I always found the invisible economy fascinating. And the gift economy, as I think it’s sometimes called, at least with artists.

I used figures from my mom while I was in high school, and Mom worked, and she ends up doing about 45K in unpaid work in addition to working full time.

Did you do it for yourself?

The problem I have with things like this is that pretty much everybody has to do work other than their paying job, even a single person with no children. I very much respect the work my mom did around the home, but I have to say I have way more respect for the work she did outside the home, nursing. Then again, at least on my mom’s side of the family, there hasn’t been a stay at home mother in three generations.

Ms T - I did it for myself, but I don’t have a kid yet. I tried to project a little, and counted the work I do now, plus a few hours a week of child care, meal planning, etc. and it came to about $85K. I was surprised to learn that stay at home moms in my town would earn more monetarily than the national average. But I guess where I live isn’t the cheapest place in the country - certainly not compared to places in the midwest and south.

Embroiderama - it’s true that some things a person has to do regardless of whether they live alone or with children, or with a partner. The value of measuring the caring economy is - at least partly - about learning how much we invest in other human beings.

We get a glimpse of these numbers when we look at differences in quality of child care, for example: e.g. how much does it cost to pay someone else to plop your tot in front of a tv while you’re at work all day? Versus, how much does it cost to put your tot in a bona fide Montessori for 8 hours a day?

For my part, I’m experiencing this in regards to elder care - how much would I need to pay someone else to drive my grandmother to her appointments, make her meals, monitor her health - not to mention look after her emotional well-being and ensure that she *feels* looked after and nurtured? To use another real life example: How much would a man have to pay a health professional to provide round the clock care to his wife who has Alzheimer’s? The man in question couldn’t afford this care (altho he was not poor), so he did it himself - for eight years. None of this is measured in our economy, although if he had put his wife in a nursing home or hospice facility, it would have been counted. I don’t think that makes much sense.

The top 10 SAHM jobs that surprised me weren’t the ones like day care instructor and janitor, but the ones like nutritionist, psychologist, and event coordinator. Some parents will spend more energy than others - my mom cooked almost all of our super healthy meals from scratch, for example. My husband’s mom (also an SAHM) relied mostly upon Hamburger Helper and tv dinners. There will always be a spectrum. Right now it’s all sort of lumped in together, which definitely obscures things.

I’m glad to see H Sofia become a regular contributor to this site.

Congratulations!

I do a lot of these things, and I’m childless. This sort of article tends to make me feel irritable and undervalued. That’s not to say that moms don’t do a lot more work than I do… but no one ever talks about paying me for all the housework I do.

And, while I appreciate the attempt to point out that being a SAHM is valuable work, to put it in monetary terms kind of undercuts that value, to me. Some things are worth a lot more than cash.

GG - Last fall, when our group brought Riane Eisler to Portland, she did a radio show, and a caller made a similar comment to her: “We shouldn’t place a dollar value on parenting and elder care work because that work is its own reward.” Riane’s response was that in our capital-based society we place a value on work by giving it a dollar value. Her argument was that occupations that have zero dollar value are naturally taken for granted, assumed to be things anyone can do. Another caller (a middle aged female doctor) illustrated this point when she declared that being a mother was “the easiest job in the world” - as evidence, she noted that a certain animal did it all the time.

Add’l resources I’m keeping in mind as I write this:
-The essay in Gloria Steinem’s book, “Moving Beyond Words,” that is devoted to the economics of work that is or has traditionally been in the domain of women.
-Rev. Marilyn Sewell’s sermon, What Do Our Children Require of Us?” from April 13, 2008. Sewell looks at the low priority placed upon child caring and rearing in our society, and the costs they and we pay.

That makes absolute sense, but it always seems to be put in terms of SAHM–not working dads, or starving artists, or single people, etc.

I guess I’d rather just get on and do it, rather than sitting here resenting the fact that no one has put a dollar value on it in order to feel valued. It has to be done regardless. No one is going to pay me. Rather than my husband saying “wow, honey, I acknowledge that the laundry you just did was worth $X,” I’d rather get a thanks.

And my husband knows not just anyone can do his laundry. He certainly can’t seem to manage it. LOL

I think the SAHM is sort of a micro perspective, and v. appropriate for mother’s day. I’m also thinking that on a macro level many occupations that are traditionally done by women (social work, nursing, elder care, K-12 teaching) are also underpaid and undervalued, which is where Steinem seems to take us.

I’ve also noticed as we’ve become more affluent how many of our daily tasks can be outsourced including gardening and landscaping, meal preparation, housekeeping, pet grooming, home repair, and computer maintenance. We tend to do it ourselves. It’s interesting how a monetary value can be placed on these tasks by a calculator, and that we don’t necessarily value it (or even see it) as work when we’re not being paid for it or paying someone else for it.