[quote=UCGal]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.[/quote]
No, I still think you’re not getting what I’m trying to convey here, and neither is anyone else, so I’m obviously not being clear enough for some reason. Please look at the links I’ve provided above to get a better idea about what I’m trying to convey.
The point is that the work that has been traditionally done by women (unpaid labor) has value, even monetary value. And this can be calculated in a variety of ways — the links I’ve posted explain it better. It doesn’t matter if the person doing the work is a SAHP, a resident wage-earner, or an unrelated third party who does it for wages; it still has value and it is work that is every bit as legitimate and valuable to society as wage-earning.
Yes, you could use the wages of your friend’s nanny to approximate the value of this work; I’ve never said otherwise. But you would also have to factor in the quality of care/cleaning, in addition to considering the longevity factor. I’ve known quite a few people who’ve had nannies, and few of them have lasted longer than 6-12 months. Every now and then, you’ll get a well-paid nanny who might stick around for a few years, but that’s the exception. Kids can handle a new nanny every 6-12 months, even though they might not like it, but it’s not the same as getting a new parent every few months. And parents will generally do a lot more work than nannies will, and do it better. You’d still have to add the value of the other work that the parent(s) do to what a nanny will do, as most nannies do only very *light* housekeeping, if that, and they can’t handle all of the family’s business (childrens’ education, medical, family’s legal, financial, contractor work, etc.), either. You’d also have to price a nanny who will be available 24/7, even at a moment’s notice.
As a frame of reference, our teenaged babysitter made $15/hour when our kids were young. For this, she only took care of the three kids — no infants, and one or no toddlers. We would usually buy pizza to be delivered (plus cut up fruit/veggies, already prepared), and all she would do was do a very basic cleanup when they were finished eating, and tidy up a bit when the kids were in bed — just putting away what they had taken out. Nothing at all like I do, as I would have to go around and clean everything after we got home. That alone would cost over $30K for a babysitter who works only 40 hours/week, who did nothing other than basic childcare, and who would be far less involved than a parent.
The point of this conversation is to refute the notion that SAHPs are “not working” or not providing for their families. Nothing could be further from the truth.
