According to a survey by Salary.com, a division of a “human resources consultant” Kenexa, your mamma should be earning $115,000 per year for the work she does. Who did they ask — her sons?!! We all love our mamma and I strongly believe children benefit from having their motther at home, but common get a grip, a stay-at-home mom is worth nothing like that $115,000.
This ridiculous over-inflated salary was worked out by dividing a stay-at-home mom’s role into 10 professions: day care center teacher, CEO, psychologist, cook, housekeeper, laundry machine operator, computer operator, facilities manager, janitor and van driver; and then calculating how many hours they do in each of these roles. Apparently the people at Kenexa think that the average American mamma does almost 97 hours work a week, including 13.2 hours as a day-care teacher; 3.9 hours as household CEO; 7.6 hours as a psychologist; 14.1 hours as a cook; 15.4 as a housekeeper; 6.6 hours doing laundry; 9.5 hours as a computer operator; 10.7 hours as a facilities manager; 7.8 hours as a janitor and 7.8 hours driving. Which all goes to prove what we already knewabout HR consultants: they are complete morons!
Firstly, we can get rid of the roles of CEO and facilities manager because Mrs stay-at-home mom USA isn’t running a commercial company or leasing a property; she’s looking after the house, 2 kids and a pet dog. We can also get rid of the role of psychologist because she isn’t one, and the average American kid doesn’t need to see a psychologist, therapist, or counsellor. And as for computer operator — 9.5 hours checking email, social networking, and online shopping isn’t work. So that leaves day care center teacher, cook, housekeeper, laundry machine operator, janitor and van driver — okay anyone else notice the overlap here? Apparently American housekeepers don’t have any cooking, cleaning, or laundry duties.
Also how did they come of with 6.6 hours for laundry? Does the typical American housewife wash by hand and wring dry?!! Loading and unloading a washing machine takes a couple of minutes at the most and another couple of minutes to hang clothes out to dry or load and unload the spindryer, and 5 minutes ironing at the most. How about 14.1 hours a week cooking!!! That’s 2 hours a day to cater for a family of four. How many meals does the average American family eat? And unless I’m missing something a stay-at-home mom “stays-at-home”, so how the hell do they come up with 7.8 hours driving a week? Does the average American mom do her shopping out of state?
The truth is that a part-time nanny and part-time housekeeper could fill all the roles of a stay-at-home mom for well under $30k, and they wouldn’t get the car, clothing allowance, meals, or home either.
Well, an interesting post but how about an explanation, or even some sort of mumbling regard about where you and your cohorts have been for the last 14 months? Myself and some other fans had privately wondered if your blog was not a school project or something with assumed identities…and that would be a shame that the characters of Pietro and Rob and Amica and yes, even Stefi.
Surely there’s at least one tale worth telling from your hiatus…
http://elfishingmusician.blogspot.com/2012/02/houstons-watercoaster-and-malibu-grand.html
Regards and how about some more bladed weapon reviews from Rob? And what do you guys think about the FN FiveseveN?
@ El Fisho
I’m sorry we’ve been away so long. I’m not sure how much Rob, Amica and Pietro will be contributing to this blog but we decided to start blogging again. I started blogging over seven years ago with Rob and when he stopped I didn’t want to continue on my own and frankly the last 18 months in Italy have been interesting to say the least. We finally got rid of Berlusconi but not before he managed to do his best to watch Rome burn while he fiddled with his underage prostitutes and suggesting that his political party Forza Italia (Go Italy!) should change it’s name to Forza Gnocca (Go Pussy). It might not have been so bad but it doesn’t install confidence with the economy tanking in the EU zone and Italy on the verge of financial ruin. Things got so bad that all but one of the unions in FIAT’s Napoli plant decided to make do with their statutory 20 days paid leave, 12 paid public holidays and 104 hours paid ROL, and to stop taking additional days off sick. As you can imagine it’s bot been easy rasing money for sport sponsorship, which used to be a significant part of my business. So we’ve been doing a lot of restructuring.
another good story,thanks.
Where have you been? And what of Pietro, Ron and Amica?
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I’m glad to find you’re still around! After discovering your blog, I spent some time going back through old posts, most of which are excellent with some very lively give-and-take commentary following. I’d love to be able to re-open some of those topics for further commentary and discussion, but don’t know if that is technically possible or if it would merely be seen as a waste of time.
As to your post, your analysis is good, but I believe both analysis and original article are subject to the same criticism–i.e., both reflect the pervasive and largely unexamined assumption that everything is and should be evaluated based on financial criteria. The author tries to stretch Mom to fit some Procrustean financial bed. You, on the other hand, and probably more realistically from a financial standpoint, take the opposite approach. However, to my mind, mothers and motherhood is infinitely valuable, and not subject to–and should not be–trivialized in this manner. Like religious faith, true beauty, art, and many of the most valuable things in life, its analysis at a financial level is, in most respects, extremely limited (and limiting) and possibly absurd. It is a bit like evaluating paintings or other works of art by how much they weigh.
God bless all mothers, and God bless motherhood.
Pushin60
@ Pushin
I couldn’t agree more. I was only giving a financial assesment of the worth of a stay-at-home mom because that is what the author put forward and I was responding to that but I don’t think you can put a price on a mother’s love and nuturing.
Hi Stefi, Welcome Back!! Fourteen months has been a long time. Seriously thought you, Rob, Amica and uncle Pietro were abducted by aliens and subjected to cruel medical experiments. Hope everyone is well. Please extend my sincerest thanks to rob for his edged weapon advice. Got the extrema ratio shrapnel. Loved it, girlfriend loved it too so guess who carries it in her car!!! Ahh!!! an excuse to buy another blade. Great to see you are all back. Hows Pietro??
Thanks. I never seem to get the time to blog. I wonder if people still read blogs or whether they are only interested in twitter.
My wife is a stay at home mom. I don’t know that I could say that it is worth $115,000 for her to be at home, but she is certainly worth more staying at home than what she could earn in the workplace with only an Associates Degree.
@ John
Exactly, a housewife is an important role but not a skilled posistion.
7.8 hours driving a week doesn’t sound that unreasonable and neither does 14.1 hours a week cooking. The worth is too high though. You’re right about the nanny doing most of that for much less but most stay at home moms can’t be replaced by just a nanny. Moms have something special that nanny’s just can’t compete with.
RescueAboxer
I think you’re right. As a child I benefited by having my mother at home, as do my nieces and nephews because my sister is a mother and housewife. I don’t see how someone who lives where they work drives 7.8 hours a week. My mamma didn’t drive at all. As for 14.1 hours cooking that just can’t be right. That’s 2 hours a day for 3 meals for an average household of 5.
Stay at home mom could be driving her kids to school and back every day. Depending how far away the school is it could take 30-60mins every day. Then you add in the driving to after school activities/library/shopping/dropping and picking up kids at friends house. That could easy average up to 8 hours a week. All of that might not be 100% necessary but it’s very possible and not that unreasonable for a stay at home mom to do. I know plenty that do just that.
Also 2 hours of cooking is not just for 3 meals. She could be preparing lunch for kids, lunch for husband, breakfast, dinner, supper. Since she is a stay at home mom, she is probably spending more time preparing meals (because they have more time to do so) than a working mom or nanny.
Dear Stefi, Thanks for revealing the copying of Leopold McLaglen’s work on Jiu Jitsu. He was my Uncle and my father showed me a photo album of some of Leo’s work, when I was a little girl saying,”You’ll never see such an amazing record of acheivements as this again!”.There were loads of photos of Leo all over the world of what was the British Empire mainly in Police Stations where Leo taught the men, from Kenya to Asia to school girls at a time it was not meant to be the thing to do for a young woman (to defend herself with such rough and tumble!) I have photos if you would like to show them. Leopold was a very tall man like his brother Fred and other brothers all seven of them all over six foot three and a six foot sister, Lily. He was a showman and an actor like many of his brothers and he took his invention seriously. He even taught his nephew Andrew V McLaglen as a cadet in Harvard! Cynthia Allen McLaglen
Cynthia it was my brother who wrote that post but yes I would be very interested in those photos. Obviously Leo McLaglen was very sucessful as a martial art instructor teaching the police and military all over the British Empire but then seems to have vanished from history and certainly didn’t get the recognition for being the orgininator of SMP Jiu-jitsu. Your other uncle Victor McLaglen fought JacK Johnson and Jess Wilard!