Stay-at-home mothers really should be paid. I feel that I personally benefitted from the stability of having my mom at home while I was a child. Of course, when I was a teenager, she divorced my dad and had to get a job--slaughtering rabbits and digging in their poop for nightcrawlers for the local bait shop--but still, she was gone anywhere from 40-80 hours a week on account of her job, education continuation at the local community college and her plethora of internships. I became the surrogate stay-at-home mom for my siblings (making dinner, helping with homework, cleaning the house, the usual), since I was conveniently on independent study trying to graduate high school early (I wanted to go away to college more than anything). But still... I feel sorry for my younger siblings because they didn't get the advantage of having a mom home for the formative years. It could be why I am a normal functioning adult now--well, semi-normal, not-quite-functioning adult who gets paid to stay home--but hey, at least I'm getting paid, right?

But anyway... Salary.com conducted an informal study on how much stay-at-home moms would be paid if, well, anyone had the money to pay them.

"An informal study conducted by Web site Salary.com shows that stay-at-home moms would earn an average of $131,471 annually, including overtime, if they received a paycheck. A sampling of the 5.4 million stay-at-home mothers were asked to come up with job titles that fit a general description of their daily routines."

"The importance of this calculation or this estimate is just calling attention to the fact that being a stay-at-home mom is not a cop out, it's not the woman's way out of the workforce and it's not a job of no value," said Bill Coleman, senior vice president of compensation at Salary.com. "There is a lot of value there, and some would say it's even priceless."

Salary.com, which tracks what jobs pay, suggested that the annual base pay for a 40-hour stay-at-home mom's workweek would be $43,461. Mothers would earn an additional $88,009 a year for 60 hours of overtime each week.--news.yahoo.com

I wonder if we'll ever have a society where stay-at-home dads are just as common as the moms; I also wonder if we'll ever live in a world that financially benefits stay-at-home parents. I mean, we live in a world that benefits poor stay-at-home mothers... these are the Welfare Queens. I grew up amongst them in Northern California. These women would purposely impregnant themselves ever 5 years just so that they would get a check every month and didn't have to work (not even at raising their kids). What if we did away with welfare and, like, sent superintendants to homes and they had to review parents the way they do with teachers. Like if the parents get good reviews or report cards, they get bonuses or something. And the bad ones, well, they, uh... I don't have a punishment that would inspire change and not harm the development of the child in the process.

But then parenting is subjective, and so is the nurturing quotient. I guess it's hard to quantify programming human beings in monetary terms, or in any terms for that matter.

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