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since y’all love to talk transactions: if men used their salary to literally pay their wives the minimum wage + overtime for hours spent cooking, cleaning, & child rearing - it would add up to way more than whatever her potion of the household expenses are. https://twitter.com/notcapnamerica/status/1275792192024559616
i’m gonna do the math based on some averages & if ur thinking ”well a stay at home parent has a lot of downtime so you can’t quantify their hours” 1. you’re wrong & 2. do you not take a paid lunch or paid breaks? do you dock your own pay on a slow workday? no? great. moving on
I’ve done some research, so let’s base the stats i’ll use off of the family in this video who i know nothing about but let’s assume they are white, college educated, and in their early 30s to give them the best shot at things working out great for them in the USA.
the median income for a white, 22 y/o college educated man in the US is approximately 50k/year (before taxes) based on data from the Bereau of Labor Statistics in 2018.
based on that same data, a ROUGH estimate for how much MORE they can expect to make by the time they’re 32 is anywhere between 30-80%
so let’s be kind but not overly generous to our 30-something whites with an infant child and say that our sole breadwinner is pulling in about 70k annually after taxes.
Now here’s where things get fun.
Now here’s where things get fun.
the average budget for the average American household according to the 2013 consumer expenditure survey is $63,784. this has allotments for housing, food, transportation, healthcare, personal insurance, pension, debt, education, as well as vices, entertainment, and charity.
but for the sake of this thread let’s just say that they’re breaking even every year, living paycheck to paycheck and saving nothing. 70k in, 70k out, which is not far off from how 78% of US Americans currently life.
per the logic of those who argue that the Breadwinner/Stay At Home split is an equal, 50/50 transaction, presumably this means that both partners are doing work of equal fiscal value and are both earning no more or less than their $35K to keep the family alive
Breadwinner is doing their job, grinding 40/hours a week and coming up with their 35K of expenses, plus the presumed 35K annual salary that they owe their partner, 100% of which will go into the overall cost of living for the household (70k)
so now let’s quantify a stay at home parent’s hypothetical work hours so we can figure out what their job is worth under this model.
