AIBU to think the economic value of what I do as a mother and housekeeper should actually be quantifiable?

[AndreaMartina]

I've been on maternity leave and somewhere between the 3am feeds and the fifth load of washing this week I started actually adding it up. Not venting, genuinely doing the maths.
Childcare alone in London runs £15-20 an hour. I'm doing that plus household management, appointment coordination, emotional labour for the whole family, meal planning, the mental load of remembering literally everything.
I built a calculator to invoice for it properly. Mine came to £83k.
AIBU to think this number should be part of every conversation about the gender pay gap? Not as a joke as an actual economic argument.

Yabu, you made the choice to have children. Surely you needed to think this all through prior to having them.

The big question here is why in this apparently enlightened age, are women still ending up doing the majority of the domestic and family chores
.

Some women, not all women, and there is an element of personal responsibility in that, as in it’s a choice they make, be it being with a twat or chosing to stay home. Wanting money for it or status, lauded as some form of hero who is raising the next gen, nope. All parents do that, we all raise our kids.

I think it's important to have this discussion, not to invoice anyone, but to raise an awareness of the real costs of raising kids. I am always bemused by research stating that increase in child benefits doesn't increase fertility rate - what do you expect when the benefits in question doesn't cover 10% of the real costs?

I don’t think it becomes apparent, much of the time, until the kids have arrived.

Pre children things are quite equal, but once the kids arrive (and compounded by maternity leave), more and more falls on the woman’s plate.

It seems an almost universal issue.

I think thays self soothing in many cases and I don’t think it’s true for a lot, these guys aren’t rushing home, doing the laundry,making dinner, doing the shopping, cleaning the toilets and doing the hoovering then baby arrives and they down tools and refuse to engage and have a complete personality transplant. Some sure, but the majority nah, they are selfish twats from the beginning, just it’s not an issue to the woman as there is no kids and it’s not as much work, often he earns more so she thinks she’s doing her bit by doing more at home, or started off that way trying to impress.

but no I don’t beleive for one moment the majority of these guys are doing their fair share till kids,

I was thinking the other day, that the modern society tends to undervalue parents contributions and as a consequence undervalue human life. When people see someone driving Ferrari, they say, 'oh that's so cool, the guy did well' but when they see a family with 3 kids they say 'scroungers, money wasters' rather than appreciating parents spending much more than Ferrari costs directly or indirectly to raise new members of society.

OMG YANBU.

I think I love you 😂🩷!!!
of course you are right - problem is, society doesn’t value children, or mothers - so no one wants to foot the bill.

• Definitely not tax payers - you ‘chose’ to have kids! Your problem.
• definitely not employers - just costs them money.

things will change when there aren’t enough employees. I don’t know what that will look like. Something is very wrong with a species when you don’t value having young to continue your populace…

This is such a flawed perspective I don’t even know how to articulate a response!! 🫠🫠🫠🫠 should we all just say ‘ok then, we won’t have any more kids’ and that’ll be that then.
except it wouldn’t would it - we’d enter some sort of horrific handmaids tale reality or end up taking babies from other countries… it’s a rather one dimensional view to hold tbh…

You are quite right. Add in the value of care as well

I do feel like a rarity.

And then in time those kids will be paying for your state pension and caring for you in your old age...

Those things are called general parenting and adult life skills. Parents have to do them whether they work or not.

I don’t understand. I do all those things you said too plus i have a job!!!!

But you will accept the benefits of the tax those children will pay in the future when you are retired and no longer paying in as much as you are using.

The problem is not all children will become productive tax paying citizens, some will be burdens on the taxpayer their whole life. I have siblings like this. Having children is their bread and butter. The other problem is when there are financial incentives to have children, then these type of people have children and the poverty/benefits cycle continues.
It is people that are willing to work and be accountable for their own families that will teach their children that you need to work. This is what is needed to run the future economy.

Op I agree with you and I think this every day. Mine are older and have SEND - just as two examples I do all the school work tutoring - costs a bomb by the hour and all the school runs (wrap around nanny also pricey). Oh and did I mention I also have an actual job?!

You are not being unreasonable. I think it's helpful to add up what it would cost to pay someone to do it all, just to help people to understand its value. I'll use that number in an argument with someone soon I'm sure, so thanks! How did you work it out, out of interest? 83k seems low to me!
Eg did you include 24hrs on call allowance, and that you would need to pay multiple people to do it in shifts as you couldn't expect one person to work 24/7? And that those people would need to stay on site?

Ok so you mention mental load, housework, up in the middle of the night with young kids, booking all the appointments.

I do all of those things also work. Should I be paid lots of extra money?

But it’s not its value. Cleaning someone else’s home. Doing child care, getting taxis. Is paying for someone’s time, it’s their job, how they earn a living.

doing your own child care or cleaning your home isn’t. It is basic adulting we all do.

i am really bemused you think employing someone v doing it yourself is remotely comparable.

and why on earth would someone wish to compare themselves to paid labour. The only thing I can think of is they don’t feel valued at home so have gone this batshit route. You can’t force your partner to value you. And no one on here is thinking it’s remotely realistic unless they themselves feel undervalued.

quire frankly if my husband said I took the bins out, if we employe someone it would have cost 40 quid a month, and I drove you into town, a taxi would have cost,20 quid and I loaded the dishwasher, someone would have charged s fiver for that, see how much value I bring, I’d think he was barking mad.

and I’d think he was utterly off his head if he said I did homework with the kids, did bedtime, went to the park, do you know how much a nanny would have cost, and I’m in here raising the next generation and need society to value that.

you can’t monetise life, you can’t demand to be valued if you’re not, you can’t make basic life choices like have kids or live independently and expect a round of applause,

Whether someone should actually be paid for all this is a separate issue for sure and I agree alot of this is just adulting. But it can be helpful to work out the cost as an exercise just for fun and to help people (esp men) understand the value of this work.

household management, appointment coordination, emotional labour for the whole family, meal planning, the mental load of remembering literally everything.

who on earth do you think does this in either childless homes or homes where both people work?! We both work full time and surprisingly all this stuff is still done, although goodness knows what emotional labour for the whole family is.
I hate these posts from SAHMs who seem to forget that working people still have laundry to
wash, meals to prep etc.

We did a similar exercise when I was pregnant with dc1, bearing in mind that we wanted more than one child, and decided that the only financial reason for me to work was to progress my career. Dh recognised immediately that a SAHP made a financial contribution to the family. We even considered whether he could be a SAHD instead, but his earning potential was much higher than mine.

I was not massively invested in progressing a career in the field I was in, and my employer was not interested in the option of me working part-time, so I became a SAHM. Financially, it worked acceptably for the family. But it took us a few years to realise that there was another aspect that we had not considered: being a SAHM was terrible for my mental health. I think I would have been far happier, and therefore the whole family far happier, had I got a part-time job. Any job.

But that's not true.

In general, only mothers have to do them. It's usually open to fathers to fail to step up or walk out. Yes, some men may do 'their share' (which is almost never half) or at least do something, but they can opt out in the knowledge that women will normally pick up the pieces because they don't want their children to suffer.

What happens when a father goes to prison? The majority of children are cared for by their mothers.

What happens when a mother goes to prison? Only a small number of children are cared for by their fathers, the rest are looked after by extended family or end up in care.

This logic is a bit short-sighted if you are expecting any kind of pension from the state in which case you need that generation of other people's kids to prop you up in later years