I remember the first time, as a baby newspaper reporter, asking a mom if she worked.
Boy. If looks could kill, I wouldn’t be writing this today.
Since then I have always said “work outside the home,” because anyone who thinks stay-at-home moms don’t work has been smoking wacky tobaccy.
That memory came up again for me when I was talking with Frances, a friend of mine, whose daughter Amy is a stay-at-home mom with three children under the age of 6.
“Amy is having a really tough time right now,” Frances told me. “Her husband works all day and figures once he gets home, he’s off work and doesn’t contribute much to the running of the household. Amy, on the other hand, lives where she works. She’s always on the job!”
Apparently Amy and hubby Stan have had…how shall I put it?…unsatisfactory conversations about sharing the household workload. And every conversation ends with Amy frustrated, saying, “Yeah, but at least you get 30 minutes to yourself on your drive!”
That’s pretty sad, when you can’t even manage 30 minutes of downtime, of “me” time, in a single day. That kind of unremitting workload, responsibility and pressure can result in burnout and illness, and when mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.
For those who never really gave it much thought, Salary.com created an eye-opening infographic about stay-at-home moms’ economic value in the household. Long story short: In 2014, if the household had to pay for all the services a stay-at-home mother provides – from laundress to chauffeur to chef to house cleaner and more – it would cost $118,905 a year for a 96.5-hour work week.
Yeah. Nearly 100 hours a week. And Stan is tired? Please!
Personally, I think that “salary” estimate is on the low end. I mean, who pays $10.19 an hour for a house cleaner? I pay mine (when I can afford it) more than double that amount, so if you know of someone who is willing to break their back, cleaning floors and toilets, for 10 bucks an hour, please – give them my phone number.
I suppose Amy can print out the accompanying chart and wave it in Stan’s face and maybe, just maybe, he’ll get off his duff. I would not bet the farm on it, however.
How to share the household workload
So here are some suggestions I made to my friend Frances to pass along to Amy in her quest for a little help around the house. (Of course, these tips will also help anyone who is feeling overwhelmed and wants to share the household workload.)
- Keep track of her time for a week, broken down into 15-minute increments.
- Analyze the data. How much time is spent in food preparation, laundry, house cleaning, child care, trips to the doctor/store, taking out the garbage, etc.? Prepare a list with the aggregated data.
- Create a list of job duties, using the daily time log as a baseline, that must be done every week.
- Add Stan’s contributions to the list. It just may seem like he’s a slug; surely he does “guy” things like mowing the lawn or taking the car to be serviced or washed.
- Call a family meeting – yes, even include the littlest one. Get ‘em while they’re still young enough to want to help; that will change soon enough. Even a 2-year-old can – and should be – taught to pick up toys, clothes, etc. Remember, it’s the parents’ job to eventually release their children into the wild with enough skills to be able to survive on their own. Boys need to know how to cook and clean and girls need to know enough about car care to make them intelligent, informed consumers.
- Show the family the list of what all has to be done each week, and ask each family member, one at a time, what tasks they would like to take on. This makes it something they want to do, as opposed to what they are forced to do, although when all the fun things have been taken, they’ll also have to sign up for some unsavory duties. Such is life. If you can make a game out of it – kids that age are always up for games – so much the better.
- Revisit the list regularly as a family to see if the duties need to be shuffled. It’s especially important if there is a lot of competition for one task; someone’s going to be unhappy. And no one wants to get stuck taking out the garbage until they’re ready for college. Plus, as the kids get older, they’ll improve their skill level — for example, they can move from sorting laundry into darks, white and colors to actually washing, drying and stowing the clean clothes.
It’s up to Amy and Stan to decide if they want to throw a little sweetener into the pot – say, a small weekly stipend or a monthly family trip to the zoo. Children need to understand that some things just have to be done – with or without a reward.
So far, this has focused on a bunch of kids, all under the age of 6. What about Stan, I hear you wondering?
Stan has to step up, too. He and Amy get to split the “big people’s” list – the driving, cooking, cleaning, lawn care, and so on. There are some things that Amy will have to do by default, like taking care of the kids all day long because she’s there…all day long.
But the other tasks can and should be handed out evenly between the big people and switched off between them so neither one feels abused or taken advantage of. No doubt Stan is tired from working all day (as if Amy isn’t!), but surely a couple of times a week, he can throw some burgers on the grill or make one of his famous dishes he’s so proud of. How hard is a pot of spaghetti, for God’s sake?
Most of all, Amy needs a break. And the only way she’s going to get one – and keep her fraying sanity – is if she sits down and has a frank and open discussion with family members based on the data she’s collected and her own sense of self-worth.
And, of course, the handy stay-at-home mom’s salary chart.