The “burden of child care” formerly known as motherhood has no place in a society where women should be out earning a living, according to Nancy Pelosi.

In an interview with National Public Radio that aired over the weekend, the House minority leader and California Democrat discussed her latest program, “When Women Succeed, America Succeeds: An Economic Agenda for Women and Families.”

She made it clear she doesn’t consider raising children to be acceptably successful.

Women, she said, should be made free “to earn without carrying the burden of child care.”

Part of Pelosi’s economic agenda includes “adequate funding of child-care programs.” Government funding, that is, taxpayer funding, everyone else’s funding, should go to pay to solve the “problem” Pelosi’s agenda says arises because “families are generally left on their own for providing child care.”

Granted, raising children isn’t easy. And granted, the American economy today puts a strong premium on two incomes for a household (assuming there’s a male partner in the picture.)

So there are plenty of reasons a woman who has children might have to work.

But there are also plenty of reasons why “families are generally left on their own for providing child care” the main one being – that that’s what families are.

Families are institutions that were developed to raise children. They are not vehicles of self-actualization. They aren’t modes of liberation. And, while the minority leader would scarcely acknowledge it publicly (though she’s a mother herself), women were pretty much designed to do the primary job of childbearing.

Is it easy? Of course not.

Is it a choice? In the world that Nancy Pelosi has done her best to create, it is now more than ever.

Is it a burden? If it is — even in the unfortunate event that that’s all it is — it is not the government’s or society’s to bear.

It doesn’t take a village. It takes a woman, preferably one married to a man, to raise a child. That’s what’s called a family.

In the world according to Nancy Pelosi, the second Sunday in May would be renamed, and Hallmark would get a new card to hawk:

Happy Burden’s Day.