s wages. The
employer next calls those hired at noon to receive their pay, he pays them the
daily wage as well; when the workers hired at dawn are called to receive their
wages, they are expecting a greater wage because they worked the whole day, and
he has paid those who worked only part of the day the full daily wage. The workers hired in the morning are angry
when they receive only one day’s wage, to which the employer replies I agreed
to pay you a daily wage, and it is my money.
Is it not my right to do with it what I please? This passage expresses the obligation of
employers to pay their workers enough to provide for their basic needs.
The Popes have used these two
excerpts from Sacred Scripture to defend the just wage principle because work
is the means by which man earns his daily bread, and “a dictate of natural
justice”[4]
demands that employers give their workers what is needed to sustain their
lives, based on the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 22:39, “You shall love your
neighbor as yourself.” Because loving
your neighbor entitles helping him to sustain his life by assisting him in
providing for his basic needs and the needs of those he must care for. The so-called “dictate of natural justice”
Pope Leo XIII speaks of is the natural law that Saint Thomas Aquinas proposes
in His Summa Theologiae, and in Question 100 Article 11, St. Thomas
states that the commandments to love God, and love one’s neighbor as oneself are
the first and common principles or precepts of the natural law.[5]
Pope Leo XIII expands on this idea
when he states, “To labor is the exert oneself for the sake of procuring what
is necessary for the various purposes of life, and chief of all for preservation.”[6] Because of this a just wage is necessary to
insure that the worker can preserve himself.
Pope Leo XIII also states that laborers and employers should be free to
set their own wages, but “there underlies a dictate of natural justice more
imperious and more ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, wages
ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage earner.”[7] An employer has done a great injustice to his
worker if he does not pay his worker what is necessary to for him to support
himself. Pope Leo XIII also says that
the state needs to monitor employers to ensure that they are treating their
employees fairly, and step in if employers are not respecting their employees.
Pope John Paul II expands on Pope
Leo’s teaching by including the obligation to pay the worker what is necessary
not only so he can support himself, but to be able to support his family
also. Pope John Paul II states, “The
relationship between the employer and the worker is resolved on the basis of
the wage, that is, through just remuneration for the work done.”[8] Continuing, “just remuneration for an adult
who is responsible for a family means remuneration which will suffice for
establishing and properly maintaining a family and providing security for its
future.”[9]
Similarly, the Catholic Encyclopedia
says,
The present Catholic position may be summarized somewhat as
follows: . . . the employer who can reasonably afford it is morally obliged to
give all his employees compensation sufficient for decent individual
maintenance, and his adult male employees the equivalent of a decent living not
only for themselves but for their families.[10]
This means that pay should be based on the need of the worker,
not just the amount of time the worker has put in laboring or the nature of the
labor, but some objective idea to help preserve the lives of your worker and
the worker’s family. Although in a
culture like the one in America today, where equality is usually understood to
imply that everyone must be exactly equal in almost every respect, the paying
of a family wage, based on the basic needs of the worker and his family is
considered to be somewhat communist, because it denies that someone without
children who does the exact same job, for the exact same amount of time
deserves to be paid the same amount as another person who is the sole
bread-winner for his family of 5.
This emphasis on the
family brings about the need to discuss the mission of motherhood. According to Pope John Paul II, motherhood
and virginity are the two vocations of woman.[11] This is of course true of both men and women;
a person is either called to the consecrated life or to married life, but the
Pope speaks of the call to motherhood differently than the call to fatherhood. Parenthood is shared between the mother and
father, but “the woman’s motherhood constitutes a special “part” in this
shared parenthood, and the most demanding part.”[12] Because of the demanding nature of motherhood
upon the woman, “It is therefore necessary that the man be fully aware
that in their shared parenthood he owes a special debt to the woman. No program of ‘equal rights’ between women
and men is valid unless it takes this fact fully into account.”[13] Pope John Paul II says that the child’s
upbringing is the responsibility of both the mother and the father, but the
mother is the one responsible for forming the personality of the child as a
human.[14] He also says that the humanity of the child
is dependent upon the mother.[15] Pope John Paul II believes that the mother
should be at home raising her children, and “Having to abandon these tasks in
order to take up paid work outside the home is wrong from the point of view of
the good of society and of the family when it contradicts or hinders these
primary goals of the mission of a mother.”[16] He argues for a “Social reevaluation of
the mother’s role.”[17] He refers to the mother’s work as a kind of
labor, and he asks people to consider motherhood by
The toil connected with it, and of the need that children have
for care, love and affection in order that they may develop into responsible,
morally and religiously mature and psychologically stable persons. It will
redound to the credit of society to make it possible for a mother – without
inhibiting her freedom, without psychological or practical discrimination, and
without penalizing her as compared with other women – to devote herself to
taking care of her children and educating them in accordance with their needs,
which vary with age.[18]
The Pope says that it is necessary for the common good of
society that provisions should be made so that mothers could be able to stay at
home with their children. Provisions
should be made to allow mothers to stay home with their children because it is
a parent, typically, who is the best moral teacher. The things that motherhood require of a woman
are equivocal to the labor done by men or women at their jobs, and as such they
deserve just compensation just as any other labor demands just compensation.
If compensation and
the just wage principle are correctly understood, as well as the relation to
the toil of the mother with the toil of the laborer, then it is clear that
motherhood also deserves Just compensation.
This idea relates to what was stated above, “In their shared parenthood
he owes a special debt to the woman.
No program of “equal rights” between women and men is valid unless it
takes this fact fully into account.”[19] But I believe the Pope includes this in
relationship not only to father and mother and their share of responsibility in
raising children, but also the relationship between a mother and a laborer,
that in a way, the toil they endure is equivocal. As Pope John Paul II says in his Letter to
Women, “There is an urgent need to achieve real equality in every
area: equal pay for equal work, protection for working mothers, fairness in
career advancements, equality of spouses with regard to family rights and the
recognition of everything that is part of the rights and duties of citizens in
a democratic State.”[20]
The Pope’s talk about compensation
for mothers does not imply that the State should pay mothers to be mothers, but
it does ask that programs be set up either by the government or employers to
provide some sort of assistance to workers, either by tax cuts or grants.[21] This idea of just compensation for mothers
who choose to stay at home with their children and not enter the workforce
leaving their children in daycare is not communist. It is fundamentally rooted in Natural Law
theory, and the first and common principles, according to Saint Thomas Aquinas,
to love God, and love one’s neighbor as oneself.[22] Loving your neighbor as oneself entitles that
when one is able or in the position to, such as an employer, insure that his
employee’s needs are provided for that one should. Thus an employer has an obligation, based on
the natural law to pay his laborer enough to allow the laborer to be provident
for himself and those who are under his care.
Similarly, the State is under an obligation to ensure that a just wage
is being paid, to safeguard the rights of its citizens. Safeguarding the rights of citizens could
also imply the use of other means.
As the March 22, 1999 editorial in
the Western Catholic Reporter, “Valuing Stay-at-home Parents,” states,
“The current tax system is . . . giving a disincentive to be a stay-at-home
parent. It is saying that a parent’s
contribution in the home is not as important as to society as the same parent’s
contribution to the work force.”[23] The author of this editorial says that
stay-at-home parenting “ought to be treasured,” and that for government tax
system not to offer fair treatment to both working and stay-at-home parents it
unjust.[24] The author is not calling for the government
to pay stay-at-home parents as employees; he is just suggesting that the
government treat all parents fairly. It
seems this is what Pope John Paul II is calling for, but in a very narrow
sense. It seems the Pope wants the
government and employers to realize the tremendous value a mother has when she
is active, full-time, in the home with her children, more or less, depending on
the age and needs of the children. John
Paul II directly states that he believes it beneficial to the common good of
society, for mothers to stay at home with their children. As such, provisions should be made, either by
employers or the State to protect this.
A question that could arise for this discussion
could be, what about stay-at-home fathers, does the same apply? It seems, as though, if this just wage
principle truly is based one the natural law, that yes, this does apply to the
father who chooses to make his career raising his children. In today’s society, this is not uncommon,
many women have better careers than their husbands, and as such they choose to
be the breadwinner in the family while the father stays home with the
children. Pope John Paul II appears to
be arguing more for the good of the family in general in his idea of just
compensation for mothers, as he is for just wanting the dignity and value of
motherhood in itself to be realized.
In conclusion, it seems rather apparent that based
on Pope Leo XIII’s Encyclical, Rerum Novarum, that all laborers are
entitled to a just wage for their labor, as Genesis 3: 19 emphasizes, that work
is how man is to receive his daily bread.
And expanding on this teaching, Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical, Laborem
Exercens, develops the just wage principle to include a family wage, which
is that the just wage ought to be large enough to provide for the needs of the
laborer and those the laborer cares for.
Also, because Pope John Paul II stresses the mission of motherhood, and
compares the toil of the mother to the toil of the laborer, he says that just a
the laborer’s labor is deserving of just compensation, so too is the labor of
the stay at home mother worthy of just compensation. Possible means for the just compensation of
stay-at-home parents include, family wages, grants, tax cuts, and other State
or privately run programs. Pope John
Paul II’s conviction that it is for the common good that whenever possible a
child’s parents should stay at home to care for him is absolutely correct. Children cannot learn proper morals from a
day care center, and proper morals need to be instilled in children all over
the world, not just in America.
[1]
Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum (May 15, 1891).
[2]
Pope John Paul II, Laborem Exercens (September 14, 1981).
[3] New American Bible, St. Joseph Medium Sized Ed. (New
York [NY]: Catholic Book Publishing Co., 1970) used throughout.
[4] Rerum
Novarum p. 45.
[5]
Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica: First Part of the Second Part (New
York: Benzinger Brothers, Inc., 1947). I-II 100.11c.
[6] Rerum
Novarum p. 44.
[7] Ibid.
p. 45.
[8] Laborem
Exercens n. 19.1.
[9] Ibid.
n. 19.3.
[10]
John A. Ryan, “Catholic Encyclopedia: Compensation,” New Advent.
[11]
Pope John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem (August 15, 1988) n. 17.
[12] Ibid.
n. 18.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
n. 19.
[16] Laborem
Exercens n. 19.4.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Mulieris
Dignitatem n. 18.
[20]
Pope John Paul II, Letter to Women (June 29, 1995) n. 4.
[21] Laborem
Exercens n. 19.6.
[22]
Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica: First Part of the Second Part (New
York: Benzinger Brothers, Inc., 1947). I-II 100.11c.
[23]
“Valuing Stay-at-home Parents,” Western Catholic Reporter.
[24] Ibid.
