A woman's worth

[archenemy]

Maybe you have been out of work for a while? After the dot com bust (my industry fell to shit and I was out of luck w/ thousands of others) I learned that staying at home too long sucks. It feels isolated and like your brain withers. Fuck that.

Edited May 3, 2007 by archenemy

[rob]

different strokes for different folks, I guess. If I liked my job and if I found it challenging, maybe it would be a different story.

[archenemy]

i think you hit the nail on the head there.

 

and I can't imagine that every woman thinks changing diapers is the end all be all of their existence.

[rob]

my kids are potty trained. They're in the fun stage.

[sirwoofalot]

Hold on. You hit a very sensative issue. My wife choose to stay at home and HOME school, yes, home school our two children.

WE choose that she would give up a VERY sucsefull carree as a CPA. Yes, she had her own firm. She made twice I do, did, can make. It is a question of choices. A close friend said, "Any monkey can be taught how to add a column of numbers, but only one person can be a mother to a child".

 

Stay at home or work are choices. We make our choices and live with them.

 

My wife is happy. Our children are well educated and happy. Now if I can ever complete a V2 I will be really happy.

 

 

[rob]

cool, my wife (and I) homeschool too

[JayB]

It's been interesting to contrast the few men that I've met that stay at home with the kids with the average woman that I've met that does the same. Didn't get any of the frazzled-underapreciated-supermartyr vibe from the dudes.

 

 

 

 

[dt_3pin]

It's been interesting to contrast the few men that I've met that stay at home with the kids with the average woman that I've met that does the same. Didn't get any of the frazzled-underapreciated-supermartyr vibe from the dudes.

 

Just curious, how many "frazzled-underappreciated-supermartyr" stay at home mom's have you met? I'm not sure if I've meet any, despite the growing cadre of moms in our life now.

[sk]

It's been interesting to contrast the few men that I've met that stay at home with the kids with the average woman that I've met that does the same. Didn't get any of the frazzled-underapreciated-supermartyr vibe from the dudes.

 

Just curious, how many "frazzled-underappreciated-supermartyr" stay at home mom's have you met? I'm not sure if I've meet any, despite the growing cadre of moms in our life now.

 

i think it depends on the day. i felt that way sometimes, and i met other moms that felt that way sometimes too. the ones who claimed there lives were perfect and nothing ever went wrong or bothered them, well i just figured they were lying and they would wind up in the loony bin

 

as far as what archy said about being at home being isolating etc. that was the case for me. much of that was perpetuated by my own perceptions, and my personal issues i was going through at the time *see the thred on social anxiety*, but that was how i felt sometimes.

 

the over all thing that i came away from the experience with is that it is really good for me to leave the house once a day to do something where i get to talk to and interact with other grown ups.

[sk]

Hold on. You hit a very sensative issue. My wife choose to stay at home and HOME school, yes, home school our two children.

WE choose that she would give up a VERY sucsefull carree as a CPA. Yes, she had her own firm. She made twice I do, did, can make. It is a question of choices. A close friend said, "Any monkey can be taught how to add a column of numbers, but only one person can be a mother to a child".

 

Stay at home or work are choices. We make our choices and live with them.

 

My wife is happy. Our children are well educated and happy. Now if I can ever complete a V2 I will be really happy.

 

 

there is a huge community of home schoolers here. there are a ton of resources and most of the people that i know who home school are very happy with their choice. we also have many charter schools that are absolutely wonderful. i am fortunate enough to live in an area where our public schools are relatively safe and quite good. i have been so pleased with the school my boys are at. but i do not have a hard fast WAY that things will go. I have the idea that i want the boys to switch to a private school in high school and i have it picked out. we will see how things go. If i have learned one thing from my boys is they are their own people with their own minds and their own way of doing things and meeting their own needs. i really like to take their opinion into consideration when we make these big decisions. I have offered home school and Waldorf or (darn it whats the other one....stoopid brain) to my boys but they are very satisfied and getting an excellent education where they are at.

[JayB]

It's been interesting to contrast the few men that I've met that stay at home with the kids with the average woman that I've met that does the same. Didn't get any of the frazzled-underapreciated-supermartyr vibe from the dudes.

 

Just curious, how many "frazzled-underappreciated-supermartyr" stay at home mom's have you met? I'm not sure if I've meet any, despite the growing cadre of moms in our life now.

 

 

Roughly 50%.

 

IMO most women seem to vocalize complaints and perceived hardships way, way, way, way more than men, and tend to center their conversation on what's going on in their lives way more than men.

 

Might be more psychologically healthy for them, definitely more tiresome for me. Always been way more interested in ideas than listening to an infinite loop of domestic/personal minutia/trivia.

 

 

 

 

[sk]

It's been interesting to contrast the few men that I've met that stay at home with the kids with the average woman that I've met that does the same. Didn't get any of the frazzled-underapreciated-supermartyr vibe from the dudes.

 

Just curious, how many "frazzled-underappreciated-supermartyr" stay at home mom's have you met? I'm not sure if I've meet any, despite the growing cadre of moms in our life now.

 

 

Roughly 50%.

 

IMO most women seem to vocalize complaints and perceived hardships way, way, way, way more than men, and tend to center their conversation on what's going on in their lives way more than men.

 

Might be more psychologically healthy for them, definitely more tiresome for me. Always been way more interested in ideas than listening to an infinite loop of domestic/personal minutia/trivia.

 

 

 

 

you and i should never get married. I process my life verbally. i solve problems buy talking about them. i think in a very typical female way in that i work better in a group than i do alone. what can i say, i am a people person i find the differences between men and women fascinating.

[selkirk]

Just remember that private school, while it can certainly have benefits, is not a silver bullet. The kids can be just as screwed up and have more money to burn.

 

 

[sk]

Just remember that private school, while it can certainly have benefits, is not a silver bullet. The kids can be just as screwed up and have more money to burn.

 

 

very true. what i am looking for are the smaller class sizes. if my kids are going to smoke, fuck, do drugs, party, drink or be crappy people they are going to do that no matter what school I send them to.

[JosephH]

I would guess they arrived at that number by calculating what it would cost to outsource all the various tasks performed by a competent stay-at-home parent to someone who would perform them all with an equal level of competence without requiring oversight. No matter how you slice it that is an exceptionally large number.

[JayB]

The whole thing is asinine. It's like trying to compute the value of your sex life with your spouse by multiplying the frequency of intercourse times the average fee assessed by an equally attractive prostitute.

 

 

[archenemy]

Attractive male prostitutes are rare and therefor far more expensive than the female ones. I'm afraid to admit that that makes the calculations for the woman a little frightening. Especially at the rate most of us like to have sex. We'd all *have* to make 138K a year just to get laid and stay happy.

[chucK]

Did someone already make this calculation?

 

12hr days*7 days/week* 50 weeks/year = 4200 hrs/yr

 

$10/hr -> 42K/yr

$20/hr -> 84K/yr

 

Increase it to 18hr/day for an infant-4 yrs old -> 63K/yr - 125K/yr

Decrease number of hours probably after about age 13 or so.

 

 

[kevbone]

What about her?

 

 

[archenemy]

Did someone already make this calculation?

 

12hr days*7 days/week* 50 weeks/year = 4200 hrs/yr

 

$10/hr -> 42K/yr

$20/hr -> 84K/yr

 

Increase it to 18hr/day for an infant-4 yrs old -> 63K/yr - 125K/yr

Decrease number of hours probably after about age 13 or so.

 

Childcare workers get paid very little above minimum wage. You can get a babysitter for less.

Housekeepers get paid about $10/hr when working for someone else.

Gardeners can be hired from Millionaires Club for about 7/hr.

You can drop your laundry off for 0.30/lb.

Just a tad of someone realistic numbers.

[chucK]

The figure of interest is not how much the childcare worker makes, but how much a parent has to pay the daycare. What's a good daycare cost? I think I remember roughly $1000/month/child. It's been a while though. That's for ~40 hrs/week max, still need to cover the other 20 plus weekends.

 

Gardeners, Housekeepers, laundry need to be added on top of that, not averaged in.

 

I think $10/hr for all the shit work one has to do as a stay at home parent would be a bargain. If you wanted it actually done right and up to my standards, especially someone that would be as attentive competent as the parent/property owner then I think it would be hard to find somebody that would do it for $20/hr.

 

I read the rest of the thread now. I think Archie touched on the the biggest sacrifice of stay at home parents. It's the stultifying existence of living in a kids/caretenders world. Sure there's some benefits (juiceboxes, legos), but man, I'll bet it can get ugly sometimes.

 

I think the best analogy to kid-tending (when they're really young especially) is long distance driving. It is often dreadfully boring, yet one is forced to be continually alert. How much would a long-distance truck driver make if she were allowed to actually drive 18hrs/day, 7 days per week?

 

 

[JayB]

Per the logic of this retarded study, we could be equally justified in engaging in the same-kind of fantasy calculations to calculate the monetary value of each routine task that we perform on our own behalf every day.

 

-Take the average hourly wage for dental hygenists and use that to figure out how much the time that you spend brushing and flossing is worth.

 

-Take the time you spend washing and combing your hair and multiply that by the hourly rate for barbers/stylists.

 

-Take the time that you spend bathing and multiply that by the hourly rate for a home-health aid, etc.

 

-That ingrown hair you removed? Take a look at the average cost-per-visit to the ER and add that to the tally. Ditto for the papercut, the shaving cut, etc.

 

You will soon find that no-matter what your level of drive, education, initiative, the relative scarcity of your skillset relative to the effective demand - your true economic worth is well into the millions.

[archenemy]

I completely agree with you on the $10/hr being an undervalued amount.

And as someone else here said, the rest of us all have to do work around the house and all that as well.

 

But the truck driver analogy is a great one! I remember that it used to be a very lucrative job before the regulations kicked in. Even now, they make ok money. I'd rather give birth though.

[SmallShoes]

Okay, okay, It sounds like most have agreed that the economic analysis in this article is bunk. However, I have to ask: Are all these jobs that the stay at home mom is doing (housekeeper, day care center teacher, cook, computer operator, laundry machine operator, janitor, facilities manager, van driver, CEO and psychologist) considered being worked full-time or just for the say 4 hours a week laundry is being done? Also, aren't some of these jobs redundant? What is the major difference between janitor, facilities manager, and housekeeper? I think someone else already mentioned the non-equivalence of a comparison of a stay at home mom to a trained psychologist or CEO.

Enough holes poked. In my mind if you need to put a dollar amount on a stay at home mom to appreciate the hard work they do (assuming a good mom, as obviously there are bad ones) you're missing something.

[archenemy]

In my mind if you need to put a dollar amount on a stay at home mom to appreciate the hard work they do (assuming a good mom, as obviously there are bad ones) you're missing something.

 

You are so right!!!

 

As for redundancy on titles, I have this issue as well. For example, I am often referred to as bitch, slut, bastard, etc etc. I see the job description for most of these positions having considerable overlap...