Father-of-one and business development manager Nazeem Dollie (38) believes that a stay-at-home mother deserves half of her partner’s salary for the work she does in maintaining the household and taking care of their child.
The South African-born entrepreneur – who is now living in Russia – recently got married and had his first child with his wife Anna Ragozina (31).
Now, he shares his opinion on why stay-at-home moms need better recognition:
“So, I've given this post a lot of thought, and personally feel that if a woman chooses to looks after a man's child while he's at work, and she looks after the domestic front (cooking, cleaning, shopping, etc.) that she should be entitled to up to half his income.
This might come as a surprise to many people, especially given my rather liberal views about gender equality, equal rights and progressive, forward thinking, rather than being stuck in old ways.
Let me explain my views on this:
1. Both parties are involved in equal or similar work. He goes to work to raise capital to sustain both their lifestyles, whereas she provides nurturing and caring on both a physical, emotional, and psychological front to their child.
2. She also ensures that their home front is well taken care of, which otherwise, would have made life impossible had the place been dirty and disorganised. A clean and organised home allows for peace of mind and clearer thinking.
3. Anyone working in human resources knows that the more senior the qualification and experience required in a candidate, the higher the stakes in both remuneration (salary) and perks. Simply put, a CEO of a company deserves a much larger compensation than a mere pen-pushing job that anyone else can do, since the stakes are much higher at CEO level than at junior or mid-management level.
4. When considering the extremely high responsibility of ensuring that your child gets the proper physical, emotional and psychological upbringing, it's next to impossible to just hire anyone. We all know horror stories of people that were entrusted to look after their children. Cases of abduction, paedophilia and even murder have been reported, and often times these were people that were known to the child. When considering this from an HR perspective, this is a CEO-level position in which the stakes are much higher than a junior or mid-management level position, and at most, you could probably only entrust this job to one person (the mother) or one extremely close person whom you trust with your life.
5. This point ties into point (4) above, thanks to Joy-Mari Cloete that advised me to include this into my post. Breastfeeding is something that only the mother can do – and not just any woman's milk, but specifically the mother of the baby. Again, this means that out of some 7 billion people, only ONE person is qualified to do this job. The father can't do it as his biological identity does not allow him to do so. Again, if only one person is able to do this, the remuneration has to be exceptionally high. It's also time consuming and labour intensive, which requires a higher pay class.
6. If you were to pay a domestic servant daily to take care of household chores, and also hire someone to run errands for shopping, laundry, paying bills etc, including a chef to make your food, you'd probably end up spending up to half, if not more than half of your salary anyway.
So I'm looking at this from the perspective of cost vs benefit, and the qualifications necessary that the job gets done RIGHT, rather than the traditional "old school" mind-set where things were done a certain way simply because that's the way it's always been done.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below, thanks!”
*This is an opinion piece that was sent through to DRUM. If you have a personal story to tell, email [email protected].
