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.
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.
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