It would make for a very healthy society indeed if we could have an economy centred on care, including care of self and others, and there is a simple way of doing this.

Many people around the world are meeting, talking, and even making films about the concept of basic income guarantee, also called guaranteed livable income (canada), formerly guaranteed annual income (GAI) advocated by Martin Luther King Jr.

One of the 500 richest people in germany is a very strong advocate of guaranteed income, Gotz Werner and goes out of his way to point out that the “unemployed” are engaged in very socially useful, productive activities: “he unemployed exist only because we use the concept of unemployment. Most of the unemployed have work, it’s not like they sit on the couch and watch TV all day. They are busy in their family, in other social work, in sports clubs. They are doing valuable work. Someone who cares for their children is much more valuable to society than someone twisting caps on bottles in the factory.”

Read the whole interview here; http://www.livableincome.org/agotzwerner.htm

you can also read an economic analysis of the importance of unpaid care work here:
http://www.livableincome.org/amothernomics.htm

and here: http://www.livableincome.org/ahousework.htm

In canada there is even an association of research on mothering, however, they make you pay a $70+ membership fee to even submit a paper for one of their conferences. So blog and articles like these become an even more important contribution.

THANK YOU for so eloquently writing out everything I have been feeling for the past nine years of my “stay at home Mom”,along with our past four years of our Life Learning lives!

I once figured it out, all of the cooking, preserving, mending, clothes making, one car family stuff that I did… and what it would take to live the ‘other’ life, and it was about $9/hr. Add in child care for two children (we now have three) on top of that, and I was actually MAKING money, staying at home.

Now I homeschool/unschool, and my children are home with me, preserving, saving, thrift shoping, and gardening. A friend once said to me, “Finanacial freedom does not come from having money. It comes from not needing it.” And I have never heard a more true statement in my life. Our healthy, happy, close knit family is living proof.

Blessings,
Val

http://goddesshobbies.blogspot.com/

Just want to wave my virtual hand and say, “Don’t forget about us stay-at-home dads!”

I would like to address what Janice said, “I envy you - I wish I could stay home and do all those wonderful things with my baby - instead I go to work and try to fill my weekends teaching her all that.”

Janice, I believe that, even in your situation, you have the power to make choices that can make a difference for the better.

On the Victoria Day long weekend I went camping with some friends and their friends. (For the benefit of non-Canadians who may read this, that was in late May 2009.)

The friends of my friends were a family that included an 18-year-old daughter and a 15-year-old son. Although the 18-year-old had just completed her first year of university, she and her brother were what I would describe as unspoiled kids. They delighted in hiking, kicking a soccer ball and throwing a frisbee on the beach, collecting driftwood and building structures from it, and ……. get this ……. READING.

They did not need video games, shopping malls, movie theatres, etc., to feel entertained.

The reason I mention them is that both of their parents always had worked outside of home. Yet their parents also loved outdoor activities, and had included their children in them from very early ages.

The results of their parents’ choices were clearly visible in those kids. I was delighted to see that a mother who had needed to be one of the income earners in her family had managed to raise what I would describe as very natural, independent teens.

So, Janice, I would encourage you to do what you can with what you have.

This is not to detract from Tabitha’s article, which I loved.