Also, they mention (late) in the article that non-SAHMs should earn 86K per year for their work in the home. So, wouldn’t only the marginal ~50K be attributable to the “stay at home” part of SAHM?
For surrogate mothers, if you charged minimum wage for the first 8 hours of each day, time & a half for the second 8 hours, and double time for the third, and triple time for every hour of each weekend (since you don’t get any time off of being pregnant), you’d have a salary of $74,250 for the nine months. I think there’d have to be some kind of bonus for labor & delivery, plus a two-week vacation, so it would be even more. That’s STILL not enough money!
(Well, for me. Maybe for some folks it would be.)
I am a male and a “tag team” parent. I leave for work at 7 am and arrive back home at 6 pm with a 4 year old and a 9 month old. My wife gets home anywhere between 8 pm and 1 am. I clean and tidy up the house for at least one hour every day.
How many hours do I “work” based on this? Exactly the same as my job - about 42 hours.
The rest is called adult life and it is the great equalizer. Every single person on the planet gets 168 hours a week of it. Some of it is used for sleeping and the rest of it is balanced out among purely mundane things, chores, and mostly enjoyable things. You can’t pretend there are billable hours when there is nothing to bill. That is just adult life.
Many if not most couples both work and yet come home and do the chores in a fraction of the time that a dedicated housewife seems to take. Parenting is not work although sometimes it is a chore. It is parenting and the vast majority of people sign up for it voluntarilly.
I wish I could submit a bill for getting dressed, commuting, picking up my daughters, taking care of them, and then cleaning. The whole thing is retarded.
What also gets missed is that the housewife is doing this for herself as well, and they are her children. So half of her salary would be paid by herself; plus she is getting the food, shelter, etc, and her kids are getting the food, shelter, etc. How about her being able to pay for what she’s getting? She doesn’t have the cash, either. The way these studies are reported, you’d think she was owned (and owed) by her husband, and he should be paying her.
It’s a choice, preferably a joint choice to divide up their responsibilities in this way. This is a team, or at least it should be.
I get the underappreciated bit – home parents tend to take on a lot of community responsibilities as well, and anymore, even school responsibilities. They are an amazing resource for the entire society.
But silly science doesn’t help anything.
I guess my real objection is the way it’s reported by the media – both the fact that such an obviously worthless study is reported at all, and that it’s presented so uncritically. The promos on T.V. last night said something like “How much is Mom’s work really worth? It might be more than you think. Find out at 11!” (Suffice it to say, I didn’t bother tuning in at 11, but I just watched part of the video on CNN.com, and it was all some correspondent yammering on about “what a valuable commentary on our society” this is.)
But “things I hate about the media” could really be another (probably much longer) rant.
Yes. Yes it does. For this and many, many other reasons. Now learn from us and don’t do it!
Pffft! Yup, I agree. I’ve done all three “women’s roles”. I’ve been a SAHM, a working mom, and now I’m a semi empty-nester with a full-time career, and a nearly grown teenager that only visits part time (though he’s moving back up this summer YAAAAAY!!!).
By far, by huge leaps and bounds that can’t even be counted, being a SAHM mom was the easiest, LEAST stressful woman’s role I’ve ever had in my life. Bar NONE. Perhaps the least stressful career choice period.
This doesn’t mean that I don’t think they don’t deserve appreciation, recognition and compensation for their roles. I’m just sick of the attitude by some, that they deserve to be raised up to sainthood or something.
How do they get away with counting house keeper and janitor? Sounds like double-dipping to me.
And what’s with “computer operator”? I don’t think using wikipedia to help a kid with a report on dinosaurs really makes one Microsoft material.
Nothing to add here (except that I, too, do :rolleyes:'s at these kinds of studies), but I did want to say that, WRT to how much a SAHM would be paid for fucking:
Trunk, DirkGntly, Telperien, Cervaise, and Little Bird? Y’all have me nearly choking on my laughter (and almost falling out of my chair) at work! Which I really needed tonight, so thanks!
And, Little Bird? I don’t know why, but that bit about healthy, white babies nearly had me rolling on the floor. (Probably b/c it sounds like something that I would say, 'cept few people would laugh if I said it.)
And chin up, Cervaise–I’m not married (being gay in the United Delusions of Right-Wing Organized Religion and Other Unadulterated Bullshit pretty much takes care of that–oh, and the fact that I don’t like anybody nearly **that ** much), but if you’re having sex six times per year (crackwhore or not), you’re definitely doing better than I am! 
Oh, and dangermom? It’s so nice to know that I’m not the only sane person (you’re sane, too, right?) who hates Mother’s Day (or those other “boost somebody’s self-esteem just because of who they are” days–ugh!). (Then again, I don’t even get excited about my own birthday.) My mother, never a big one for M-Day, has always said that she doesn’t want anything–which is great, 'cause I very rarely do gifts–but I’m seriously thinking of telling her that I don’t know how much longer I can do the whole obligatory phone call on Mother’s Day. I simply detest forced appreciation. Ugh!
I leave my house at 7.00am and I get home at 5.30pm. That is 10 1/2 hours. But my bastard empoyers only pay me 8 hours per day ! What is with that?
It’s patronizing. And stupid.
I am a semi-SAHM (I work from home and take care of my daughter, be we have a housekeeper). Physically it is the most exhausting job I ever had. Taking care of my daughter is much harder than sitting in my desk, however, I would not trade it for the highly stressful career I had. I left because at that rate I was heading for an early demise (my ex-boss had his first heart attack at 35 and was done in by the second at 45, he was otherwise healthier than I am).
I have more respect and appreciation for my husband who goes away 2 months at a time (he gets 2 mths vacation after it) to support our family. I tell him all the time, I just couldn’t do what he does. He misses us terribly. The money I make is just gravy, being with my daughter is worth more than whatever I would make if I go back to work in a corporate setting.
Yep. It’s an excellent gig. I worked a little harder at it than some – I’ve known some bloody lazy SAHMs who did almost nothing all day and expected their husbands to do housework after they got home from their paid jobs. And I worked less hard than others. The hardest working stay-at-homer I ever knew was a guy (the husband of a shipmate of my husband’s) whose house was immaculate; who took care of all the household repairs, yardwork, and vehicle upkeep; who coached a team or activity for each of his 3 kids; and who held two volunteer positions (Ombudsman for our spouse’s ship AND a board position on the PTA).
That’s fine. Lot’s of people don’t want to do it and it isn’t patronizing for them (or you) to say so. What I find patronizing is when an intelligent, accomplished person talks down to me, saying that my job is so much more difficult than their piddly little position as a fighter-pilot or orthodontist or computer programmer.
As I said – being a housewife is a pretty good gig. I enjoy it and have enjoyed it for 25 years. I take pride in being a good housewife and I truly do believe that what I do has value. My husband and children all agree with me, and are happy that I’ve chosen to fill this role in our family for all these years. But it is not – looked at in a strictly practical light – a difficult job. Any reasonably able-bodied person could take over every single one of my daily tasks with a week’s training. Try that with a fighter-pilot or an orthodontist or a computer programmer.
I am feeling that way too, the 45th anniversay of my birth is tomorrow, and if any one will let me I may have a nice day.
I want to boycott the card aisles. I’ve stopped sending to all BIL and SIl’s. I forget a few siblings now and then, god will hear it if your late or forget a parents yearly. And I dont want to hear my so complain about having to buy his own cards if he wants them sent.
Right now this SAHM is on sabbatical!!! Not :mad: but 
They forgot –
Butcher
Nurse
Personal Shopper
Makeup Artist
Entertainment Director
Interior Decorator
:rolleyes: [sup]10[/sup]
THANK YOU! I am so sick of hearing about all the extra work from my wife who is in a similar situation to you. She is not nearly as appreciative of the upside of her position (and the downside of mine). Do you have a clone?
That’s fair. I find domestically organized people amazing. It isn’t that I think it is necessarily that difficult, it’s just a skill I don’t have. I’m not likely to play in the NBA either. I am, on the other hand, pretty good at what I do.
I think I probably could do all the tasks, but I would, on the other hand, be miserable as hell doing them. Then again, spending 12 hours a day reading documents regarding a particular manufacturing process I neither understand nor care about isn’t doing a lot of good for my sunny disposition.
I’ve done both. Staying at home is ten times easier than sitting here in corporate America and 100 times easier than laying bricks or tiles.
My wife and her friends in similar situations wouldn’t even dare pull that underpaid/overworked crap.
Don’t mind my tone, because I consider the stay-at-home job more rewarding, and a blessing if one can afford it. My wife sees it the same way. We are lucky to enjoy what am’ts to a luxury.
Seems to me this sort of story discredits sexual equality in a similar way to radical feminists on an anti-male rant, suggesting males are obsolete and such. If these ‘researchers’ had been more reasonable and turned up a more realistic housewifely wage, it might have made a populist point about male/female equality. The inflated figure almost sounds like a sly misogynistic joke.
Nah, you’re mixing it up - it’s the study where 4 out of 5 prefer the scent of Jif, and the taste of Pledge.
Susan
mmmm…lemon-y
You skeptics should see the look of terror in my husband’s eye whenever I experience a minor health concern. 
I think being a SAHM is the toughest job ever, at least it is for me (and I was employed for 22 years before having my twins). I’m baffled by people who can run a smooth ship (clean house + satisfied spouse + happy kids + mom who’s not totally stressed) day after day. I sure can’t do it.