A Proposal to Instill Parenting as a Paid Job

There is no debating how hard it is to raise children, especially for an all-day-every-day ‘stay-at-home’ parent. The importance of good parenting, especially for young children, is something we collectively understand. It is no mystery that the care and intention we put into loving, teaching, and guiding children makes a huge impact on their psychological, social, and cognitive development. Years of research has confirmed this. Why one of the most difficult jobs an adult can hold is not honored in our society with an officially paid status is the real mystery. Many people agree that stay-at-home parents should be paid, so here is a humbly drafted job description to encourage parents everywhere to advocate for an actual salary (or, at least, reasonable benefits) that recognizes their immense contribution to society.

To Whom This Proposal Applies

Whether we have the financial freedom to make this choice or not, many of us prefer to stay at home with our young children who we brought into the world. For a breastfeeding mother, it is certainly most feasible for her to be the parent at home when a family prefers a parent provide full-time care for the baby.

Plenty of mothers work full time and breast pump while at work, but even with legislation protecting this right, many workplaces lag sadly behind in actually implementing these protections and women are often forced to wean earlier than preferred. For babies who drink from a bottle, whether filled with formula or pumped milk, it is just as easy for a father to be a stay-at-home parent as it is for a mother.

Although mothers are the primary stay-at-home parent in most households, fathers and other guardians often are as well. This proposal applies to all primary child-rearers who do not work in order to provide full-time care for a young child.

Understanding the Significance of Our Job

Imagine full-time parenting as a paid job for which you apply. For some people, parenting itself was more of a surprise job than a planned career, but regardless of the circumstances that led to this position, let’s imagine we are applying for the income and/or benefits to which I believe stay-at-home parents are well overdue. What information would be included in the job description? Are we qualified? What kind of support would we receive? If we think stay-at-home parents should be paid, we ought to at least have some idea of what we are doing and what we are asking for. It is beyond the scope of this discussion to describe every responsibility that comes along with the job of full-time parenting – I think that information is already intuitive enough for parents! Here, we will just cover a good amount of the basics in a rough draft job description.

All of these tasks are important. In any given job in the workforce, slacking off in performance is irresponsible and impacts your team. In parenting, slacking off is especially unfair to your child who is in a much more helpless stage of development and completely dependent on you for proper care. Every child is more than just a project – he/she is a very real child who will grow up to be a very real adult.

A Parent’s Objective

Before delving into the job description, let’s understand the overall agenda of being a parent. What is it we are trying to accomplish? What is the goal we are trying to achieve? Everyone’s answer will look a little different. Here is what hopefully sums up much of what we all strive for: to love, nurture, teach, and effectively raise our child so that he/she is adequately equipped to flourish in life at every age and stage.

Ultimately, we want our children to grow up into fully functioning independent adults who are mentally and physically healthy and who can form healthy social bonds with others in developmentally appropriate and meaningful ways. This is an important job, not one to put in only half the effort. This is the most important job in the world. Our children grow up to form a society of ideally competent adults.  

Job Description

Position Title: Full-time parent and CEO of parenthood in your household

Benefits: Endless love and joy from caring for your child and celebrating their discoveries (non-exhaustive)

Risks: Illness, injury, setbacks, sleeplessness, temporary insanity caused by said sleeplessness (also non-exhaustive)

Schedule: Up to 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Schedule varies to include potentially unreliable breaks while baby naps or when you have arranged for others to care for baby while you sleep or perform other self-survival tasks. It is your responsibility to seek, acquire and secure regular help.

Responsibilities: Duties will change and progress over time as your child grows and develops. Expectations include but are not limited to: holding baby and providing plenty of loving physical touch; feeding baby throughout the day and night; changing diapers; washing and sanitizing bottles, pumping supplies and any other supplies used several times a day for feeding purposes; responding promptly to baby’s cries and distress in order to comfort and soothe; washing baby’s clothes and blankets and possibly also cloth diapers; giving baths; nursing wounds; attempting to diagnose illness which may or may not be serious; taking baby to medical appointments; caring for baby during illness; and providing playful stimulation and meaningful interaction. Additional long-term responsibilities include modeling and teaching appropriate manners and social skills, healthy conflict resolution, and constructive emotional regulation.

Position Duration: 18 years’ legal commitment. As CEO of parenthood in your household, there is no ‘honorable discharge’ except in the case when, due to serious circumstances, you deem another carer better able to raise your child (such as when your child is adopted by a family member or another person who assumes full custody). Should you commit any serious infringement that endangers the well-being of your child such as abuse or neglect, you lose your position and are ‘court-martialed’, so to speak, while another person is deemed primary carer in your place. Resuming this position is contingent on the circumstances and outcome of remediation.

Compensation: You can do your own math by multiplying how many hours you are responsible for your child by whatever hourly rate you would pay a qualified nanny. Start with 168 hours in a week and subtract the amount of hours you sleep each night, any time the baby naps at least an hour, and any time the baby is in the full care of the other parent, another family member, or a babysitter. If you sleep eight consecutive hours a night, your baby takes at least one full hour-long nap each day, your partner spends an average of two hours a day providing sole care for the baby, and a decent nanny in your area earns $20 an hour, then your gross salary is $94,640 (now we’re talking).

If you get less sleep at night, your baby’s naps rarely exceed 45 minutes in length, or your partner works long hours and isn’t available to provide as much childcare most days, then your salary will be higher because you are spending more waking hours providing full care and attention for your child. One article shares that the median annual salary of a mother is $162,581 (now we’re talking!). The author explains, ‘with a nearly 96-hour work-week and a six-figure annual rate, moms may be the most valuable workers in the country.’ I can’t agree more. Stay-at-home parents should be paid their worth in gold.

Full-time parents who plan to return to their job after a year or longer could be alternatively compensated with paid maternity/paternity leave, and then with subsidized quality childcare when they return to work through the years leading up to school. On a side note, let’s stop limiting school funding to voting outcomes and property taxes; why not mandate it for all tax-payers and distribute the funding uniformly based on population density (beyond base needs)? After all, these tax-payers will eventually be cared for in hospitals or nursing homes or served in other capacities by the children whose quality of education depended on their tax dollars.

Continuing Education: The most important benefit that should accompany full-time parenting is that of continued growth and learning opportunities for the parent. No parent knows everything they need to know about raising children, but we do the best we know how and learn along the way. The best way to support parents, besides compensating monetarily for their service, is to give them valuable information and teach them important skills to help them every step of the journey.

The aim of continuing education is two-fold: to help parents continually improve their skills in order to do a wonderful job raising their children, and to make it a rewarding and enjoyable job for parents their selves. This includes teaching self-care strategies for the most extreme and difficult circumstances as well as providing opportunities for parents to incorporate self-care into their schedule. When it comes to educating parents, no stone should be left unturned. I was fortunate to attend free support groups with my infant son at the hospital where he was born and where different organizations in the community would come to share topical information each week. Not everyone has that opportunity, however, and there is plenty of information from which we could all desperately benefit (I know I could use all the help I can get!).

The Takeaway

If all parents had the option to provide full-time care for their young children without worrying about how to support them financially, I think a lot more would choose to do so. Of course, plenty of people also love their jobs and choose to work even if they can afford not to. But it shouldn’t have to be a zero-sum game if they want to also spend a little more time with their children.

I think that if important financial costs such as health insurance and childcare were provided to all families, a lot more people would work part-time jobs in order to spend more time caring for their children. Most of us depend on full-time employment for health insurance and other benefits, but if we were instead given partial compensation for providing part-time childcare in order to cover the costs that we would otherwise have covered from a full-time salary with benefits, society would shift for the first time to see more fathers staying home with their kids and more mothers climbing the career ladder at the same pace as their male counterparts. Families would flourish given such options and flexibility.

Whether you are already a stay-at-home parent or hope to be one, you deserve compensation and you deserve support. Stay-at-home parents should be paid based on the important role they play in society and on the unparalleled amount of quality work they do.