Years ago, I ran across an article in the now-defunct Home Education Magazine. The short version, in case you don't feel like finding a back issue and reading the whole thing:
Amy Hollingsworth ruminates on what is 'missing' from a stay-at-home-mom's life, mainly work that will not be undone tomorrow... laundry that's just going to get dirty, meals that are eaten, children who will need a bath again, and her perspective of how to find a tangibly rewarding aspect to motherhood and housewifehood.
This is a perspective that has long bothered me. She says, at one point:
"Not like the tangible sense of accomplishment you might get after finishing a report or closing a deal or saying something really smart in a board meeting."
Uh... saying something really smart in a board meeting is tangible?
I worked for years before having children, and I have to say that closing a deal might be momentarily satisfying, but in a moment there are other open deals that need to be closed, and others still that are unopened... that never ends, anywhere.
There are few jobs where people finish the work and never have to repeat it, or something quite a lot like it, tomorrow. The report might be all crisp and bound, but it's not the last report. It will be revised, there will be editorial changes, it will need to be added to or there will be a different one to do.
No one, in any job, walks home at the end of Friday and says 'there, that's done once and for all' with nothing to do on Monday. Even one big win doesn't stop the workflow, getting a huge project completely finished is satisfying, but it only completely clears the desk of someone whose job ends simultaneously.
The tangible rewards of motherhood and housewifehood are akin to the kind in the work world: I can enjoy the fresh air scent of the line-dried sheets when I replace them on my bed, and when I stick my nose into the linen closet, and I know I've accomplished something that is as lasting as the employee review, or serving the last table of the night.
If I don't believe the clean linens have value, or I don't value my effort (however much was done by technology), the accomplishment will not feel like one. But the same can be said of an employee review that is ticked boxes and requires the use of phrases written by others, or not being the one who made the food being served.
I believe that the key to healthy sanity is in personally valuing what we do. If I feel that tidying up the Lego is drudgery or not worth my time, or what servants should be doing for me, or it should stay tidied up because I tidied it up ever... I'm going to have no difficulty slipping into the misery of unfairness, of being asked too much, of not being wealthy enough to own slaves or not being appreciated enough by others who should see Lego tidying as more valuable than I do.
This is the core of the problem with grades and praise and employee reviews and rewards and awards: they take the onus for appreciation off the person doing the work and put it 'out there' --where the tangibility of the smart thing said in the board room first has to be acknowledged as such by others.
When an accomplishment has at all to do with being seen by others, then I can feel exactly the same kind of tangible sense of accomplishment by saying something brilliant to a child, or even to myself in the kitchen... because it's either smart or it isn't, who hears it cannot be related.
I suspect that what many mothers feel the lack of is the pats on the back.
When one is required to seek to find ones own sense of accomplishment, it challenges something we've come to believe is necessary for the functioning of the galaxy: an external witness.
Yet, a huge part of self-esteem is being able to see, and value, ourselves accurately without relying on external praise or rewards to prop us up.
After my first was born, I went through an interesting change of heart. While I used to believe that what I did at work was valuable and a good use of my time, and worth what I got paid for it, I came to discover that it wasn't. In fact, it went from feeling important to feeling irrelevant. Anyone could move that paper around, answer that phone effectively, transfer those calls, write those reports, organize that workflow --only I could mother my daughter. I felt for the first time that what I was doing actually mattered, both in terms of what it was I was doing, and that it was me doing it.
From that initial discovery, my self-esteem came to be linked very closely with what I thought was valuable, not what other people might see, or think, or believe. So, my house is messy --and my children are loved and healthy and nurtured. The laundry really piles up, and I nurture my family with food made with care and love, skill and knowledge. The dandelions on the lawn are thriving, and I have nothing better to do with my energy than sit up until 3:35 a.m. talking with my 21 year old daughter about her day, her friends, her thoughts and her discoveries.
One of my tangible accomplishments has always been that the week ended with people who experienced many great moments, laid down some excellent memories, have fun stories to tell and deep connections between them. How can a job, a paycheque or a employee award, or the applause of the board compete with that?
As a long-time stay-at-home mom, one of the discussions I love having is about how 'it's not possible to own real estate on one income' and how 'it's no longer possible for one parent to stay home with kids in today's economic reality.'
Uh-hunh.
Funny, how people told me the same thing the year (1989) my oldest was born...
I've read in various places those ridiculous estimates of How Much It Costs to Raise a Child to 18 ($180,000 was one I saw one), and after I shake my head in amazement, I'm curious about the fundamentals that have been used to determined that.
Is it based on a certain number of brand new pairs of pants per child per year? I'm pretty sure that for us, the total number of brand new pants per child up to the age of about 15 was 15. Maybe 20. It's amazing the thriving business second-hand and thrift stores do, in spite of everyone apparently having to buy brand new clothes all the time. Would you rather buy lightly worn $6 Gap pants for a 12yo who is in the process of outgrowing them or unworn ones she'll grow out of just as fast, for $60? That factor of ten adds up fast... faster than a 50% off sale can fix it.
Is it based on convenience, precooked, packaged foods as a large part of the grocery budget? One of the things that people who have never stayed home for 2 decades raising kids don't know is that when you're home most of the day, it's possible to
- bake bread (for about 61 cents a loaf, even with 12 grains, whole wheat and fancy sea salt)
- cook beans from dry ($2.90/kg dry or $1.69 for a half pound can, plus you control the added salt)
- make muffins (that don't have the texture or sugar-load of cupcakes, for less than $1 a batch, instead of a dollar or more each), every day if you want to because it takes 20 whole minutes
- make stew from scratch using the cheapest vegetables there are: tough meats,
yams, onions, potatoes, carrots, etc.
- roast whole chickens right in your own kitchen without needing to speed home from the store to avoid killing everyone with cooling rotisserie birds, still controlling the amount of salt added
- make chicken stock from scratch without the salt (oh, man, the salt!), fat, sugar (not kidding), or whatever 'hydrolyzed vegetable protein' is --made for free from bones and scraps that would just be tossed
- can or freeze anything that appears in abundance, free or low-cost, like a 4' box of 'picked too many' apples from a friend that became applesauce with no additional ingredients, the free blackberries that grow like weeds all over town, a box of nectarines that accidentally got frozen at the store and sold for $2 for 22 pounds and a bumper crop of cherries once: $10 for 25 pounds
- grow a vegetable garden for the cost of seeds and watering, giving a parent something to do outside while supervising the kids who want to be out there anyhow
So, do feel free to choose between 2 hard cooked eggs in a cute little egg-carton shaped bubble package for $2.10 or eggs that you can use for anything, including hard cooking, at home in under an hour for $2.40/dozen.
An angel food cake only takes an hour, with the addition of about nine cents of other ingredients. Whip a cup of heavy cream with a tablespoon of real vanilla extract and serve the cake with whatever fresh berries or canned fruit you like...
Let Someone Else Pay for New
With LetGo, Kajiji, Craigslist, Used[CityName] and Freecycle, there is almost nothing but food that anyone must buy new, and even then I see listings for 'come and get it' freezer emptying, orchard-picking, over-abundant garden leftovers and even 'made a whole bunch and no one will eat it' canning, as well as 'unused' 'totally new' 'in original packaging' and 'unopened' advertising all kinds of things.
What Time Allows
While I'm home I can do all kinds of other things I'd have to hire someone else to do instead: from lawn care to laundry, home improvements and repair to mending and removing stains from clothes instead of replacing them.
Maybe More Realistic Numbers...
I figure our kids were more like $2-3000/year for the first one and probably 50-85% of that for the second (because, among other things, there is no reason to buy more kid-sized plastic dishes once the set is in the house), over and above what we would have had to buy to live, just the two of us. I do know that, 2 years later, we certainly aren't floating in an extra ten grand a year, since our eldest move out.
What is On Their List?
So, what's the other $7-8000/year paying for? A car each every year? Six years of full-time post-secondary education (hey! You can't count that in the first 18 years, they don't go until 18, and what if they never go?)
I suspect that bureaucrats sit down with catalogs and layette lists and itemize absolutely everything that a baby could possible 'need' in the first 19 years of life supposing it never received a single gift or hand-me-down and every second-hand store in the world went up in flames. This list includes new furniture however often it outgrows the old stuff, a bedroom of its very own, a new car that seats enough people every time a new one arrives, and multiplies of things like 'vacations' and 'holiday shopping' based on the hilarious idea that having a third or fourth or sixth kid creates another $10k in income to fling around every year.
Normal people in the real world, on the other hand, have another baby and get to make the same amount of money spread among more people, trimming or eliminating some of the casual, unnecessary spending to do so. Which is why people with 16 kids don't usually make $160,000 a year over and above their 'real' budget...
... and some of them still buy their own houses, even on a single income.
There are few jobs where people finish the work and never have to repeat it, or something quite a lot like it, tomorrow. The report might be all crisp and bound, but it's not the last report. It will be revised, there will be editorial changes, it will need to be added to or there will be a different one to do. 
After my first was born, I went through an interesting change of heart. While I used to believe that what I did at work was valuable and a good use of my time, and worth what I got paid for it, I came to discover that it wasn't. In fact, it went from feeling important to feeling irrelevant. Anyone could move that paper around, answer that phone effectively, transfer those calls, write those reports, organize that workflow --only I could mother my daughter. I felt for the first time that what I was doing actually mattered, both in terms of what it was I was doing, and that it was me doing it.
