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Comment by koolba | Hacker News Reader

I don't see homemaker (i.e. housewife, stay at home dad, etc) on there. I wonder if it's because it doesn't rank high enough or just wasn't included in the data set. I'd imagine that the higher paying jobs would lean more towards a single income household.

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Well, you wouldn't expect to, right? That's a category that doesn't exist UNTIL you get married i.e. you're not a househusband/housewife until you're a husband/wife. That's obviously a somewhat contrived subset, but admittedly this is ONLY looking at married couples.

I'd be more curious how it handles change of career, for example.

Probably because that's not tracked as a profession beacuse it's not really one. You are tracked by what you actually learned. People become stay at home mums/dad in the relationship, not before.

Can we talk about your opinion of it not being a profession? I've always noticed that good homemakers share the same qualities of a good professional. Organized, punctual, good communicator, and good manager. They don't earn a paycheck from an employer, but neither do other professions. A home maker simply does not stay at home and watch TV (well, a good one). There is a lot of work behind keeping a home in good standing.

Am I talking non-sense? If so, why?

Profession is literally 'a paid occupation' and homemakers aren't paid - so homemaking would be an occupation but not a profession. Furthermore, as the parent mentioned, there aren't really unmarried homemakers, except those who are independently wealthy. Someone may be a physicist or nurse and then _become_ a homemaker.

All this isn't to to say that homemaking isn't challenging or exhausting (it can be), just that it doesn't really qualify as a profession. I don't think the parent poster was implying it wasn't difficult, just that it doesn't fit within the framework of professions.

This is exactly why amateur athletes cannot take money for their wins/etc. Because as soon as they do, they are professionals by definition.

Good points. I did not consider it being an occupation and not a profession. Thank you.

Yeah, it's a matter of definitions. A "profession" is something you do that you get paid for. No one sends paychecks to homemakers. An "occupation", however, is something you do to occupy your time (hence the term, "occupation"). Usually, they're one in the same, but not always: if you don't need a paycheck, you can have an occupation as a homemaker, a philanthropist, a volunteer, a socialite, etc.

> Probably because that's not tracked as a profession beacuse it's not really one.

Anyone who thinks being a homemaker is not a profession has no clue what it entails. If you consider a couple as a single unit, it's simply optimizing by specialization. When you look at the cost of baby-sitting/nannies it makes a lot of sense too. Why make $40K extra if I'm going to spend $35K on a nanny?

> You are tracked by what you actually learned.

No you're tracked by what your current position is. I'm pretty sure that office assistants who studied literature are still tracked as office assistants.

> People become stay at home mums/dad in the relationship, not before.

Exactly and this data represents a set of married people, not a set of jobs. If it doesn't include homemaker as an option then you've excluded all married single income households.

> Anyone who thinks being a homemaker is not a profession has no clue what it entails.

Or just has one of the many common definitions of profession, for which homemaker doesn't qualify. E.g., the first definition in most dictionaries tends to be something like this "a paid occupation, especially one that involves prolonged training and a formal qualification."

Homemaker is not, generally, a paid occupation, nor is it an occupation that requires prolonged training and a formal qualification.

I think the desire to characterize it as a "profession" is that the social perception of the social value of professions has led to a desire to characterize any vocation with perceived social value as a "profession", and a perception that a judgement that something is not a profession implies that it is not a worthwhile vocation.

> If it doesn't include homemaker as an option then you've excluded all married single income households.

No, it doesn't. Its possible to have a married single-income household where neither partner is a homemaker. (Single income households where homemaking tasks are either shared or contracted out, and the non-income-earning partner devotes their bulk of their time to tasks that are neither income-earning nor homemaking exist -- my perception is that they are more common among higher income groups, but that's not the result of any systematic study.)

Anyone who thinks being a homemaker is not a profession has no clue what it entails.

I was married to a stay-at-home mom for 12 years. When she moved into an apartment and left me with the 4,000 square foot house and our three kids I realized just how ridiculously easy being a stay-at-home parent is when you have kids in full day school. I'm a software engineer that works 40 hours per week from home and I have no trouble keeping up the house, the kids homework, the kids activities (karate, cheerleading and basketball right now) in addition to a full time job. For home cleaning and laundry I hire kids from the local university for $10 to $15 per hour from Care.com for a total of 3 hours per week.

My soon-to-be-ex wife used to spend over 8 hours per day on Facebook. Not surprising considering she was literally sitting at home by herself for 8 to 9 hours per day. Her mom was a stay-at-home mom as well and she used to brag about sitting around at home all day and then when the husband would surprise her by coming home for lunch she would grab the vacuum cleaner and pretend to vacuum. Keeping up a house and taking care of kids over 5 is not a full-time job. Don't get me wrong - you can make it a full time job by being incredibly inefficient, doing things for your kids that they should be doing on their own and doing inconsequential things that don't matter to anyone if they aren't done. But other than that, being a stay-at-home parent is not even close to being equivalent to a full time job.

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