I Don't Get Paid in Hugs and Kisses

This Labor Day, spare me the cutesy rhetoric about my job

Last year for Labor Day, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a series of blurbs in which readers shared what they loved about their jobs. One woman wrote in something along the lines of, “My boss demands things at all hours of the day and wakes me with requests at night. I don’t have a clear job description, and he asks me to do all kinds of different tasks. I don’t get a salary, but I get paid in hugs and kisses. I wouldn’t trade my job for anything. My boss is a 12-month-old, and I am a stay-at-home mom.”

I ranted about that to my friend Kaela for weeks. We did riffs on it: My boss poops in his pants, but still I serve him, or My boss screams endlessly for no reason, or Last year, I did so well on my performance evaluation I got a 20% increase in kisses.

Seriously, though, that kind of rhetoric irks me for a number of reasons. For one thing, Ben, though charming, is not my boss. I am an adult. He is a child. Although I don’t have the total control that some parenting books would lead you to believe is possible, I am the one in charge. I hate the image of a mother as an unpaid but grateful drudge, serving husband and children around the clock.

It bugs me when people say being a mom is a 24/7 job. Maybe it is for stay-at-home single mothers, but if there’s a husband in the picture, a woman should be getting a break from time to time. While we didn’t, as I’d naively assumed, initially split the non-work-hours childcare 50/50 (I seriously underestimated how much time it takes to breastfeed an infant), Tom does a great job of taking care of Ben evenings and weekends. We haven’t somehow morphed into a 1950s couple in which he comes home and reads the paper while I continue my housework long into the night.

Also, what’s with the paid in hugs and kisses crap? I understand that people are saying there are intangible rewards of staying at home, but it bugs me to see hugs and kisses called payment. Aren’t they voluntary expressions of affection? Plus, I thought all parents got hugs and kisses. Or should we pity the poor work-outside-the-home parents, with their cold hard cash and their kiss deficits? Does the fact that I’ve hugged and kissed Ben much more than he’s hugged and kissed me mean that his salary is bigger than mine?

This kind of cutesy rhetoric hides the disturbing aspects of being a stay-at-home mom. After out-earning my husband the first 5 years of our marriage (admittedly not hard to do when he was in grad school the first 4 years), I gave up my salary and became dependent on Tom for money and health insurance. I underestimated how much this would drive me crazy. Any woman in her right mind should realize how vulnerable she becomes when she gives up her job.

The financial ramifications of staying home are real and serious. You cannot provide your own health insurance. You have no employer to contribute to a 401(k). You are not provided with life or disability insurance, sick days, or tuition benefits. You can’t invest your hugs and kisses to make up for the lower social security benefits you’ll get when you’re old. Mothers who re-enter the workforce after staying home with kids earn lower salaries than women who never left. If you are left alone by death or divorce, you are in a scary position.

I stayed home with Ben for 15 months, and I’m still staying home with him for 3 days a week. Obviously, I weighed my options and decided my staying home would work best for our family. But that doesn’t mean I support mindless blathering of sentimental platitudes about motherhood. Such words give the illusion of support but actually get in the way of a clear and honest discussion about the implications of our parenting choices. Gosh, if mothers are so happy to be paid in hugs and kisses, there’s no reason to make Social Security fair or offer basic health insurance to women who stay home! Instead, we need to look at our society and decide whether it supports our values, and make changes if it doesn’t.

Happy Labor Day, everyone.