I think my mothering duties are worth $0
Filed under: Home, Family Money, Simplification, Career
I have, in years past, had mixed feelings about the annual estimations of a mother's worth, portioned out into little bits of hourly wages for laundry, cooking, and "managing" her household, and usually coming out just over the maximum salary I ever earned in my life (with an Ivy League MBA, that is) (of course, I was a mom for most of my career).This year I finally figured out what, exactly, was my problem with these "statistics": I think my time as a mom is worth zero, monetarily speaking.
I have tried every sub-genre of the working mom life: freelancing work that allows me lots of time to spend with my three little boys and around the house; working from home in a demanding corporate job that required lots of travel; traditional office work (when I had only one baby); and coming soon, as an Army wife with deployed husband.
So I feel I have a pretty good idea of the many different ways mothers can occupy their time. And reading this economist's take on a mother's value (which was generous in spirit, but argued moms weren't really worth nearly as much, due to the inflated hours reported in the survey on which the PR figure is based) gave me more perspective.
Here's the thing: being a mother is unquantifiable and shouldn't be expressed in dollar figures.
Being a mother should never be considered through the prism of money; through valuing mothering, a woman is either building a case of resentment against her family (her spouse, her children, or both) for robbing her of those shoulda-coulda-woulda earned dollars, or creating a needlessly financial comparison between herself and other women who work outside the home. Do I think my work as an investment banker was worth more than the work of the elementary school teacher who I befriended right out of college? I was paid twice what she was! It's clearly ludicrous.
What's more, the main "jobs" valued by these surveys are duties that are typically done both by childless individuals (whether they work a day job or not) and those whose children have grown. Singling out moms for special attention for their laundry and sandwich making shifts when everyone has to do these things doesn't make sense. Is a grandmother's laundry, or that of a college student, worth nothing? And how about gardening and cooking for oneself; should we monetize those, too, so everyone knows how much they're "worth" when they eat their own lettuces in a salad, or bake a loaf of bread? If we all did this for each activity we're involved with, we'd either spend our life in resentment or decide that nothing, done for oneself, is worthwhile (after all, this salad I'm eating right now "cost" me $25 in materials, labor, and overhead, and what should I pay my husband for the "childcare" while I washed the greens?).
Let's officially put the value of living, whether mothers, fathers, or stewards of the planet (I'm looking at you, neighbor who I saw lovingly planting honeybee-friendly herbs yesterday, hands and knees in the dirt for hours), at $0. And just do it for love.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-11-2009 @ 10:14PM
laurie said...
Of course we do it for love" as the last line says.But the point others try to make when putting a "price" on these things,is usually when they are taken for granted.A house cleaner I know,gets 250.00 per mansion sized house she cleans.Granted,the house is huge,but we all do the same thing.And we do it when we are sick,feverish,with PMS and everything else.I've even had to cook and clean with a cast on my leg!When you don't seem to be appreciated,you feel the need to tell your kids and hubby what they would have to pay to HIRE someone to do all the things WE do,most times without a thank you.
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5-14-2009 @ 2:18PM
KYouell said...
I think you have a really good point. My husband sent me a link to a moms' worth calculator and the existence of the site bothered me, I just couldn't put my finger on why.
I stay home with our kids instead of working at the career I trained for because who but their own mother could see the positive side of an almost 4-year-old screaming at his books when they don't stack right? Or the crazy budding independence in the girl who no longer wants to lay down for diaper changes? I can't imagine what I'd have to pay someone else to "put up" with this and then that person would want days off and to stay home when they are sick. Ha!
And really I do get paid. I can have as many hugs as I want, just not necessarily when I want them. We need to get away from the idea of being paid in cash and then it's easy to see that I do have an awful lot of benefits at this job.
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5-14-2009 @ 6:39PM
http:compactbydesign.com said...
I do understand the angle from which you approach this argument. But as it is something that I have recently been dealing with myself, I just have to say that a cash value does need to be considered. At least when it comes to replacing what a care-taker does. To often families insure Dad because he gets a paycheck. But that loss of income is not all there is to worry about.
I stay at home with my son because it works for my family. But we recently revised my husband's insurance policy and took out a policy for me. Of course we hope to never need either one, but if my husband's income pays for our housing, food, lifestyle etc., how can it also pay for childcare if I'm not around?
I know this is a little of the topic you were addressing but as I am on the heels of a death I feel it is important to remind everyone that each person needs to at least consider their cash value regardless of whether they get a paycheck or not.
Insurance doesn't need to be the winning lottery ticket for your family but neither should a death (or disability) be their financial ruin.
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6-29-2009 @ 1:24PM
Mom2MCGD said...
What I find disheartening about a calculator for "mom's work" is that it ignores the fact that some Dad's take an equal role in childrearing. Growing up my mother worked full time as an office manager and my father worked part time to be there for me after school. Dad did most of the cooking and cleaning and driving me to skating practice, etc. etc. I think there were times when he felt like "less of a man" because my mother was a main bread winner, but the arrangement worked.
As I became more aware of traditional gender roles I was proud of my family for making a different model work and I really thought that the days of women raising the children while men worked (or women working and doing all the child raising while dad works and does... not that much around the house) were over. I bristle when someone says a dad is "babysitting" when Mom is out on her own.
Then my friends and I started having kids and it became quickly clear to us that the stereotypes are not yet dead.
Like my parents before me, I will not settle for outdated childrearing models because that is what everyone else is doing. I do work part time while my husband works full time, but we both have enough flexibility in our jobs to stagger our hours so our son only needs to be babysat for a few hours 3 or 4 days a week. We share the house work close to equally.
Yes, there are days when we each feel like we are doing the vast majority of the work at home... neither of us are in the right about that idea. But like my parents, it works for us.
We are well into the 21st century, isn't it time for family members to all pitch in to get done what needs to be done rather than women taking on all all the home duties?
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