It’s Friday. Where’s my paycheck?
I am a divorced, full-time parent, who also seeks work and has been doing so for more than a year, since the most recent layoffs – two, nearly simultaneously. I was working a corporate full-time contractor job (marketing writing) and a freelance journalism job. I managed both around parenting my boys. And I was almost paying my bills.
How many of us are in this situation? Men and women who no longer show up in a statistic because we aren’t on the unemployment rolls? When you work contract or freelance, there are no benefits. There is no unemployment. How many single parents are there, living on credit and a prayer? Women, mostly. And still showing up 24/7 for their children, while sinking deeper into debt, aging more rapidly, getting sick from “doing it all” and lack of proper medical care. Losing hope.
So. There. I’ve said it. I’m 50-something and worn out. 50-something and financially beyond repair. Still parenting. No job opportunities. Skills galore, brains-a-plenty, and a body that is breaking down, largely from the stress that has kicked a sleep disorder into the red zone. As for my 18 years of “volunteer parenting” for no pay, and two more to go? I’m over it. Where’s my paycheck – with back pay and benefits?
As for the past year? Let’s not go there. I wish to speak frankly, but I am also trying to follow my own rule, about not airing dirty laundry on the Internet. And truth is mutable, subject to contortion in able hands. This is my truth. Only that. And my indignation, which some of you share.
We pay childcare givers – don’t parents qualify?
So here it is, my treatise: My time, my knowledge, my skills, my experience all poured into parenting, and were I not here, doing this job, someone else would be, and with pay. Where’s my $1,000/week pay for full time parenting two boys? Or $2,000/week, since expenses require that I feed them, house them, buy them books and school supplies, clothes and doctor’s visits? Too much money you say? If I were a live-in nanny, multilingual, with fancy degrees and years of experience – how much would you pay me then?
Would you prefer a different standard? Fine. How about a teacher’s salary? An accomplished and experienced teacher, and that means health care benefits and disability benefits, right? Maybe even dental and vision and life insurance. Perhaps a retirement plan of some sort. Unemployment insurance. Wait. I won’t be needing that because I’m a mother, and my children are my heart. Abandonment could only come from my death. And I vowed years ago that I would live until this job is done. It is my bargain with God. Until they are properly launched, doing the best I can for my sons. I gave them life. I owe them that.
Anger as fuel
So I’m back to my issue, my waking thought, my irritation, my constant fear, my morning anger. The mask is off. I’m too damn tired for pretty or cute or upbeat. This is real. Only a fragment of my reality, but real nonetheless: perpetual worry about my ability to keep going on virtually nothing, to keep parenting because it is my responsibility. It is not solely mine, but it has turned out to be largely mine. And while it has also been my privilege, getting through each day is getting harder. I am disintegrating. Yet I am still parenting, and well.
But I want to talk about pay for work, to stay angry if I must for the fuel which that particular emotion provides. I want to talk about value for critical skills and experience, the years of nurturing children, of encouraging them, teaching them, preparing them for the world and their contributions to it. I want to talk about surviving rather than slowly spiraling into poverty, which is exactly where I have been headed for many years. Now tell me – why do we pay babysitters and teachers, cooks and house cleaners, gardeners and handymen, taxi drivers and bus drivers, career counselors and tutors? I have been all that, and more.
Parenting is a profession. Why aren’t we paid for it?
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Tags: anger, biglittlewolf, children of divorce, Culture, daily plate of crazy, dollar value of parenting, marriage and divorce, Parenting, parenting is a profession, salary for live-in nanny, single moms, single mothers and poverty, Single Parenting, Surviving Recession, value of parenting, whatever life dishes out, women and anger, women's issues
This is not the stuff of my everyday life; it is affirming and energizing to relive this extraordinary fullness, the mind-body connection, the airy sense of well-being that results. And as the thrill of the experience began to ease, very late last night, I lay down and slept. Without turbulence, without waking, for nearly six hours. Miraculous. 
I know exactly where I would go and put my mastery of the French tongue to use. But first, vitamins, bills, parenting, real life. Fortunately, I have a cache of foreign films of my own. In memory.
Eventually, there was another car to drive, and both of us had to get back behind a wheel. When you are knocked down, you must get up. Period.
