The New York Times recently published a “Room for Debate” column featuring four different perspectives on the topic “Wages for Housework.” The premise of the debate: that housework – including child care – is generally unpaid labor, except when others are hired to perform it. A professional child care provider is remunerated for child care work, while a mother isn’t. Countries in vastly different parts of the world have considered proposals to pay housewives (as well as househusbands) a salary for their work, with advocates arguing that the wages would give millions of people financial autonomy and demonstrate that taking care of children, cleaning, and cooking meals are difficult tasks that are critical for national well-being.
All Our Kin’s work with family child care providers has made us passionate about increasing the status of child care in the eyes of the public. NPR recently featured a graph showing the ten most popular jobs in each income bracket illustrating how different jobs are remunerated; sadly, the bracket including child care workers falls dead last. Furthermore, a recent report from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment highlighted the challenges of building a skilled workforce of early educators in a nation where “much of the public is averse to the idea that pre-kindergarten teachers require levels of knowledge and skill as rigorous as those of their counterparts who teach older children.” We must find a way to pay child care providers the wages that they deserve for educating our youngest, most vulnerable children.
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“The most excited people in some cases were the people who came in with the most responsibility — and they got it,” Peter says.