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Strollerderby
Investopedia is reporting that it would cost nearly $100,000 annually to pay for all the services a homemaker provides. The economists say they calculated only those tasks that have monetary value (because my love and nagging are priceless, obviously) and used the lowest value for each calculation.
Private Chef, House Cleaner, Child Care, Personal Driver, Laundry Service, and Lawn Maintenance were included in the tally, bringing the grand total to $96,261 per year. It was noted that Lawn Maintenance was a “less common, but possible duty of a homemaker.”
As Strollerderby reported last May, Salary.com offers a calculator that lets you determine the worth of a homemaker, based on the number of children and your region of the United States. Using that calculator, my annual worth as a Philadelphia-area stay-at-home mom of four kids is a whopping $122,011.
Flexible working arrangements a win-win?
According to a new study, employers who offer a flexible work schedule to moms who have returned to their jobs after giving birth helps with employee retention.
Study author Dawn S. Carlson, a professor of management at Baylor University, explains, “When confronted by one or more job demands, a flexible schedule provides working moms with alternatives for meeting those demands while caring for their newborns. When working moms are better able to control their work environment and adapt, work-related stress is less likely to become a family issue.” Continue reading »
I must say that after over ten years of parenting, I’ve got a pretty good record for keeping my cool in public with my kids.
Maybe I overcompensate because I have four children and feel like people are watching me extra-closely, just waiting for me to mess up.
Me, at home with my daughter, Violet
For the past decade I’ve worked as a producer in local television news. I’ve covered a lot of amazing stories during my career including the kidnapping and unbelievable return of Elizabeth Smart, the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, and some pretty high profile murder cases.
I loved it. I was never bored. And then I had a child and I hated it. The guilt over not spending more time with my daughter was crippling. She bonded more with her dad than with me and I felt left out. I determined that it would not be the same with my second child.
I gave birth to Henry a little over two months ago and was able to quit my job to become a freelance writer while on maternity leave. I am now a stay-at-home-mom who works from home. Guess what? The guilt is the same. I feel guilty I’m not entertaining the kids enough or that they may be watching too much TV.
The whole experience made me wonder: are working moms more prone to depression than those who stay at home?
I have an answer.
I had never fully appreciated my mother's plight until I became a mom myself.
When I became a mom, I started to see the world in a whole new way. I became more patient, understanding, and instead of quickly summing up a situation, I began to think more about both sides of a situation and empathize. While a few of the changes that came from being a parent weren’t the greatest, like my newfound worry, most of the changes were enlightening. All along the way, I think that being a parent has given me the chance to really get to know myself more and contemplate life from a mom’s perspective. Through it all, one of the most unexpected ways that being a parent has changed me is that it helped me become a more appreciative daughter.
My mother was a single mom. She didn’t just work one job; at any given time she had two to three jobs at a time while raising my sister and me. When I was very young, I knew she was a nurse but I had no idea what stress and strain she went through as she traveled each morning to her hospital in Spanish Harlem, taking five trains each way back and forth. All I knew was that 5pm was the happiest time of my day because my mother would come home and Batman would come on TV. There was no better combination.
Working moms who are always available to employers can miss out on the small joys of family life.
I remember the good old days of work, when you went to the office and then came home. Once you were home, you were really home and present. No cell phones, emails, texts, Facebook notifications, Twitter mentions, nothing. Just homework, dinner, maybe even some television and relaxation time.
When I first started out in the publishing field, that’s how it was. I worked hard, deadlines loomed and closing magazines was chaotic but exhilarating. As a team, we worked like a well-oiled machine, and although the pace was frenzied and there were always last minute changes before press, when we were done, we were done. We celebrated, had some champagne and handed out collective high-fives. We were tired but felt proud of our efforts and then went home.
Can You Resist the Parent Volunteer Vortex?
This school year, will you be sucked into the (cue scary music) “The School Volunteer Vortex”?
On her blog Late Blooming Mom, 45-year-old working mother Holly Sklar describes her initiation into public school volunteering and the onslaught of all these Uber Volunteer Moms who are clamoring to suck her into her ranks. Two weeks into her kids’ kindergarten year, and she’s already fed up.
In a blog post highlighted on the New York Times’ Motherlode blog, she writes:
I have filled out dozens of forms from the [parent booster] club, not to mention the kids’ teachers, all to do with what activities I can volunteer to be a part of, in the classroom and outside of it, ranging from re-shelving library books to driving kids to and from field trips to helping to organize and run any of the myriad of fund-raising events and activities that occur throughout the year. I’ve been told of mandatory commitments per child at the school, e.g., every family has to work one traffic safety shift, at pickup or drop-off, per child, during the year. I have been invited to no less than four volunteer events, and I’ve already missed two of those. I’ve been asked to contribute the “suggested” amount per child – and nothing that you can pay in ten installments is cheap – because, though a public education is free, a great one is not — especially nowadays. Every day brings more mail in the kids’ backpacks, offering additional ways to get involved.
If I get another piece of paper from the parent association, it’s quite possible my head is going to explode.
Joslyn Gray 
Amber Doty 
Julianna Miner 
Monica Bielanko 
Sierra Black 
Meredith Carroll 
Carolyn Castiglia 
Sunny Chanel 
Madeline Holler 
Wendy Michaels 
Rebecca Odes 
Danielle Smith 
Danielle Sullivan 
Katherine Stone 
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