You can check homework all day, the economy doesn’t care.

We know very well a person doesn’t get paid for parenting, but you’d think the meals we cook and the homework we check would at least raise our standards of living. Nope. 

To measure the greatness of peoples’ lives, economists use a number called Gross Domestic Product. It’s the cash all the people in a particular country spend on goods and services. If you divide it by the number of people who live in that country, you get the GDP per captia, or per person. Economists will compare that per person number for a bunch of countries and decide that the country with the highest GDP also has the highest standard of living. 

Problem is, there is money spent on goods and services that will definitively make your life a lot worse. Heart attacks, for example, drive that number up there, as patients spend a considerable sum of money on medical care. Hurricanes too, because afterwards so much money is spent on construction repairs. Both of those events increase GDP.

You know what doesn’t drive up that number? Mommying. Reading to your children, growing organic vegetables and spending an hour hiding them under a layer of pizza cheese. Or serving them straight, with a threat on the side. Sitting through dance recitals, shopping for a dress the kid will agree to wear and checking homework are all activities that do not pump up the number we use to measure our standard of living. Happy Mother’s Day, anyway.