As usual the approach of – the American one – Mothers’ Day has people claiming that mothers are undervalued and really, everyone should just be giving them lots of stuff. Like this example, that mothers do in fact earn an salary of $162,000 a year and why, oh why, isn’t anyone paying it to them? The reason they don’t is obvious enough, mothers don’t earn that much and they don’t deserve that much.
For a start the earnings from something as prosaic as raising your own children are unlikely to be three times the per capita gross domestic output – that is, the value of everything produced by everyone – of the country.
Still, the claim is made:
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] For those who believe stay-at-home moms have it easy, a new study shows they should be paid over $162,000 in yearly salary for the work they do. Salary.com compared jobs that reflect what moms do each and every day with their kids, and then used the medium salaries of those jobs to come up with a salary for stay-at-home moms. [/perfectpullquote]Well, yes, that they’re using the word medium not median shows quite how much weight we might put on this idea.
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] Putting a price tag on a priceless job is hard to do, but we gave it a shot anyway. On Mother’s Day, Salary.com, the leader in compensation data, planning and analytics, would like to honor all the Moms out there who work their hardest day-in and day-out. We would like to recognize both professional and stay-at-home Moms on their unwavering dedication to their families and other responsibilities. We selected a handful of jobs that reflect a day in the life of a Mom, and using Salary.com’s Salary Wizard we uncovered that the medium annual salary of a mother is $162,581– rising nearly $5,000 from our 2017 calculations. [/perfectpullquote]And quite obviously that salary isn’t being paid therefore it’s not the medium – sorry, median – one anyway.
On to whether mothers deserve it – no. Labour is worth what someone will pay for it, will someone pay you $162,000 a year to be a mother? Not if alimony statistics have anything to do with it, nor single mother incomes, so therefore the job’s not worth that much.
Yet there’s more to this. What they’ve done is add up all those different jobs and blah blah. But the pay for all of those jobs is what people get paid to do them for other peoples’ children. You know, those snotty brats that you don’t love with all the tenderness of your heart? The thing is we do in fact make a differentiation between things done for love and the same thing done for money. Of that distinction convictions for soliciting, pandering and prostitution are made.
We might even go further – having grandchildren is the very point of life itself. That, unfortunately, involving that intermediate stage of having children. Who do have to be raised by someone, that’s the human way. And we do generally need to be paid to raise those of someone else because we don’t get the grandchildren at the end of the process. Yet mothers do – thus they are already being paid in life’s great prize, that perpetuation of the genes.
Oh, sure, many mothers would just love to be getting $162,000 a year for what they currently do unpaid but think that through – why should anyone pay anyone for what they willingly do unpaid?
UBI. Good boy, you know it makes sense.
I suppose nonsense is a kind of sense.
UBI. Good boy, you know it makes sense.
The place got filthier the longer my ex was in the house. Does that give a negative salary?
I was a stay home dad for six years, while my children were little. Once the oldest started going to school it was ace! There’s no way in Hell it was remotely as hard as any job I’ve had before or since. Even before they went to school it wasn’t remotely difficult. I could nap in the middle of the day when they did. I watched endless sport as I pootled around doing whatever housework needed doing. I caught up on all my hobbies while they were playing quietly. At the end of the period my wife informed me that… Read more »
Usually there is a mass of double counting as the add up the full time competent salary of several different jobs. The true answer is about £20k a year.
I would never willingly do it unpaid, which is why I chose to never have any of the damn things.
Potential wife: I *demand* to be paid $162,000 to be a wife!
Potential husband: Where the BLEEP am I going to get $162,000 from?
Exit former potential husband.
Obviously women should be forbidden to have children if the father can’t pay them $162 000 a year.