CAR –
I still have trouble understanding how you can impute that the SAME task is worth pay if it’s done by a stay at home parent than if it’s done by a single person or someone who works outside the home. You imply it’s not worth pay if the task is done by someone who works for salary outside the home.
Yes – there is more cleaning, laundry, and childcare when there are kids involved. But earlier in this thread you claimed wage equivalency for paying bills, investing, etc… And you’d agree that even people who work for a salary outside the home have *some* cleaning, cooking, laundry to accomplish. And as I said – bills don’t pay themselves.
FWIW – a friend uses a nanny. Her nanny is there for 9 hours a day, 4 days a week. (She works her 5th day from home.) Her nanny does more than just childcare. She cleans/straightens, she runs laundry, she drives the kids to activities, she cooks and feeds the kids breakfast and lunch…. That would probably be a better wage equivalency.
To try to divide it up in separate people who perform services is not reality. People can multitask and do all the time… performing several different job duties in the course of a day. To try and say that it’s a 24/7 job isn’t fair either. As a working parent – you’re still doing home based work (domestic/childcare/etc) when you’re not at work… Trust me – I did it. Weekends were spent doing yard work, housework, laundry. Weeknights were spent cooking/cleanup after, working on homework with the kids, driving kids to activities, coaching teams, etc.
You can convince yourself that a SAHP would take $100k/year plus to replace – but that’s not reality and it is ignoring the reality of working parents who still manage to get a lot of the household/child stuff done after work hours.
