Mom Salary

It turns out that moms do about $118,000 worth of work per year, according to Salary.com.  In light of this fact and the suggestions of certain less than intellectual U.S. public officials, I would like to share my thoughts on this. 

First let's look at the math.  One of the worst financial decisions anyone could make for single moms is to offer them free child care so they can work jobs that pay less than $10 an hour.  At full time, a $10 an hour job pays $20,800 a year, which is less than 20% of the value of staying at home to raise children.  It would be better to give them the $20,800 a year, no strings attached, because at least that way, we don't loose $97,200 a year in value.

Note that this accounts only for the actual monetary value of the work, not the social value.  The social value cannot even be calculated.  Civilization itself largely depends on it.


Now, here is a list of my immediate thoughts on this:

When we suggest that a mother work outside the home, we should start by comparing the income she could earn with the value of the work she does at home.  If the income from working is not significantly higher (recall that the $118,000 a year does not include social value), we should shut up and mind our own business.

There are not many jobs worth over $100,000 at entry level.  Motherhood is the easiest to get into.

While it is a volunteer position, unless we can justify the loss of volunteer labor at that value, we should be doing everything we can to make sure mothers have the necessary resources to do their job well.  In other words, it is a better financial choice to give a single mother $100,000 a year in welfare than it is to pay for daycare while she works a $10 an hour job.  The fact, however, is that $35,000 a year would be sufficient.  Are we really so stingy that we are not willing to pay 1/3 of the going rate for an essential service?  Even non-profits can afford to pay their lawyers and accountants around $40,000 a year.

As far as the government and society are concerned, raising children is an investment.  The average child does more to help society in the long run than to help her parents.  The majority of the payoff from the investment goes to the employers of the child, the government, and society in general, so why does the mother have to foot the entire bill of $100,000 per year worth of work?  In fact, why do the parents have to foot the entire monetary cost of child rearing, when they are not even in the top three who benefit from the investment?  We should not just be giving tax write offs and paltry credits for children.  Parents with children should be getting significant stipends, and society should be grateful that they are not demanding even more!

What I just said above is even more applicable when a majority of the children are being raised by a minority of the people.  When pretty much everyone raises 2 or 3 children, the costs get spread out fairly well (excluding the part owed by the government and businesses).  When Mormons have a birth rate of 3.4 and everyone else is hovering around 1.9, everyone but Mormons are freeloaders who are not doing their share.  Without Mormons, Catholics, and Protestants, we would probably be almost as bad off as Japan or South Korea.  You are welcome, all of you Americans who are choosing to have one child or less.  It would be nice if you at least acknowledged the massive value of our public service!  And it would be even better if you would occasionally help us out (without any petty complaining) when we needed it ("need" in this case should include things like occasional vacations, because raising children does not come with paid or even unpaid vacation time; you have to actually buy vacation time when you have children).


Now, I should probably note that a working mom evidently still does about $70,000 worth of work at home, in addition to paid work.  For single moms working $10 an hour jobs, the total value still comes out at only just over $90,000 a year (assuming full-time), except, of course, that the social value is significantly lower, because the kids get significantly less time with mom.  Also, the statistics seem to indicate that working moms ultimately do more hours of work total per week, for that lower total value.  This does not change the fact that a majority of U.S. society is freeloading though.  Likewise, even a working mom is doing $70,000 more worth of work that is benefiting everyone else more than herself, and that does not magically reduce the monetary cost of having kids (in fact, daycare actually increases that cost).