Hello girls:
It was mother's day here in the Dominican Republic yesterday so I got to celebrate this special day again!! Daniel woke me up with breakfast in bed. He makes the best omelets!!
We then went to Church and had the farewell for a dear couple relocating to New York. we invited them and four other couples to dinner last night. Daniel made his delicious milanesas and his famous rice. I made soup and an assortment of salads so If you called yesterday during dinner, you probably couldn't get us. Sorry!
Today I want to salute all the mothers and future mothers by sharing an article published in the Fortune magazine.
"The Toughest CEO Position In The World
I was a CEO of a
high-growth technology company for many years and so believe me when I say that
I don’t make this next statement lightly: There is no tougher CEO position in
the world than that of the CEO of a home.
Recommended
by
As CEO of a home you
are not just the Chief Executive Officer, you are the Chief Everything Officer.
You are responsible for the finances and budgeting; the facilities cleaning,
repairs, and maintenance; the laundry; the transport; the scheduling and
project management; the cooking; all human resource responsibilities such as
rewarding and discipline along with ensuring safety and protection of each
person in your care; counseling as needed on any number of subjects; spiritual
advising; educating on science, technology, math, art, history, etc, as well as
teaching all values and life skills; decision-making (noting that some
decisions are literally life and death for the team); and doing all of this on
a 24 hour a day x 7 days a week basis without any sick days and without
vacation time.
As the CEO of a big
company I was able to receive validation for the work I did in the form of
awards and accolades as well as thanks from clients and employees. But as the
CEO of a home you carry all the responsibility but typically receive very
little external validation for the work performed. There are very few awards
and accolades given to CEOs of a home, and while you hope for thanks from the
team, you have to accept the fact that a vast majority of the work you do will
go unnoticed and unappreciated. Let’s face it, no one thinks to thank you for
making sure there is milk in the fridge and toilet paper in the bathrooms. I
still recall a humorous conversation I had with a woman who had left a high
powered corporate job to become a stay home mom to her little children. She was
expressing just how desperate she was feeling to receive any validation at all
in this new job. She shared that every time her husband walked in the door from
work she literally wanted to grab his face and say “Did you see that the
dishtowels are all clean and folded perfectly in the drawer and the cans are
all lined up nicely in our food pantry?? …Aren’t you so proud of me?!” No doubt
there is an unfortunate lack of validation, either private or public, for the
CEOs of the home.
Salary.com recently
did an analysis of how much salary
an employer would have to pay a Mother to cover the cost of each of the responsibilities
she carries in her 40 hours along with the 56.4 hours of overtime each week.
They calculated that an employer would have to pay a Mother $122,732 a year. I
would suggest that is getting off cheap! They even offer a calculator for you
to personalize your own Mother’s salary at mom.salary.com. My own Mother gave
birth to ten children within a twenty year span, so their calculator decided
she should make $171,891 per year, but the reality is that there isn’t a dollar
amount that would have fairly compensated her for the amount of work she actually
did.
It’s important to
note that many CEOs of the home are also working second jobs outside of the
home, yet their burden of responsibility at the home remains the same. Having
been the CEO of a company while being a single-mother CEO of a home I learned
some valuable lessons. The greatest of which was the importance of outsourcing
and prioritizing. The best advice I can give anyone who is both the CEO of
their home and is also working a second job outside of the home is this:
Outsource everything and anything you can afford to that isn’t an absolute
necessity to do yourself. That was the only way I survived. I also had realize
which of my home tasks just didn’t matter in the big scheme of things. For
example, I realized I could still be a successful CEO of the home even if I
bought my bread at a store rather than baking it myself. Sure homemade bread
tastes better, but it’s the perfect example of one of those things that just
doesn’t matter. Whereas, the most important thing a CEO of the home can do is
to focus their time on teaching their children good core values and preparing
them to become contributing members of society. There is no more important
task than that.
I literally cringe
when I hear women respond to the question of what they do for a living and they
say, “I am just a stay home Mom”. I want to scream “NOOOO (imagine
scream in slow motion)…you’re not! You are the CEO of a home and that is the
toughest CEO Position in the world!” One should never minimize the role of CEOs
of homes. Whether it’s working mothers, stay home mothers, or stay home
fathers, all deserve incredible thanks and validation for the amazing work they
do. Thank heavens for Mother’s Day and the reminder it serves that we should
all take a moment out to thank the CEOs of the homes that have benefited our
lives. Let this article serve as my own way of saying thank you. You all make
the world a better place"
Yesterday was the day
in the DR designated to acknowledged women in general, not just mothers, for
all we do. I am grateful to be a woman. I love being a woman. I know I was
a women before I came to this earth and I know I had a mission to
fulfilled and part of that mission was to be a mother to the most elect
children like you, a wife and a grandmother. And for that I will always be grateful!!
Love,
Mami
Vero (a.k.a. Nana)
No comments:
Post a Comment