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Motherhood
The Invisible Profession By Mindy Greenstein, Ph.D.
In the course of my life as a psychologist, I've worked with drug dealers, gang leaders and heroin abusers; people who were suicidal, homicidal, psychotic or all three; AIDS victims who knew they would never reach their 30th birthday and cancer patients on their deathbeds. 
But, hands down, without question, the hardest job I have ever had, the one that has been the most physically and psychologically draining, has been my job as a mother to my two young boys. It also is the most gratifying, and yet, I often feel I have nothing concrete to show for my efforts. I can't put it on my resume, I don't get a pat on the back for giving lectures about it, I can't even get good stories out of it if I'm talking to members of the "real" world. It is, in fact, the most invisible, undervalued job that I have ever had. This should come as no surprise to full-time mothers, who are viewed even by the United States government as mere dependents rather than as full-fledged partners in the family "business."
Ann Crittenden, a journalist and author of The Price of Motherhood (Metropolitan Books, 2001) finds motherhood devalued not only by a patriarchal society that historically respected only what men accomplished, but also by feminists who view progress in terms of the ability to take charge in traditional male roles. Women who allow motherhood to overshadow their careers are quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) scorned as betrayers of feminism. After Crittenden resigned from her full-time job to devote more time to her son, she began to feel like a nonperson. "Didn't you used to be Ann Crittenden?" someone eventually asked.
Many women often ignore these vibes, finding in motherhood its own re
