The Deification of Stay-At-Home Motherhood
Published by Lisa Kansas June 4th, 2008 in Culture, Family, Wankers, WorkThis just really, really irritates me.
Mother’s love worth $117,000 per year, study says
No, THAT isn’t what irritates me…actually I’d say that mother’s love, or any healthy parental love, is priceless. I think we’ve all seen how damaged people can end up being when they aren’t on the receiving end of much, or any, as children.
THIS is what irritates me:
If a stay-at-home mom could be compensated in dollars rather than personal satisfaction and unconditional love, she’d rake in a nifty sum of nearly $117,000 a year. That’s according to a pre-Mother’s Day study released in May by Salary.com, a Waltham, Massachusetts-based firm that studies workplace compensation.
The eighth annual survey calculated a mom’s market value by studying pay levels for 10 job titles with duties that a typical mom performs, ranging from housekeeper and day care center teacher to van driver, psychologist and chief executive officer.
This year, the annual salary for a stay-at-home mom would be $116,805, while a working mom who also juggles an outside job would get $68,405 for her motherly duties.
1. Personal satisfaction and unconditional love? Have the people who write these articles ever actually BEEN a stay-at-home mom? Those particular rewards do exist, of course…however, they tend to be instances of, not a continuous ecstatic flood of. They share the field with feelings of personal frustration and unconditional unappreciation.
2. What duties does a typical mom perform that equate specifically to chief executive officer? I would be willing to agree to small business owner, but CEO? I hate to recycle my own point, but it’s a relevant one–have any of these people ever actually been a CEO?
3. Hate to have to YET AGAIN burst the bubble of ignorance bobbing around so wildly in this article, but a working mom also functions as a housekeeper, van driver and psychologist. The only thing on that list that she outsources (so to speak) is the day care center teacher. And this results in a $50K pay differential? I don’t think I’m ever going to put any credence in anything that Salary.com has to say ever again about typical salaries. ‘Cause I assure you, most day care center teachers don’t make $50K a year.
One stay-at-home mom said the six-figure salary sounds a little low.
“I think a lot of people think we sit and home and have a lot of fun and don’t do a lot of work,” said Samantha Russell, a Fremont, New Hampshire, mother who left her job as pastry chef to raise two boys, ages 2 and 4. “But they should try cleaning their house with little kids running around and messing it up right after them.”
A little low? Lady, does your kids’ other parent even make that much?
Cleaning your house with little kids running around and messing it up right after you? That’s HORRIBLE AND UNIMAGINABLE! Working moms never have to deal with THAT bullshit–we keep our kids in cages when they’re home.
The biggest driver of a mom’s theoretical salary is the amount of overtime pay she’d receive for working more than 40 hours a week. The 18,000 moms surveyed about their typical week reported working 94.4 hours — meaning they’d be spending more than half their working hours on overtime.
Working moms reported an average 54.6 hour “mom work week” besides the hours they spent at paying jobs.
So the working moms are reporting their NORMAL 40 HOURS (if only that) outside the home, thereby making the entire 54.6 hours of the “mom work week” to be overtime, for a total of 94.6 hours (assuming they are not also working overtime at their paid job)…and yet stay at home moms, who are averaging 0.2 hours LESS with either IDENTICAL “overtime” hours or LESS “overtime” hours…still make $50K more?
Add “no math classes” to “never been a stay-at-home parent” and “no clue what a CEO actually does” to the list of issues experienced at Salary.com.
Russell agreed her job as a stay-at-home mom is more than full-time. But she said her “job” brings intangible benefits she wouldn’t enjoy in the workplace.
“The rewards aren’t monetary, but it’s a reward knowing that they’re safe and happy,” Russell said of her sons. “It’s worth it all.”
Because working moms know their kids are in danger and miserable at all times. OH, that must be why we lock them in cages as soon as we get home! At least we know then that they’re safe.
Please, people. You know what stay-at-home motherhood is? It’s a lifestyle choice. Just like any other lifestyle choice. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it; there is equally absolutely nothing right with it. It deserves neither praise nor censure. It just is. Licking the concept’s ass, which as you can see above takes a lot of reality-stretching if not outright shattering, does nothing but make the ass-lickers look stupid, and completely devalues the parenting put in by parents of BOTH genders who also happen to bring in the dough to keep the little family in food, clothing and shelter.
Well, obviously the “study” was just a PR stunt to get their name in the news around Mother’s Day. It’s like the glurge about paying teachers minimum wage per student,
I’d also be curious as to how long the “second shift” is for other groups, such as women without children in the household or working/stay-at-home fathers.
Sigh.
This stuff just annoys me, for all the very good reasons you enumerated, Lisa. I don’t have anything substantive to add, though. The faulty logic, math, and rhetoric of those who claim that SAHM motherhood just drives me nuts.
I understand that middle-class educated SAHMs (the opt-out class, if you will) may feel that they have to justify their choices, especially if, like me, they were taught that it’s their Duty to Feminism to Make Their Marks in the workplace.
I understand that there is something to be gained by examining the possible monetary value of unpaid labour traditionally performed by women (where “traditionally” means “traditionally in middle-class homes not wealthy enough to outsource these jobs to nannies, maids, housekeepers and other underpaid domestic labourers, but wealthy enough that the household could afford for one potential earner to stay home and perform all those tasks.”). It’s important to acknowledge that these women are contributing to their households and families, and it does them no credit to assume that everything they do is easy. It’s important to acknowledge that when one partner stays home, the other partner may be benefiting from domestic labour that would otherwise be expensive.
But yeah, stay-at-home dads do a lot of the same work, and nobody’s canonizing them as a class. Working moms pull the second shift at home, as do some working dads.
Also? I really want to know how running one household with one or possible two locations, and probably fewer than seven participants (not counting pets) could possibly hold challenges or require skills similar to those of a CEO. Like Lisa said, small business-owner, sure. Office manager for large company, sure. Group manager or team lead, not too far off. I really wouldn’t want to meet someone who parented the way most CEOs I’ve met run their companies.
Thank you . That was awesome.
And there is one situation where we pay women to be stay at home moms.
If these articles existed to draw attention to the value of this work and find ways for society to compensate laborers for it, I’d be behind it. But it’s not. It’s just about guilt-tripping working mothers, and giving housewives reason to feel better about not being out there making their own money so they aren’t as vulnerable to cheating or abusive husbands.
But yeah, stay-at-home dads do a lot of the same work, and nobody’s canonizing them as a class.
I think most people are quietly trying to forget that those aberrations even exist. Same as with single fathers.
There was a similar study to this done in the UK which reached a much lower figure, one that might be more in line with reality.
One reason it might be worth adding this up - it’s good to know how much prosperity is lost to society because mothers are pushed out of the workplace. *le sigh*
So they calculated a dollar value for the work a woman performs as a wife and mother. That’s interesting. Is the $117K before or after taxes? Motherhood is certainly not easy. Why don’t they also calculate a dollar value for the sex provided by a wife to her husband? High class hookers usually get big bucks. Isn’t the sex provided by a wife worth at least as much?
Personally, I don’t see a difference between a woman who would assign a dollar value to her effort as a parent and a woman who would assign a dollar value to sex. Moral of my point: it is tacky to attach a dollar value to a personal relationship.
Additionally - a “stay at home mommy” doesn’t have a boss. That must be nice.
^Thanks for the moral lesson, jackass. You can fuck off now.
^Are you always a jerk or are you just having a bad PMS day?