Seems like a silly question, right? Especially on Mother’s Day (one day late as yesterday was an event filled day). We celebrate mom’s and all they do. Whatever that is, love, nurturing, caring, there is an unsaid insistance at not distilling it down to a currency calculation.
Nor should it be. Kind of. As long as it is understood as a public good, one that fulfills the mission of a seventeen year investment in a child– work done to form a member of society who is both able to achieve their inner purposes while contributing in ways to those around them. It is nature’s ultimate public good transacted between the giver of life and her offspring.
But for the sake of practicality, for ease of conversation, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to quantify some of the efforts towards these ends? Researchers such as James S Coleman tied mother’s education level to child’s performance, but as far as I know he did not draw a present value of those future earnings back to the mother and say, voila, her life’s work was worth $xxx.
Perhaps the aversion to equating mother’s work to dollars is that cash is fungible and moms are not. You can hire babysitter to look after a child, but that just buys you care enough to keep the child out of harm’s way. It doesn’t buy all the extra on-demand services, or the supplementary nurturing, or the tradeoff evaluations between off-spring and what would be best for them at that particular point in time.
Even the courts agree that only under dire circumstances should a child be removed from their mother. After forays into such social interventions, it quickly became clear that even if they are of meager means and abilities, moms are still the most likely to serve their child’s interests. You see, because the labor of motherhood is not replaceable with paid work, it is non-fungible.
And similarly, just as the mother is poorly substituted in the paid marketplace, the care and education passed from parent to child is also non-fungible. A child cannot package it up like their Nike shoes or favorite baseball cards an sell them to classmates. The value of the transaction clings tightly to those in the relationship.
These are not straight out gifts in most cases. There is a payment, whether said or unsaid. Mostly the implication is that what a parent does for a child, the child is expected to pay it forward to the next generation. The reciprocity isn’t back to the individual who did the work. Time does not allow for that. The reciprocity is to another in the group who will in due course have a need.
But what about the group: Mothers? Are they an aggregate of individual mothers each making the best decision for their individual child, or are they grouped as mothers, celebrated on Mothers’ Day, altogether going through such metering out a list of jobs? Well, that depends
At the primary level every player is an individual. But there are instances, compelled by a common pursuit, say a Little League Team, that mothers may start behaving as a group. They become known as The Baseball Moms. Although each mom is still keeping their individual commitments to their children, the interest in winning the League championship, persuades them, as a group, to cooperate for all things baseball.
These might be making sure all the kids get to practices, organizing their eligibility paperwork, bringing snacks and water, mending and cleaning uniforms, tag-teaming on sibling care. It doesn’t matter which one of the individual moms do exactly which chores. It only matters how much they do sum total. And in that way their individuality vanishes.
Even though the mom are still making choices and acting individually, the only measure that matters is how the group of moms keep their pitchers, basemen, shortstops, catchers and outfielders in the game. Their work is spontaneous and just-in-time, as well as divided into jobs. To add each individual’s hours or contributions matters little–it’s the sum total or their capacity that matters.
Mom’s are independent contractors who forge alliances with groups in the schools, extra-circular activities and places of worship to advance many missions. Far from a socialistic model of a group performing based on equal allocations of obligation, the individual choice making is done through granular comparisons on where it is best to spend one’s time and energies.
It makes no sense to hand out 1099’s for this type of non-fungible work. Value is accumulated and retained. In the public sphere, choices are made as individuals, but the work is evaluated based on the outcome of the group. So in order to make any sense of measures, it is vital to know how to sort.
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