A woman's worth, controlling for inflation

In a rather fitting addendum to yesterday's post, apparently each of the nation's 5.6 million full time stay-at-home mothers would earn $134,121 per year if she was paid for all her work, and working mothers would earn an additional $85,876 for performing their additional domestic duties, according to Reuters and a study by Salary.com.

Now, before everyone hits the e-mail forward button in honor of Mother's Day so mom can feel like a martyr for the countless, thankless acts of charity she undertakes every day to sustain the lives of the children she chose to have, think about this for a moment:

To reach the projected pay figures, the survey calculated the earning power of the 10 jobs respondents said most closely comprise a mother's role -- housekeeper, day-care teacher, cook, computer operator, laundry machine operator, janitor, facilities manager, van driver, chief executive and psychologist.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but to merely survive in the world, those of us without kids also have to do every single one of those jobs except "day-care teacher" and perhaps "van driver." And unless I'm just an anomaly, we're not hiring out private contractors or illegal immigrants to do them for us–shouldn't we all get compensation, too?

But then again, of course our everyday duties just don't matter if we're not tending the nest and grooming the next generation.

"Every husband I've ever spoken to said, 'I'm keeping my job. You keep yours.' It's a tough one," said Gillian Forrest, 39, a stay-at-home mother of 22-month-old Alex in New York. "I don't know if you could put a dollar amount on it but it would be nice to get something."

Yeah, that would be nice, wouldn't it? Unfortunately, few people in this country make what they're worth or ever will. And I don't think I'm alone in saying I wouldn't fancy my tax dollars–which I actually work for–going toward paying disgruntled breeding cows to stay home and tend to their spawns.

Hell, if we're going to be throwing federal funds away, I'd rather they go toward the Bush administration's star wars anti-satellite space laser project – at least frivolous interplanetary weapons systems, assuming they function correctly, wouldn't annoy me virtually every time I go out in public.