wages

by Robert Drago and Arlene Holt Baker

Many voters and pundits see John McCain as a maverick, someone willing to cross party lines on important issues. Maybe that is so in some ways, but his record on family issues is consistent. He opposes what American families need (see Take Care Net Summary).

If we want to understand the wage gap between mothers and others, we might need to start by looking at the way we treat our kids. A new University of Michigan study, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, reports that boys ages 10 to 18 are more likely than girls to be paid for doing housework, even though boys spend an average of 30% less time doing chores.

According to the WSJ, Professor Frank Stafford, who headed the resrarch, speculates that "Boys may be handling more of the kinds of chores that are regarded as a job that should be paid, such as lawnmowing. Chores such as dishwashing or cooking, often regarded as routine and done free, may fall more often to girls."

The website salary.com released a study today calculating the true cost of a mother's childrearing labor - they calculate that stay-at-home moms' would earn $134,000 a year if paid for all her work; mothers who work outside the home perform an estimated $85K of additional work.