I built a calculator for unpaid labour in the house and I want to help people like me.

[AndreaMartina]

DD is 5 months old. Was up at 2am the other week doing that maths you do when you can’t sleep, what would it actually cost to pay someone to do everything I did this week.

Couldn’t find anything that let me work it out properly so I ended up building one myself. Free, nothing to buy, but I did make it so factor that in however you like.

There’s also a tracker for logging household stuff over a week, which is uncomfortably useful if you’ve ever tried explaining the mental load to someone who genuinely can’t see it. And a template for having the actual conversation about splitting things, which is the bit I found much harder. They are free resources.

Let me know if you want to calculate yours and I’ll link the calculator.

It is labour though!
I consider laundry, meal planning, cooking, clearing up and cleaning the house chores. I certainly don’t do it for fun and enjoyment

You do it because it needs to be done. You'd do it if you were living on your own. You'd only not do it if you were rich enough to outsource everything.

If I'd been paid for my 'work' on mat leave and during the summer holidays when the kids were little, I would probably have had to give some of it back!

Mat leave involved lots of telly, meeting up with friends and family, lots of cake and coffee, lots of walking. Lots of time on MN. 2 hour lunch breaks. I never cooked. Sometimes wine. If my childminder had been doing that, I would have been impressed.

I have helped ds apply for jobs today, so now he owes me about £90. Although he's put the washing out, so I can knock a bit off.

A farmer growing food to sell and provide their living is doing a job. Me growing tomatoes in my back garden for me to eat is not a job, and I cannot claim that I should receive a farmer's salary for it, even pro rata. I don't feel like this is a very hard difference to grasp.

People undervalue the labour involved in running a home, maybe (debatable, I'd say plenty over-value it). Don't call it female labour, that's bad for all of us. Most women do not solely 'labour' at home - we earn money just like me do these days!

Or just don't marry stupid men? Or if you are unfortunate to have done so - don't make yourself financially dependent on one

Obviously you want your home maintained, and your child/ren happy and well cared for.

It’s not really a chargeable ‘job’. 🤷‍♀️

Sound advice! 😉

People-men- generally undervalue female labour. If a man stays at home, the bare minimum is accepted . It wouldn’t be if a woman was.

Even outside of the home, female labour is undervalued. The first coders were women doing manual calculations. It was seen as low level work. Then men got into the field and suddenly it isn’t.

But it is Labour.
Your partner will get a private pension, time off etc for his work. Women who are in the home don’t get those things.
If it’s just a case of things we do to live- why aren’t more men stay at home parents?
It’s because men get their value from work and staying at home isn’t valued.

So why if he does it , it isn’t seen as Labour, but if you pay someone it is?

If the husband was paying for cleaning etc, the partner would also get rights like time off and sick pay as well as pension contributions.

Domestic work does need to be done. But the benefit it brings doesn’t benefit the person doing it like an outside job would in prestige, salary, pension, employee rights etc. if it was seen as valuable there wouldn’t be countless women who have been SAHM who find themselves in a pickle in a situation like divorce when they can’t just step back into the work force.

If it’s paid for, it comes with obligations. Do women really want to be paid by their husbands for housework, cooking etc? Because they will need to do things to an agreed standard in the same way as a paid cleaner, cook etc.

And what percentage? Because if they expect to be paid market rate then how is that reasonable when some of it is for the benefit of herself and the children (if they have any).

It’s not about being paid by your partner but a) having the work done seen as of equal importance to the work done out side of the home to the family b) more protections are needed for women- whether that is government or legal level- so should things like divorce happen, women’s labour is not discounted .
Many men who have had stay at home partners will moan come divorce that all his partner did was stay at home and why should she get much from him as he did the “real” work. This needs to change. The system needs to change to make it clear that both forms of work are equal .

But we all have to do it - regardless of family status. People who WOH have to do it as well as their jobs.

But not forms of work ARE equal.

Anyone with a job still has to do domestic stuff on top of that job. A SAHM does the domestic stuff without the additional stress of being responsible for bringing home a salary.

It may be valuable but it isn’t of equal value.

A single mother with two small children and a job has to fit in all the domestic stuff as well as her job. How is her weekly workload worth the same?

But if you were single you’d still need to do it lol. It’s not shit thay happens as yoire married, you still have to clean your house and take care of your kids 50 percent of the time, people are writing like it’s something you do for your partner and if you were single you’d not, it’s bonkers, and if you don’t want to do it, get a job and hire a cleaner.

Like most working parents, I do labour both at work and domestically, as does my partner. Only one of those is a job, and only one therefore has a meaningful financial price. That doesn't mean one is more important - if it makes you feel better, we can say that my labour at home is simply priceless - but putting a false price on the one that doesn't have a monetary value doesn't add anything. DH should and does do half the cooking because he lives here too and eats too, not because otherwise he should owe me the cost of a private chef.

If it’s not of equal value, why would you have to pay someone to do it all if a SAHM wasn’t there? A cleaner, a cook, a nanny, house keeper, driver etc?

Again, almost no one who doesn't have a SAHM does pay for any of that except childcare (and then they don't have a nanny, most people pay for cheaper childcare than that). I know lots and lots of families with two working parents, and am one, and can assure you it is not necessarily to employ a driver just because no one gave up work. You'll note that the country is not exactly full of chaffeurs ferrying around the offspring of working parents?

Sahp are a fairly recent/mc thing. Most of the mums on my estate growing up did some work- barmaid/ sewing/hairdressing/ weekends in the shop. Before that, my grandmothers worked and left the kids with neighbours/ older kids.

Running the house was just done alongside it- with the help of your girl children.
The only difference for me, is thatI'm in a job i got to choose, rather than finding work. I also have a dh who does his share.

As pp have pointed out, the chores are just part of life - is how well you choose to do them that makes the difference. I could clean tonight or read a book. So I'll read a book and do a quick flick at the weekend. I have friends who would rather a pristine house. Ihave a dh who cooks; my friend gets a lot of takeaway. Whatever makes us happy.

Linda's Ledgers!

That was a great show.

No sahm in this house, and I can assure you we do not pay for a cook, nanny, housekeeper or driver!

Are literally all the mums you know either a sahm or have all those things? How wealthy are your friends?!

Well firstly, employing someone to do those jobs would entitle you to expect certain standards, or you have the right to sack them. So would it be okay to insist that a meal was cooked again because the wife didn’t cook it right the first time?

People still have to do all the shit stuff if they work. They have the responsibility of earning the money as well as keeping house. Instead of having all day to do the housework, they have evenings and weekends if they are lucky.

Would you pay your partner for doing the jobs he may do? Or is it just part of life?

SAHM are fine but they don’t do anything that 99.9% of people with jobs do

That’s not true actually. A stay at home mum is now less than 10 percent of women are completely financially inactive, and it’s hugely down from the sixties where it was 50 percent, it’s dropping signficantly and fast.

it is also not a middle class thing either, it is majorly skewed to working clsss women with upper middle class the next bucket. The middle classes are more likely to work.

but this is a fast declining group, which is less than ten percent of women and it’s mainly working class women, I assume as they can’t afford child care.