a thought for the weekend

[tielan]

What if we defined the cost of a full-time parent?

A friend of mine is a stay-at-home mom (Another question: when all the kids have gone to 5-days-a-week school, is she still a stay-at-home mom? Or is she a housewife?) and once calculated that she added $55K AUD of value to the household per annum. Childcare + meal prep + washing + cleaning + oddjobs + income she made from her hobbies = $55K.

She said it helped her think of her job as 'adding value' to her family, even if she wasn't 'paid' for it, even it wasn't recognised.

I'm pretty sure that everyone reading this is well aware of the discussion about the unpaid labour of women adding to the economy, and not every woman is going to be able to add that much value to her household.

In J.D. Robb's book series 'In Death', a future America (2080s, I think) has a 'stay at home parent wage' that is paid to parents with a child under a certain age.

My question is: if we paid - or even attributed - to women (and the men who are stay-at-home parents) the actual value of the work they did in relationships/parenting/household, would that be 'monetizing parenthood'? Would we be 'staining the soul' of parenthood by acknowledging the cost of primary care for a child? Would adding money to the equation cheapen the relationship between parent and child - reduce it to something done for financial gain, instead of something done out of love?

I mean, I can see the neocons blathering that such things "cheapen the purity of the maternal (because ofc it's the mother staying home) relationship by adding money to the matter", and I know, taxesgovernmentebiluntrustblahblahblah, and peoplerortthesystem, and weshouldn'tevenhaveasystemifitcanbecoopted, etc.

But do you think it would?

What if we defined the dollar cost of a full-time parent? Would our appreciation for what parents do change?

Thought.

--

Anyway, today I'm finishing a quilt, and trying to ease people into an action scene which gets progressively worse until it all goes completely to cock. As they do.

Comments

[bladespark]

Frankly, if somebody wanted to pay me for all the toddler-watching and housework I do, I'd take it.

It's very easy to have high-minded principles about not wanting to "cheapen" or "sully" something when you're well-off.

I am not well off. I'm not "desperate scramble to have food and a roof over my head" either, mind. There are people in worse places, but still... I'm not proud, I'd take it.

Even the extra ~50 a month I get from Patreon right now makes a massive difference in my life. The amount of money I'd get paid if I were paid as a full-time nanny would be life changing.

[tielan]

It's very easy to have high-minded principles about not wanting to "cheapen" or "sully" something when you're well-off.

Yes, precisely.

[beatrice_otter]

I'm reminded of the book Ethan of Athos, by Lois McMaster Bujold. The protagonist comes from a planet with no women (they think women are Evil). He's shocked and appalled that society doesn't pay parents to take care of children, and baffled as to how one could run a society in which parents were expected to do all that work for free.

[tielan]

Interesting. It kind of confirms the gender bias, though: if a man did it, he'd expect to be paid for his efforts. Since a woman is doing it, of course her services come for free.

[frith_in_thorns]

I believe the book was written in the 80s in mild rage after the author discovered that a large number of her friends believed that *of course* men couldn't parent. (It's by far from a perfect book, but it does also get some things very spot on.)

[pensnest]

It *might* be an opportunity for even more judgement of mothers (because it's going to be mothers) along the lines of, Are you working hard enough to deserve that money? Are you *really* doing a good enough job that you ought to be paid all that?

I mean, on the whole, it seems like it would add to the total sum of society's happiness, but there are always opportunities for judgement.

[elanya]

I was thikning thins too - there are already so many accusations towards women on welfare that they're having kids to get the money, like that's an equation that at all works out. I think this would certainly make that worse. And if there is money, especially government money, going into this system then there would be an expectation of accountability - are you taking care of your children well enough? Why are you spending money on X when the kids don't have Y? and so on - and of course white stay at home moms with working partners would be much less susceptible to this kind of interrogation than parents from other non-white demographics...

Personally I would rather see a universal basic income system where people are given a certain amount to live off regardless of whether they are working or not, or parents or not, etc, that they are not directly accountable for.

[tielan]

Some indigenous communities are being forced onto a 'welfare card' where they can only spend the money on certain things (and, of course, at stores that are in that payment system and have the things that they need, presumably at the price points that the welfare card agreements have pre-determined).

[tielan]

Which is to say, yeah, there'd be 'requirements' of a parental income scheme.

[tielan]

Hm. Very good point - I didn't consider that.

[monanotlisa]

I like the idea -- and honestly, even if we count the (underpaid) professions or nanny or babysitter, the price tag would likely be way higher than your 55k, given the workday is also a worknight and thus overtime.

[tielan]

Oh, yeah, the overtime. But she was just counting the tasks she did as though they were professionally hired out.

[weaselett]

See it's interesting, because over here at least foster parents are paid a wage for doing just that (and there was a court case https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41543651 about them wanting holiday pay) - so it does get discussed every so often

at the time there was a mix of responses - mostly negative but partly due to the impact on foster kids of what she was arguing....

well off people DO basically pay people to parent (live in nannies), so it seems fair to pay parents who don't have the option/choose not to pay other people to do it, but yeah, if you're being paid you're not a good parent would probably come up despite the complaints about pay at home parents not adding to the economy.
We get it enough with the benefits system, which pays an amount to the parents per child each month....

I always hate the fact that so many people like to tell stay at home parents that 'it isn't like you have a job' because yeah sure they don't, they have soooo much free time wh0ne looking after kids and the house, but being a mother especially is looked on something you benefit from via the child not money as far as society seems to be concerned.

[tielan]

I think it's possible that foster parents are paid a wage here (I'm not entirely certain, I only know adoptive families, not fosters).

I always understood that people who raise kids are helping the economy - after all, aren't the politicians regularly at women in the west to 'have more children'? (Although that might be a case of racial anxiety since western women tend to have fewer children than immigrant women and we're all gonna be outbred...or something.)

I always hate the fact that so many people like to tell stay at home parents that 'it isn't like you have a job'

Oh man, I am ever so glad that I don't have children, and don't have to do the work that my friends who are mothers do, even if almost all of them have pretty good husbands.

[velithya]

I think "woman's work" is consistently undervalued and taken for granted. Of course we should have some kind of income for parents (I mean, I'm a fan of universal basic income, which would also solve the problem). Well off people pay for cooks and cleaners and nannies/au pairs; a stay at home parent does all of these things, for 18 hours a day (and is on-call the other six) for nothing.

[tielan]

Yeah, I'm all for a UBI myself. I mean, collectively, the planet has more than enough resources to support everyone in comfort, just not enough to support a handful of people in flagrant excess. And, unfortunately 'supporting everyone in comfort' doesn't allow other people to justify their self-importance by lording it over someone else.

[velithya]

Now we just need some legislators to get their heads out of their asses and make it happen!