Stay-at-home moms can’t seem to catch a break. They do what’s right for their family—dedicating all their time to raising their kids—which sounds like a noble and good thing to do, and yet they still don’t get the respect they deserve.
Some people still see stay-at-home parenting as the easy way out. They perceive stay-at-home moms as women who just lie around the house all day, pausing their Netflix binge-watching to change a dirty diaper or two.
But stay-at-home parents do so much around the house. They’re not only childcare providers, but also cooks, housekeepers, money managers, laundrywomen, teachers, etc. SheKnows put together a very scientific (no, not really) pie chart to finally answer what remains a mystery to many non-parents:
“What does a stay-at-home mom do all day?”
In case you’re having trouble reading the fine print, some highlights from the pie chart include “20% grocery shopping (for healthy she’ll never make but will make her feel like a responsible mother)” and “5% cleaning her children’s pee off the walls (of the local Rite Aid)”.
Though the pie chart is comical and shouldn’t be taken seriously, it is disheartening that stay-at-home moms still feel the need to defend themselves from people that devalue the work (yes, parenting is work) that they do.
On the next page: a more scientific answer to the question “so what do you do all day?”
What moms with their time depends a lot on their socioeconomic statuses
Redbook recently conducted a survey of over 500 women who identified as stay-at-home moms, asking them about their daily lives. They found that the women they interviewed were from diverse backgrounds whose activities ranged from playing tennis for hours to milking cows. In addition, many women who call themselves stay-at-home moms also work for pay.
What moms with their time depends a lot on their socioeconomic statuses. While well-off moms spend their day socializing, exercising, and running errands, moms whose households don’t have large incomes end up doing large amounts of housework.
When Insure.com tried to compute the economic value of a stay-at-home parent, it listed 14 tasks ranging from cooking and driving to planning parties and just “finding up what the kids are up to”, as Business Insider reports. Though not an exhaustive list, that gives us an idea of the amount of work stay-at-home moms really do—a lot more than some of us salaried employees, some of whom often get paid for just spacing out at our desks for hours.
READ: Dad fires back a stranger who belittled his wife for being stay-at-home mom
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