As a SAHM I Should be Paid $134,121 - I guess Caitlin Flanagan disagrees

My husband just forwarded this CNNMoney article to me titled "Being a mom could be a 6-figure job" and he lamented that right now he can't afford to pay me all that since his own salary is roughly 1/3 of that amount :)

This figure was determined by Salary.com by calculating the hours and pay of housekeeper, cook, day-care teacher, janitor, and CEO among other functions that stay at home moms do*. Cool - huh? Except that we DON'T get paid a penny for our work! And now women like Caitlin Flanagan are saying that we should be just happy with our inner housewives and stop complaining!!

No wonder she could not stand up to Stephen Colbert when she went in his show weeks ago. Speaking of whom, I finally got to see his "speech" demolishing Bush at the White House Correspondents Dinner -- thanks for the link, Jo, but I just couldn't see the Salon.com videos, but my husband found it in 3 parts at YouTube.com.

I wasn't able to see Caitlin Flanagan's Colbert Report's appearance at Salon either, but the Comedy Central website makes it available, so you can see how pathetic she looks. Right now this is the page where you can find Flanagan but as new shows are uploaded, it'll go down the page to the next page, I suppose. (What Colbert had to say about his appearance at the Correspondents Dinner is currently here and he began with a hilarious talk about the immigrants notshowing to work protest of Monday, May 1st that's worth seeing).

I was surprised to get my copy of Time magazine yesterday and see that Flanagan had written the last page's essay, titled "We're Here, We're Square, Get Used to It: Why the Democratic Party is losing the housewife vote," I guess you can read it here, at least during this week. She argues that the Republicans keep winning because the democrats have alienated the average white men and their housewives. She's always been on the democrats' side of policy making, she says, but that right now she's being driven away because women like her, who are happy to stay home and care for their family and their man, who have a traditional family and go to church every Sunday are being made fun of by the democrats. Hmm, how interesting. Worse of all - and apparantly what motivated her argument - every reporter who comes to talk to her about her new book promptly assumes that she's a conservative Republican, and she's upset that her traditional views on marriage would prompt that assumption.

See, I think it's OK that women choose not to work and stay at home with the kids, but as plenty of other bloggers out there have already stated [I'll include links later, promise], the problem with Flanagan is that she's arguing that women should be happy with that, and stop complaining that society owes them something if they stay at home. I'll take the 134,121 dollars instead.


*They also calculated what working mothers should earn for their second work journey at home, and it's not bad either!! It's $85,876 (for working moms who work 44 hours per week).