“Ann Romney never worked a day in her life.” This negative quote about a stay at home mom of five boys really got some people fired up. After I heard this quote, I was reminded of a website that put a dollar value on what a stay at home parents are “worth” for the jobs they do at home. The website said the annual salary was $138,000!
I looked at the categories and started to understand where this amount came from. I completely understood that there were categories for laundry, cooking and preschool teacher. The categories that I thought were a little bit strange were CEO, facilities manager and computer operator. Huh? I’m supposed to draw a “salary” for poking around on my computer? And what is a facilities manager anyway?
I would change this list significantly. My “salary” would be based on the following jobs:
Line Cook (not even going to pretend I’m a chef)
Professional laundry washer, and folder (amateur laundry put away-er)
Crowd control police officer
Rodeo clown
Goat wrangler
Taxi driver
Therapist
Peace negotiator
Ice pack administrator
Waiter
Photographer
TV Censor
Storyteller
Stroller mechanic
Lawn boy
Weekend bartender
Co-Lego architect
Cloth diaper swirling extraordinaire (if you’ve used them, you know what I’m talking about)
Barista
Children’s music DJ (Raffi anyone?)
I considered totaling all this up and giving you an inflated grand total of my value as a stay at home dad, a total that would make you think wow this guy must be doing something really important!
I’m not going to do that.
Doing so would take away the exact reason I became a stay at home dad to begin with…and you can take that to the bank.
-Pete
facebook.com/petetheblogger
