My Mother Never Worked

Not everyone with a job is a hard worker; similarly, not all hard workers are employed. Modern government only views work as having a job to obtain monetary income, but this is not always so. Bonnie Smith-Yackel’s “My Mother Never Worked” portrays this exact scenario. In the story the government does not recognize a hard working mother as eligible to receive death benefits because she was not employed to earn income. One does not need a job in order to be a hard worker, and working hard should not be defined by whether or not one is employed.

What is the government’s idea of work? In “My Mother Never Worked” the author went to the Social Security Office to inquire about her mom’s death benefit. At that point she was informed “your mother isn’t entitled

She lived through a large drought, lost a child in the sixth month, and endured life during the second world war. In 1969 Smith-Yackel’s parents were in a car accident that left the mother paralyzed from the waist down. Even after this accident and the death of her husband in 1970, Martha continued to “live usefully in a wheelchair” (120) where “she canned pickles, baked bread, ironed clothes, wrote dozens of letters” and “made balls and balls of carpet rags” (121). As is evident from Martha’s life, someone can definitely be an incredibly hard worker, but not have a job. The government generally doesn’t recognize anyone like Smith-Yackel’s mother because of their lack of employment. Despite this view, these people are extremely hard workers. Just because they don’t receive payment for employment does not mean they do not put forth tremendous effort to keep themselves and their families protected and taken care of. Once this is taken into consideration, we can see that hard work is not defined by employment, but instead by one’s efforts and