ARE HOUSEWIVES OVERPAID ?

BILLINGSGATE JOURNAL (Dateline San Diego)

MOTHER'S DAY BULLETIN: Last week the results of a study that evaluated what a "full-time stay-at-home" mother should make if she were paid for all her labor was published. The study estimated that by calculating the earning power of the 10 jobs most closely comprising a mother's role, including cooking, janitoring, van driving and providing psychological help, she would earn $134,120 per year.

Interestingly, this goes against the grain of extreme women-libbers. By default, it places the father in a patriarchal position again, the role that was lost when our boys came back after World War II and found their wives wearing hard hats, smoking cigars and driving bulldozers. He would, in effect, become the CEO of the family because he would be responsible for paying his wife's hypothetical salary. His wife would merely be his most senior employee. Since in reality, both husbands and wives contribute to and benefit from the household economy, the costs and benefits should be accounted for as in any other business.

• Although the wife may do a disportionate share of the household work, she also benefits from it at least as much as her husband does. This cuts her salary in half to: $67,060

• Since the husband would be required to be the sole source of cash flow, he is responsible for all the family expenses. Therefore, half of the family's housing costs; mortgage payments, food and clothing, etc., should be deducted from the wife's imputed salary to cover her rent. Easily another 2 grand a month, leaving her a paltry $43,060 remainder.

• The wife's imputed salary would be cut even more for work the husband did around the house, such as managing finances, mowing the lawn and taking out the garbage. Let's say around a $2,000 per month. This leaves the wife $1588 a month for miscellaneous expenses such as green fees for her husband and buying jars for canning vegetables and fruits in her spare time.

NOTE: Since Mother's Day is just around the corner, perhaps enough has been said. But the point is that a wife could easily end up owing her husband money if proper accounting principles were used.