JFF - Do In-home Parents Deserve Salary?

I would think that most stay at home moms are in charge of the money anyway, at least all the ones I know are so they get whatever they need. But yes I do think it is a tougher job than most and they deserve more respect than they are usually given

My husband couldn't afford me. With everything I do, I would deserve much, much more than ten per cent. But husbands and wives are on the same team (or should be). They share the house, they share the kids, they share the fun, they share the money.

Well, in some cases like my relative, she was in an abusive relationship and wasn't even allowed to use the car or go grocery shopping without her husbands permission, and his answer was usually 'no'.

In *most* functional marriages, money allotment doesn't need to be enforced.

Meh. We share our money earned and have one account. We don't do "this is mine, this is yours." We're a team.

We don't enforce money 'mine' or 'yours' in our house. My husband works, I stay home with our kids. The money he makes is our money, for our family.

No.

In our house, what's mine is mine and what's his is mine. At least that's what my husband says. :)

Well my husband pays for my housing, medical care, food, clothing, car, vacations and pretty much anything else I want or need. He does the same thing for all three of our children and all of our pets. And I have more than enough spending money to use as I wish.
Asking him for 10% of his pay on top of all of that? Um, no.

My wife and I are partners . . . equal partners. She and I know what money is available after the bills. We both have access to that money. We talk over what we want to spend it on beyond a certain point.

She and I both have "fun money" that we can spend on what ever we want. She and I have "staches" where we put money we are only accountable to ourselfves for. My stache paid for a week long celebration of our 38th anniversary (vacation in Jamaica at the beach). It will pay for her birthday present and Christmas present. With any kind of luck, it will pay for our 39th anniversary trip next year.

Good luck to you and yours.

Payment for being a hands on parent doesnt come monetarily, it's much bigger than that.

If I were one of those women who has a craptastic husband that thinks that all the money is HIS, then it would be a good idea, but I, personally, would be taking a HUGE pay cut! LOL!

Na.....I'll stick with the 50/50, not 90/10.

I manage our money so I probably get more than 10% already so NO I don't want to take a pay cut. :) In all reality, we share our money and we don't believe that either of us in entitled to more/less of it bases on who technically brings it in. When I finish my schooling in 2 years, I will be making twice what my husband makes and it will still go into our general fund to be spent on our living expenses.

No way...that is not a good dealio. I get 100% of my hubbies' earnings...there is no his and hers in our home. Wait...I mean I get 90% cuz 10% goes to the Lord in tithes and offerings.

I am the accountant in the family so I distribute the earnings and spend the earnings. I think I have the good end of the bargain.

Good luck and best wishes!

Psh, few husbands could actually AFFORD to pay what his wife's salary should be.

Suppose to be a team, no yours and mine, regardless of who's making it.

So under this 10% plan, say a guy made 100k, his SAHM wife would stash 10k that she would use ONLY on herself, not the kids, not the house.....? Hmmm, maybe not such a bad deal, huh?

:)

And do what with it? Help with the groceries and the mortgage and the retirement fund? Its ridiculous for the modern marriage. Some men give it all to their wires to manage, some are stingy jerks. Mine is as generous with me as he can be. Why should I settle for a percentage? We are married. Everything he has is mine and everything I have is his. We make decisions together and no one makes big purchases without the other one's consent. Its a sad portrayal of what her marriage is.
why should healthy marriages suffer this ridiculous stipulation because some men are controlling abusive stingy jerks? My mother could have benefited from this arrangement, but i think it would have been better had she grown a back bone.

I make 100% of my husband's earnings. It's not HIS money, it's OUR money.

Only 10%?!?!?!? I'm confused, I thought all of it was MINE. ;-)

I think the SAH parent (male or female) should share equally (50%) in the earnings. If it was both parents' decision for one to stay home, then this is an equal partnership, with equal benefits.

You know what I want? I don't want a paycheck for all that I do. I want someone to figure out what my salary would be, and then apply credit to my social security benefits for all the years I stayed out of the workforce to raise my children.

Everything between my husband and I is shared. It's not a yours or mine type thing. I already get his wages... But then I pay the bills with it. Lol.

Now do I think that we deserve a nice surprise or something from our husbands more often to show appreciation?..... YES!

That is such an odd concept to me. So, what would she be expected to do with that 10%? Pay bills? Contribute financially to the household? Or is it her play money? If so, does the husband get 10% as play money also? In our home, we are a team. All of our accounts are joint, so we both have full access to all the money that comes in. I'm sorry but what I do is worth way more than 10% of what he earns. He couldn't hire someoen to do what I do for that. I think it undervalues a stay at home mom.

I don't know about giving 10%, but I think the money should be put in a joint account with each spouse having equal access. That said, I think that both spouse should respect the other enough not to make any big purchases without the knowledge/consent of the other.

Why would I settle for a measly 10% when I'm getting 100? :) It's foolish and immature to expect to be paid for taking care of your own family, especially your own children. Just stupid. Oh, wait that's called welfare. :| Getting paid would not make it any more rewarding. If being a S.A.H.P is something that causes you to gripe then it would be the same annoyance as when you work a corporate job; You'd still drag out of bed in the morning, barely get to work on time, take way too many smoke breaks, too long of a lunch and when the job frustrated you the first thing out of your mouth would be "They don't pay me enough for this &H@#!"

If her husband is a jerk and only thinks his money is "his"... then his Wife must be pretty destitute. Living in poverty. Which is, for a Husband doing that, really a jerk.

How can a Husband, just stand there, and not provide for his SAHM-wife?

In our house his paycheck gets put into the one bank account we have, I pay all the bills and manage the money, we make decisions on spending together.. I don't think he's ever bought anything "just for him" that I didn't completely agree with..

I don't know about getting paid but a gold MEDAL would be nice. It's a thankless and hard job. Behind every successful man is a very tired wife and for every great kid there's a mother that gave up a little dream of her own to make someone else's dream happen. My rewards are few but the best...it's: Thanks, mom...you're the best! :)

My kids are my family, not my occupation.

Personally, I think 10% is a low ball figure!
With all that a SAHM does (or even a PT working mom, like me) most middle income men probably couldn't afford to pay for these services!

But I am lucky, I make some money. Husband makes about 5 times what I make. But he's so generous...never questions why I might "need" more money from the joint account, etc....

If I had O. of those "allowance-giving" husbands, he's have probably been gone long ago!

I made my own (good) money for a LOT of years before I switched to PT, so I *thought* it was going to be odd....but thankfully b/c my husband rocks...it's not at all!

yes. my job is just as important as my husband's. And he does give me a portion of his paycheck.

Do they deserve a salary for the care of children? HECK yeah, it's the hardest 24/7 job ever, and very emotionally rewarding. Imagine how much less exhausting it would be if SAHM/SAHD's could get paid.

I'm assuming she means not taken from him, but paid as if it were a salary. I think it's a neat idea. I enjoy a particular science fiction novel series about a cop in the future, by JD Robb - and one of the jobs mentioned is "professional mother" or "professional father". It's basically a stay-at-home parent and in the books, I guess it's paid for by the city (it's in NYC). Yeah, it's fiction, but it's cool.

My husband and I have this principle that we stole from Eddie Murphy's standup: "HALF." I make a bagel with cream cheese and hubby wants some, "HALF." There is only one cupcake left and we both want it, "HALF." My hubby brings home a paycheck and I need or want money, "HALF." It's good and simple, and works for us. We are equal.

I just joke with hubby that the WHOLE check is mine ;) I also joke that no-one could afford me so I am forced to work for free :P Seriously though all the money that comes in is ours, so it's all good. I think the idea of a 10% salary is weird bc I see all the money as belonging to us. He works so we can have money which is a necessity and I look after our children bc we had them and it is our job to see that they are looked after and we decided I would be the one doing it, end of story. Getting 'paid' by him would seem strange to me. I mean what would be next, I sleep with him a certain amount bc he makes the money? I wouldn't want to live tit for tat like that, just my two cents.

That would be a huge paycut for most SAHM American moms... including myself! But this mom lives in South Africa! It's probably like it was here in the 60's and70's. I know my mom would have really loved 10% of my fathers paycheck! He was tight with the money and he made all the decicions on how it was spent! Thank God things have changed for the better!

YES!!!

The stay at home parent should never have to ASK for money to purchase something other than gas and food. The SAHP works just as hard as the outside earner - but they are working for free. The Earner should feel that their spouse/partner deserves some sort of financial compensation for all the money their altruistic choice saves the entire family unit by giving them a small/decent wage which is ONLY theirs to do or save with as they choose.

Never forget... if you were to ask someone ELSE to watch your children, they'd get a very good wage. If you were to have someone ELSE clean your home, expect to shill out a good amount of money. If you were to have someone ELSE buy your groceries and cook - another large sum of money each month. Having a SAHP saves the family a lot of money, and the parent who stays homes has to deal with adult isolation, stress due to too many 'jobs' needing to be done during the same time frame, and knowing their hard work isn't earning them a paycheck, nor is it paying into their social security benefits or medicare/medicaid benefits.

Why? That sounds pretty stupid to me. I don't ge 10% of what I make, and my husband doesn't get 10% of what he makes, but we have a joint account and pay our bills and buy our groceries. I make significantly more than he does (thought not a lot by most standards), but that doesn't mean that I get more "spending" money. Each person should probably have some of his or her own money, regardless of who earns it, just to allow for small-scale spending without permission ("Honey, can I buy these shoes? They're on sale." or "Can I buy a latte with a girlfriend today?" or "Sweetie, do you mind if I go out for a beer after work with one of my friends?").

Craziness. :)

Here's our reality,
He makes the paycheck, I stay home.
He gets 1/17 of his take home paycheck every month. This buys his gas, McD's, donuts.
I get the rest to pay bills, kids activities and my gas, anything fun.
We both have IRA's and whole life insurance. He would have to sell the house to get a nanny to do what I do.

When I worked, the money went into the same account as his.

Ha, I skimmed over the question, and I thought it said do parents deserve "SANITY" LOL, so I clicked on it to say Hell yes, but I don't have any left.
Salary, no, but I think we should be able to buy whatever we want!

I don't get this at all...all of my husbands pay goes into one account. We spend it as we wish...His pay is my pay...