AFTER a hiatus of a few weeks due to some necessary commitments, I have decided to write this week on a theme appropriate to today – Mother’s Day. The quote that prefaces this article was chosen for two reasons.

First, it illustrates the sort of sacrifice and love that is the hallmark of motherhood universally; mothers portray the level of self-sacrifice that fathers do not often match. One cannot begin to overestimate the value of a mother to a child’s, or even an adult’s, life. Mothers nurture, educate, and generally oversee the development of our society. Every single tribute today dedicated to the wonderful nature of mothers is necessary, and all the gifts which will be given are well-deserved.

Second, I chose the Tenneva Jordan’s quote above because it is a demonstration, however basic, of maternal management within the home.
While I acknowledge the varying facets of motherhood that will be highlighted and celebrated today, I wish to focus in this column on an issue which goes largely unacknowledged and unappreciated.

A housewife’s work or, more often than not, a mother’s work in the home, is exactly what we have named it – home economics. Even if we were to give it a less glamorous label, like ‘housework’, for example, it is hard to escape from the fact that it is work.

Globally, in recent times, there has been an increasing impetus to recognise the work undertaken by stay-at-home mothers/women. Surprisingly, in researching this topic, I’ve discovered that the question of compensation for the work done by housewives has been an issue as far back as half a century ago, to say the least.

‘The Economic Contribution of Homemakers’, 1947 by Margaret Reid, dealt with the issue at hand. “Homemakers,” begins the article, “are here conceived of as women who assume a major responsibility for household tasks, and for this work receive no money wage. Since there are many such women, this article is in substance a report on a major enterprise in our economy.”

Consider the following excerpt from a study done in Bangladesh last year and titled, ‘The Economic Contribution of Women in Bangladesh Through their Unpaid Labour’ — “… even those women who have paid jobs must continue bearing responsibility for household work, with its many time consuming tasks. As a result, many women spend most of their time on housework. Women also perform paid labour within their homes, such as taking in piece work or assisting in family productive activities, such as farm work, running a family business, etc. Typically, however, any work that receives little pay is considered unimportant and labelled as ‘women’s work’, despite the fact that such work actually brings tangible economic benefits to the family. Since housework and childcare are unpaid and are carried out almost exclusively by women, they are considered to be without monetary value.”

Here we have two studies published a significant time apart, in different parts of the world and the issues are essentially the same. If it is generally acknowledged that housework contributes significantly to the economic well-being of societies the world over, how is it that no one has come up with a system for compensating women for the work they undertake in the home?

Consider this – imagine if all the women who are stay-at-home moms or who engage in a significant amount of housework each day were suddenly transported to another planet. Every single job that they undertook would either now have to be taken over by men, which would impact on male productivity, or, more importantly, some person (or alien creature) would have to be paid to do those very same activities.

So where does that leave us? If it is that monetary compensation for housework is somehow impracticable, as critics of the idea would claim, how does one demonstrably show appreciation for the home economics outside of the Mother’s Day food baskets and perfume sets? This column doesn’t allow, both in terms of space or scope, for that level of analysis but — gauging from the fact that a workable solution has not presented in the 60 years since Ms Reid’s article — I don’t think that these questions are going to be answered any time soon. Until society comes up with a way to start issuing cheques to those homemakers in our midst, all we can do is show our appreciation in the best ways we know how. Happy Mother’s Day!!