Summary of 'My Mother Never Worked'

 

My Mother Never Worked

 

In this narrative essay, Bonnie Smith Yackel tells the story of the sacrifice made by the millions of the homemakers whose works have not been recognized both by the society and the government. Smith- Yackel challenges the government laws that grant society security benefits to the survivors of those who worked as wage earners. According to the federal law, a woman who is a homemaker (works at home) who has never been a wage earner is eligible for social security benefits only through the earning of her deceased husband. The main idea or thesis of this essay is that although Martha Smith didn’t work outside the home, the works she did should be considered valuable enough to entitle her to social security benefits. Hence, the essayist considers the laws regarding social security as injustice, discriminatory and biased, and thus they must be changed or amended to accommodate those homemakers like Martha Smith.

Martha smith, the author’s mother, worked very hard at raising her children, doing farm chores, and maintaining household, but she didn’t work outside the home for pay-the only kind of the work recognized by the government. So, she wasn’t eligible to get the social security benefits because she never worked as wage earner. And now, after the death of her mother (Martha Smith), the author (Smith-Yackel) makes inquiry at the social security office if she will get any death benefits on behalf of her mother’s death. While the officer checks whether her mother is entitled to death benefits or not, the author narrates the life of her mother who spent her entire life at the service of the family. First, she narrates the story of her parents’ love affairs and how her mother feared marriage. After they married, they worked in a farm and produced in every one or two years’ gap. When they had earned enough money, they bought their own farm and started living there. Whole day her mother worked in the field, raised chicken and calves, but they died of cholera.

In the next year, there was drought and her parents had to carry water from the well. They couldn’t save the crops due to the heat. During their hard time when their fourth child was born, her father went for hunting in the forest and brought home chicken, ducks, pheasant and grouse. Her mother plucked the feathers of each bird to make quilts and pillows for the family. During winter her mother made clothes for her children from the old clothes she baked from her relatives. Every morning and every evening, her mother milked cows, fed pigs and calves, cared for chicken, picked eggs, cooked meals, washed dishes, scrubbed floors and tended and loved her children from her heart.

In the coming seven years, she gave birth to four more children of which one died and the remaining seven survived. In 1941, she was 46 years old when she gave birth to her eighth child. She continued doing her domestic chores every day and kept making quilts and pillows, tending her vegetable garden, stitching clothes from rugs. In 1955, her last child completed high school. Finally, in 1970, she met with an accident when she and her husband were going to a town for a shopping. The mother was paralyzed the waist down, and the father died a year later. The mother was kept in a rehab center for treatment. When her health improved, sitting in a wheel chair she still continued making pickles, baking bread, ironing clothes, making quilts, clothes and writing letters.

When the author completes telling the story of her mother, the social security officer informs the author that her mother isn’t entitled to get the death benefits because her mother never worked. In this way, condemning the governments’ social security policy, through this essay the author Bonnie Smith-Yackel wants everyone to express their honor and respect to all the hardworking mothers around the world, who are also called the homemakers.