Are You Surprised That Homemakers Are Valuable?

[This was originally posted in January 2012, but I'm bumping it up.]

Porcshe Moran has done that report that makes the news at least once a year, "How Much Is A Homemaker Worth?"

I say a good homemaker is priceless, especially if they make the home pleasant for the income earner and provide ever-present love and guidance to the next generation of citizens. But lets look at what is being said this time around.

We examined some of the tasks that a homemaker might do to find out how much his or her services would net as individual professional careers. We only take into consideration tasks which have monetary values and use the lowest value for each calculation.

Private Chef
Meal preparation is one of the major tasks of most homemakers. From breakfast to dinner, there is plenty of meal planning and cooking to be done. The American Personal Chef Association reports that its personal chefs make $200 to $500 a day. Grocery shopping is another chore that needs to be factored in. A homemaker must drive to the supermarket, purchase the food and deliver it to the home. Grocery delivery services charge a delivery fee of $5 to $10.

Total cost for services: $1,005 per five day work week x 52 weeks = $52,260 per year.

The article does similar calculations for:

House Cleaner
Child Care
Driver
Laundry Service
Lawn Maintenance

I'm surprised they left out prostitution, but maybe they take the approach that women actually like lovemaking, too. Then then the conclusion is:

Total for a year of all services is: $52,260 + $6,137 + $31,200 + $4,168 + $936 + $1,560 = $96,261 per year.

Uh huh.

The daily work of a homemaker can sometimes be taken for granted by his or her family members.

Unfortunately, that's true, and it is also true that some feminists denigrate women for being homemakers, as do political types who want more income to tax, employers who want more labor supply to lower labor costs, and businesses who want people to have more "disposable" income to spend on crap they don't really need.

I've already addressed reports like this in this previous entry.

I do want you to know that in general, if you don't like your chef, cleaner, daycare provider, driver, laundry service, or gardener you can fire them either immediately or with very short notice, and paying your latest bill will settle the matter. You generally do not sign lifetime contracts with them. However, if you marry someone who promises to be a homemaker and it turns out that person does next to nothing or does a horrible job, in states like the one I live in the default, standard contract is that "firing" them means giving them half of everything you earned while they were in the contract with you, and continuing to pay them one day for every two days you had the contract, or for life if they were under contract with you for ten years. There is NO penalty for failing to perform any of the tasks adequately.