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CA renter
Participant[quote=bearishgurl]I want to add that it doesn’t cost that much for a parent to take a $30K yr FT job, say 6-14 miles from home if they have “reasonable” child care expenses (<$800 mo). It's still worth it due to being in line for eventual raises/promotions. We will assume the worker doesn’t have a student loan to pay because they are only a HS grad or certificate holder (obtained “free” from ROP) and are a 24-yr old parent. Their spouse or parent pays the rent/mortgage and they drive an older paid-for vehicle but can ride the bus directly to work for $72 month if they have someone else to pick up kid(s) or a relative to keep kid(s) a little longer in the afternoon. No weekly gas fill-ups are necessary:
http://www.sdmts.com/fares.asp#bus
CAR mentioned clothing and lunch for workers being expensive and that may be so for attorneys but is NOT SO for 90% of worker bees. In actually, for women, the lined skirts we regularly drycleaned in yesteryear (weren’t allowed to wear pants to work) have now been replaced by black Dickies, (a little more expensive) Dockers and a cheap ($5-$10) top or shirt (no jacket). The expensive haircut has been replaced by a pony tail or bun. I’ve seen this new “uniform” even in high-rise law offices for at least the last 12 years and law offices tend to have better-dressed employees than other businesses and corporations. Even gubment workers don’t dress very well anymore … at least not the “clerk-helping-the-public” variety (which are 90% of gov worker-bees).
Got a new ~$30K job?? Here’s an economical place where you can buy 5 pairs of pants in dark colors on the cheap. They are clean, permanently pressed, and comfortable for San Diego:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/dickies-and-athletic-chula-vista?osq=Dickies+Outlet
Situated right in front of the TANF office and State EDD (Unemployment Dept), it’s the same place that school uniforms are sold.
Having taken my lunch 99.9% of my workdays for decades, I can attest to how cheap it is to make your lunch at home. I can assure you that there is a frig to keep it in in every workplace and likely a microwave as well. I made my lunches for between .25 and .80 day (that’s “cents”). Yes, there was protein in it, sometimes it was leftovers and I often put it together the night before. 80% of my co-workers took their lunch everyday as well. If you finish your lunch quickly and want to use the rest of your lunch hour for errands, you can do that if you drove to work.
I realize groceries are higher now but you get the drift. It’s MUCH CHEAPER to pack your own lunch than to buy lunch every day and always has been. I worked less than 2.5 miles from the Navy Commissary, which was on the way home. I could shop there once weekly, stand in a 20+ minute line to check out and still be home by 6:30 pm with groceries for the whole family for a week+! Also, you don’t buy $3 – $5 coffees at work or on the way to work. You bring your own travel mug from home with coffee in it and then chip in the monthly coffee fund on your floor to whoever brought in a coffeemaker if your employer does not provide it free (some do).
Except for daycare for kid(s), a worker-parent can take all of their earnings home and work themselves into raises and a better job. It doesn’t matter if they even went to college or not. It’s all relative because a young worker who didn’t spend anything for higher education and their parents’ couldn’t afford to help them can still work FT. It’s just not a $50K – $100K job … at least in their early years. (There’s no guarantee that a college grad will even land a $50K job, anyway.) The workers who opted for a FT job instead of college are gaining valuable work experience while most of their demographic is in college (full or part-time) and thus can’t work FT. BUT … they don’t have student loans and they have at least four more years FT work experience than their college-bound peers.
Who hires these young HS and ROP grads? Retail sales and mgmt, restaurants (incl mgmt), insurance companies, gubment offices, collection agencies, banks, auto dealerships, shipyards, auto service centers, non-profit agencies, construction companies, factories, medical offices, etc.
I see these kids going to work every day to support their own kid(s). The whole argument about it being “too expensive” for an unemployed parent to take a FT job (I’ve read it here and elsewhere on the internet) is wa-a-a-y overblown, imho. The public aid agencies and family court judges don’t see it that way. They feel that EVERY PARENT, regardless of gender, has a personal responsibility to financially support their kids. The “village” is in place to support these young parents’ lower daycare expenses as they start out working FT and their wages are insufficient to pay the full amount.
“Cost shifting” was brought up here that “somebody has to pay for it” in regards to public school and publicly funded daycare agencies, etc and therefore that’s another excuse for a parent not to seek FT employment. The reality is that publicly funded child daycare IS “free” to the people who need it most. Public school IS “free” to all residents. Even if you are a property owner who doesn’t pay more than $8-$9K year in property taxes, if you have more than one kid in public school simultaneously, ONE of your kids is attending for “free.” It’s “free” to you because your kids’ “tuition” is being redistributed to the many thousands of property owners paying property taxes who do not currently use the public schools. If a parent chooses to purchase all of their kids’ textbooks themselves and homeschool (or pay for private school), that is their choice. These parents are voluntarily running up their own household expenses all the while their kids are eligible by law for a “free” public K-12 education. In the case of YMCA and scouting daycare discounts and camperships, these agencies’ donors are paying for an income-qualified child to have the experience. Taxpayers don’t subsidize these programs.
I feel that the arguments about why a parent can’t work FT or work at all to support their kids are smokescreens. I suspect that those making this argument are in one of these 3 situations: a) they simply have enough household income to live on indefinitely and so their contribution to their family’s monthly income is not needed; b) they currently have enough household income to live on for the near, foreseeable future and if additional income should later be needed, they’ll cross that bridge when they get there; and/or c) they ARE making money every month, but it is passive income and doesn’t require them to leave home or placate an employer (i.e. investment mgmt).
[end of rant][/quote]
BG, I’ve calculated it out for friends using their actual income and expenses. Even for college educated women, many of them are only netting ~30 cents on the dollar of wages earned, or less. For a woman making lower wages, their incomes are often negative. For this, my friends were absent from home for 10-12 hours/day, their husbands and children felt neglected, the moms were totally stressed-out, dinners were almost always restaurant or take-out, the housework was piled up around them, and everyone was miserable. Not worth it.
Clearly, very intelligent, educated women are making different choices than you did. I highly doubt they are doing so because they don’t know any better. These are very well-thought-out, calculated decisions on the part of these families. If you came to different conclusions for your family, then it’s good that you made the decisions that worked best for you.
Participant[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.
Participant[quote=FlyerInHi][quote=CA renter][quote=FlyerInHi]I’m going to be a gold digger. I want to dig deep and get lots of gold.
I’m going to be prospecting for gold. Need to be sure there’s lots of gold, otherwise, I’d be wasting my time.[/quote]What will you provide in return?[/quote]
My amazing studliness. I’m willing to take care of all the household responsibilities, as long as there’s enough gold. Too little gold won’t do. At least 5x more gold than I can prospect on my own.[/quote]
That won’t do. You need a uterus and children, too. And breasts to nurse them with…don’t forget the breasts. 😉
Seriously, though… Most women would not claim that household responsibilities for just two people is enough to justify having a SAH spouse. It’s the kids that throw everything over the line. The increase in workload feels exponential when you have kids. Laundry alone can take an hour or more each day.
ParticipantWe need viable write-in candidates. Even better if we could eliminate the party system, altogether. People should vote for individuals, not parties. If a person is too lazy to do the research, then they shouldn’t be voting.
Of course, publicly funded elections would be the best way to go. I would LOVE to see the end of money driving politics, though it would be very difficult to enforce, even if we had publicly funded elections.
ParticipantTry using a mattress without a box spring. We’ve had a platform bed for years, and we absolutely love it. No noise, no bouncing around when the other person moves, and it automatically makes it more firm.
Participant[quote=UCGal]Wow – after reading through this entire thread I realize a few things:
– My marriage must be highly unusual… Maybe my husband struts too much or too little, but I don’t care.
– There are a lot of people who don’t recognize the give and take of a partnership. Domestic duties (child rearing, house cleaning, cooking, budgeting) are as important as working for a salary. But working for a salary has value as well. I guess I’m lucky because I never had to put more weight on one or the other – I worked for a salary (until June when I became a slacker on that front) for my entire marriage. I also did domestic labor. But so did my husband. Yes – some of it was divided by gender – he’s better at installing windows, hanging drywall, etc. I don’t mind cleaning the kitchen, running the vacuum. We both cook. We both deal with the kids. (Although he was challenged on the breastfeeding front. LOL).I don’t think my marriage is that rare or unusual. My husband isn’t some whipped guy who just does what I tell him. I’m not some mouse that does everything he tells me to do. We both contribute and it works. Looking around at friends – this isn’t that rare. (And my friends consist of people who have a stay at home parent, and couples that have both parties working for salary, and a few single parents of both genders.)
After reading this thread – I get the idea that my friends and I are truly exceptional – and I know that’s not the case.
So guys – strut your stuff and bloviate. Women, chatter on about how women deserve “me time” more than men. There are plenty of selfish self absorbed people in both genders. Get over yourselves if you’re one of them. If this doesn’t apply, then don’t take offense.[/quote]
Reading back through this thread to see how we got so deep in the woods and realized that I didn’t address this and clarify something in my post about men contributing little more than wage-earning and the uneven distribution of labor. It was related to the comment about women leaving long-term marriages in order to “find themselves” after serving others for decades. These marriages were older marriages, so the gender roles were more defined than in today’s marriages. I did not make it clear that I was referring to older marriages (though the “divorcing after multiple decades” part was in there). It is well known that many men of those days would not participate in domestic chores or child rearing; that was “women’s work.”
As I’ve stated in another post on this thread, men have come a long, long way since those days. They are most definitely participating to a much greater extent in family life and domestic chores than their predecessors and the labor gap is closing. Women are taking on a greater share of the income earning, too.
Each family needs to decide what is best for themselves because each situation is different. People bring different abilities, skills, interests, income-earning potential, etc. to their marriages. And different families have different needs, too. There is no one-size-fits-all way to do this, and nobody should denigrate the work that others do, or the choices that other people make for their own families.
And there is a HUGE difference between finding “me time” and living life as a single person — as though nothing (marriage, kids responsibilities) has changed WRT hobbies, interests, friends, etc. Huge difference. Nobody here ever claimed that women deserve “me time” more than men (nor claim that doing domestic duties was more valuable than paid labor).
Participant[quote=scaredyclassic]You taking notes, kev. You’re gonna increase your income by teaming up with a woman who stays at home and calculates how much all the stuff she does for you would go for retail.
Shell get to decide what work needs to be done, can create work or make you do it if she changes her mind. And she can complain endlessly since it’s not valued in the marketplace.
You’re broke cause you don’t have a disgruntled employee at home working 24 7[/quote]
If you were to define what your paid work entailed, would you be labeled a whiner or told that you were “complaining endlessly”? Seems a bit sexist to me when you think that women who detail the work they do are “complaining.”
Do you honestly think that it’s wrong to note that unpaid labor has value, even monetary value? This was only brought up because some other posters were insinuating that unpaid labor had little or no value.
Does your wife complain when she’s working? Do you complain when you have to do housework? Where do you get the notion that SAHPs are disgruntled or complaining endlessly?
Participant[quote=Blogstar]It doesn’t seem logical to me that any legal definition of the value of household work would ever be more than half national median household income. Even that is pretty extreme. If a stay at home worker sucked that off median household income families below and at the level and for some $ above would be doomed.
A person managing household investments in community is getting half the gains already.
Stay at home parents should be grateful that their partners consider them to be pulling their weight. The deal the stay at home is getting ,if they in fact they want to stay home, is better than good.[/quote]
Put down your beverage and try to make some more sense here, whiny pants! 😉
SAHPs are not “sucking that off” of anything. They are *contributing* to the household, not taking away.
How do you figure that a SAHP’s work is only worth half of the median income? Have you ever gotten estimates from people who perform these services? Obviously not.
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“How do you figure out the value of those hours spent in the home, where no one ever earns wages for wiping noses or countertops? The paper simply calculates what it would cost to pay a domestic worker to do the work. The value for individual families is big: it increases personal income 30 percent. But the effect on the economy is also huge. If this work were incorporated when measuring GDP, it would have raised it by 26 percent in 2010.“
http://www.forbes.com/sites/brycecovert/2012/05/30/putting-a-price-tag-on-unpaid-housework/
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And this organization is trying to educate people about the value of unpaid labor in developing countries. It goes into the many reasons why this needs to be done.
http://healthbridge.ca/Gender%20summary%20report%20final.pdf
Participant[quote=bearishgurl][quote=CA renter]It would make all the sense in the world if you would take off the blinders of your preconceived notions. These highly-educated, intelligent women are doing what’s right for their families (what may have been right for you is not necessarily what’s right for them). After realizing that we can’t “have it all,” and after calculating how much it costs to work outside of the home, along with the emotional costs to the family of working outside of the home (more stress, more resentment, etc.), these *families* (not just one spouse) have opted to make a choice that provides the greatest benefits at the lowest cost for themselves.[/quote]
That’s all well and good if it truly was a “joint decision.” But why go through the trouble and expense of going to college and graduating, only to drop out of the workforce shortly after graduation … especially with student loan debt looming.
Ballooning student loans in the background don’t mix very well with attempting to raise a family on one salary. Sorry, but that’s not a wise choice to make for the family whose future the SAHP purportedly cares so much about. It actually jeopardizes the family’s financial future so the cost is way too high, imho.
You don’t need an expensive college degree to be a mom, let alone a $200K+ graduate degree that some of them are laying to waste by “choice.”[/quote]
Again, in EVERY case that I know of where one parent is the SAHP, it was a joint decision. I’m sure that *after the divorce* some of the non-SAHPs would like to claim that it was a unilateral decision; but that doesn’t mean it’s true.
Many women (and men who are SAHPs!) plan to re-enter the workforce at a later time. Others got their degrees because they didn’t know for sure if they were going to get married and care for kids, so made plans to be sole providers. Others will work in phases, going from SAHP to part-time to full-time, or some combination of those things. Others are able to help their husbands in their work, even advising them and helping to write research papers, speeches, etc. An education is never a waste, IMO.
And, many of us do NOT have student debt (or non-mortgage debt of any kind), including myself.
Participant[quote=FlyerInHi][quote=njtosd]
To quote one of my favorite characters, Syndrome, “When everyone is super, nobody will be.” Beauty is a relative term – to say everyone is beautiful makes it meaningless. You may like everyone, you may find them to be valuable and meritorious, or you may say that physical beauty is unimportant to you in terms of other people’s worth. All of that would be fine. But everyone isn’t beautiful, or smart or funny.
And although I think your motives are genuine, there are a lot of people out there who say everything is great (for example, local school principle who uses the word “amazing” 100 times/parent meeting) to prove the depths of their own enthusiasm, rather than the merit of the object of their compliments.[/quote]
I agree. Superlative terms should be reserved for the top 20% percent.[/quote]
That would be fine if “beautiful” was a superlative term, but it’s not.
Participant[quote=njtosd]I don’t think my husband is getting much value from me. I’m not very domestic – although I like to bake. I work part time, but based on scaredy’s calculus, that probably sets me back because clients get me peeved (so I fall below the “happy 80% of the time” threshold). We just bought and installed shower doors together – but he put in more effort than I did (I don’t have much “hack saw” experience). I keep track of paperwork, insurance, etc.
Would we be calculating this stuff if we were single? And considering it imputed income to ourselves? I don’t think so.[/quote]
If you were single, you wouldn’t be doing it for others. For SAHPs, you’re working for other people, not yourself. There is a LOT more work involved when you’re doing everything for a family vs. just taking care of yourself.
Participant[quote=scaredyclassic]You taking notes, kev. You’re gonna increase your income by teaming up with a woman who stays at home and calculates how much all the stuff she does for you would go for retail.
Shell get to decide what work needs to be done, can create work or make you do it if she changes her mind. And she can complain endlessly since it’s not valued in the marketplace.
You’re broke cause you don’t have a disgruntled employee at home working 24 7[/quote]
How much do you think you would have to pay a woman of your wife’s caliber to bear and raise your children? If your wife is/was the one responsible for educating them (and I’d still like to hear how you’ve managed to homeschool with both parents working full-time outside of the home), how much would that be worth? How about your child’s character development? Who watches the kids when you have to work? What if you have to travel regularly? And how much would you have to pay a personal assistant to manage all of the daily tasks in your household (bill paying, some maintenance, cleaning, laundry, shopping, etc.)? How much would it cost to have someone to tend to your needs 24/7? Do you think someone should do this for free? If so, why?
I’d also love to hear your wife’s input on this if she’d be willing to participate in this discussion.
Participant[quote=FlyerInHi]I’m going to be a gold digger. I want to dig deep and get lots of gold.
I’m going to be prospecting for gold. Need to be sure there’s lots of gold, otherwise, I’d be wasting my time.[/quote]What will you provide in return?
Participant[quote=bearishgurl]
The WWII Gen and the boomers (+ some early Gen-Xers) paved the way for equality for women in the workplace and did make a lot of headway in being instrumental in getting family friendly labor laws enacted only to result in LESS women of childbearing age in the FT workforce today.I haven’t investigated the stats on this but based upon recent articles I read, I strongly suspect that the bulk of women in the FT workforce in the US today either do not have children or all their child(ren) are over the age of 16. The rest of the mostly overeducated crowd of mommies are home with their children. The poor women without higher education and with or without spouses and minor kids at home are working in all the service jobs (essentially grunt work)… PT, FT or both part and FT … anything they can get.
After all their sister predecessors have been through, why did the values of the younger generation of parents (mostly moms) change over the last decade-plus? They prefer modern conveniences and technology much more than their older brethren (many of whom retired with their own pensions) and all this stuff costs money (and many are indebted for their educations) but it seems a good portion of them would rather opt out of the workforce, ignore their debts and attempt to live on less.
It doesn’t make sense.[/quote]
It would make all the sense in the world if you would take off the blinders of your preconceived notions. These highly-educated, intelligent women are doing what’s right for their families (what may have been right for you is not necessarily what’s right for them). After realizing that we can’t “have it all,” and after calculating how much it costs to work outside of the home, along with the emotional costs to the family of working outside of the home (more stress, more resentment, etc.), these *families* (not just one spouse) have opted to make a choice that provides the greatest benefits at the lowest cost for themselves.
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