As the mother of a toddler, I’m keenly aware of how grueling the 24/7 unpaid work of parenthood really is. A friend of mine sent around a mother’s day email that added up all the little things we do and arrived at a salary of about $131,000. Slave wages compared to the figure in Jennifer Steinhauer’s Times article, The Economic Unit Called Supermom which came up with “an estimated $707,126 annual paycheck.”
Problem is, no one will ever pay me $700K to do what I do for free. So is there any point in speculating about the market value of mothering? Perhaps there is. Steinhauer tells us that In 2003, the Bureau of Labor Statistics conducted its first-ever Time Use Survey, which examined the doings of 21,000 Americans over a 24-hour period. “There were a number of economists who were interested in valuing nonmarket production,” said Diane Herz, the survey’s project manager.
Many social scientists have explored the “social capital” gained by participating in these otherwise uncompensated activities. Social scientists argue, for example, that test scores go up in schools where parent volunteerism is highest, and that crime is reduced in communities with high civic participation. “Social capital is usually defined as the networks and relationships we have, as well as the trust and sense of mutuality that arise from them,” said Amy Caiazza, a study director working with Ms. Hartmann.
So this got me thinking about digital networks and I started wondering how much web content is created, nurtured and maintained without compensation. And how apropos the term “nonmarket production” is for most web activity. The networked book, for example, relies on free contributions and other forms of non-commercial support. What does this mean for the future of books? Does the web have the potential to turn the book industry into an unpaid labor of love?