In an article entitled “Eco-Housewives - Enlightened Caregivers or Feminist Nightmare?” found in the Fall 2008 issue of Brain, Child magazine, Tracy Sutton interviewed Shannon Hayes, a self-proclaimed Uber-Mom and “enlightened homemaker.” As such, her goal, as she explained to Sutton, “Cuts out the consumerist middleman and asks people to work hard for what benefits their family and their community directly.” In other words, Hayes lives with her family on a farm where they grow their own food, she gets up at 2:30am to milk the cows, and her family buys everything second-hand and trades their clothes and baby gear with others in their community. This is all in an attempt to stay out of our consumerist culture as much as possible.

Now first, let me make a little disclaimer on behalf of . . . myself: I wanted, and expected, to love the ideas touted by Hayes. I fully prepared myself to finish the piece and promptly relocate my family out into the wilderness somewhere and build a cabin next to our newly-planted organic vegetable garden. I am easily influenced by the whole eco-movement, and proud to be as involved as I can in that endeavor. I tell you this to make sure you know I did not have any sort of negative preconceived notions about what this woman would say - in other words, I didn’t want to fight; I wanted to agree and be inspired.

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This is a game I like to call, “Can You Find Everything Wrong With This Article?”

Every year, there is an article like this, giving some outrageous figure for what a stay-at-home-mother’s salary would be if she were paid. What’s wrong with that? Ready? Let’s play. Here are my top 5:

1) It’s condescending. The way it’s presented, with the huge number, it’s meant to grab readers’ attentions, shock them and make them say, “What? Stay-at-home-mothers are worth that? That doesn’t make sense!” And, then they go away shaking their heads and laughing because…

2) The number is horribly inflated. If you read the article, it says that it arrives at that salary a couple of ways—first off by pooling together all the “jobs” that moms do, like psychologist and teacher and so on. Well, I am a stay-at-home-mom and I used to be a social worker. My “caseload” as a SAHM is three, when all my “clients” are home. My caseload as a social worker was 30. There’s a difference. I may dabble in the occasional behavior modification or grief counseling session as a mother, but it’s certainly not 40 hours a week, and my kids aren’t truly mentally handicapped. None of those pooled “jobs” are done 40 hours a week, or at the level of intensity that a professional would do them. So, it’s another way of being patronizing.

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