Here we go again. It's the yearly assessment of housewive's imaginary "salaries":
Stay-at-home mother's work worth $138,095 a year
Don't get me wrong. I have the greatest respect for parents. But this sort of study pisses me off for a number of reasons:
1. Hello. Ever heard of a guy called a DAD? And yes, some of them actually stay at home while the wife works. Heck, some of them don't have a wife bringing in the bacon. A guy I'm dating will have his kid living with him all summer. He's divorced. He doesn't have a new wife. Who's taking care of that kid for the entire summer? Him, and no-one else. Do we see his "salary" added up anywhere? No, and that's not fair.
2. Do all moms work that hard? Sorry, but no. Would you like to meet the welfare mom who got kicked out of our apartment building in March? I'm not saying all welfare moms are like her, but this particular gal was a lazy slob who was perfectly fit, healthy, and young, and spent all her days hanging out with her boyfriend while her neglected kid ran around the complex leaving his toys everywhere for other people to trip and fall on.
3. Here are the 10 jobs that comprise a mother's work, according to the report:
housekeeper, cook, day care center teacher, laundry machine operator, van driver, facilities manager, janitor, computer operator, chief executive officer and psychologist
First off, this list is utterly ridiculous. Computer operator? CEO? Gimme a break.
As a single woman, I also serve as housekeeper, cook, "van driver," facilities manager, janitor (um, isn't this the same thing as housekeeper?), computer operator, chief executive officer...and heck, even a shrink (to all my friends who call me on the phone for advice).
I'm not saying it's easy to be a mom. But you know what? The idea of staying home with the kids while a partner goes out and deals with bringing in the money sounds a heck of a lot easier than being single and starting up a business on your own.
Kids can be a handful, I know. But for pete's sake, if you have a husband bringing in the money, and all you need to do is take care of one or two kids and keep a house clean...please, stop whining to the rest of us about how hard your life is.
I respect good mothers. Just don't try to tell me that you should get a special dispensation for the choice you made to have children. I'm sure the moms out there would be the first to say that the benefits of children far outweigh any drawbacks.
So why the need to put a monetary value on that? Housework is just housework. We all need to do it, kids or no.
The Solution To The Gay Marriage Issue
by Pat Gundry
Historically, marriage has been many different things. The only thing it has consistently been is a more or less personal relationship between two people, usually a man and a woman.
It has usually been a secular legal agreement between the marriage partners, or between two families.Not until relatively recently, as time goes, has it been considered a religious ceremony, with vows made before God.
Therein lies the problem, and the solution.
If we allow marriage to be a legal agreement for the purpose of protecting the persons involved and any children they might have, and their property, then the solution is to require marriage to, again, be, first and foremost, a legal agreement with certain minimum requirements set forth to qualify for entering into the agreement.
If we create a basic marriage contract that all must agree to in order to have the legal protection of marriage, we could eliminate the present conflict about whether people of the same gender should be allowed to marry.
If persons desiring to have the legal protections of marriage could simply go to a courthouse and prove their identities, meet reasonable and minimum requirements set forth for everyone, and sign the marriage document, the problem is solved.
And, if those persons desire to have a religious marriage ceremony, of any kind whatsoever, they are free to do that also.
Or, if the marrying parties want to create their own invention for an auxiliary marriage ceremony, they are free to do that.
Let those who want to marry women marry them, and those who want to marry men marry them.
And, this seems to be lost on the majority of opponents to gay marriage, inter gendered people should be free to marry whomever they wish without having to choose a gender and then be restricted in their choice of a marriage partner to a declared opposite gendered partner.
Gender is on a continuum, all the way from what we might think of as totally male to what we might think of as totally female. Many people think they are one or the other gender when they are actually a mixture to one degree or another.
Insisting that we must know the gender of a person and then restrict them to what we may erroneously think of as the opposite gender is forcing individuals to comply with a very out of date understanding of what gender is.
Allowing all adults to choose who they want to marry, not asking them if they are one gender or another, allowing that to be private, as it should be, will solve not only the problem of the gay marriage issue, but that of discriminating against and invading the privacy of inter gendered people.
Posted on September 21, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (3)
Tags: current issues, gay marriage, gay rights, inter gendered, religion