2006年NPR美国国家公共电台五月-What Is Mom's Work Worth?

Ed Gordon: Mother's Day is this weekend and for those of you who take mom's hard work for granted, listen to this---a new report from website Salary.com crunched² the numbers and came up with a fair wage for the average stay-at-home mother, raising one child under the age of five. The grand total: 134,121 dollars. For more on mom's worth, NPR’s Farai Chideya spoke³ with Bill Coleman, Salary.com’s Senior Vice⁴ President of Compensation.

Farai Chideya: Bill Coleman, thank you for joining us!

Bill Coleman: Hello!

Farai Chideya: So, what jobs do stay-at-home mothers actually do?

Bill Coleman: Stay-at-home mothers do a lot of jobs. And I think pretty much everybody in the audience knows most of the jobs that mom does, but for the purposes of our study, we asked moms what they do, how they spend their day in terms of, er, jobs that you would typically see in the classifieds. And we found a lot of mothers latching⁵ onto certain familiar-sounding jobs--laundry machine operator, housekeeper⁶, janitor⁷, also day-care center teacher. We also heard psychologist and, and CEO.

Farai Chideya: Yes, the CEO of the home! Absolutely! So how many hours a week do stay-at-home moms work on average, and how many hours of sleep do they get at night?

Bill Coleman: Stay-at-home moms on average tell us that they work about 91 and a half hours a week, which is a little bit more than 2 full-time⁸ jobs’ worth, and it leaves them about 6 hours and 40 minutes a night of sleep.

Farai Chideya: Now these women who stay at home, millions and millions of people, although less of a percentage than there has been in the past, also are contributing to the US economy. In what ways do stay-at-home moms contribute to both the current and future economy in the US?

Bill Coleman: One obvious way, that, that, the mothers contribute to the future economy is, is by, actually, er, raising the future economy. Mothers are also certainly participating in the economy in bringing their kids to stores and bringing them to camps, to soccer practice. All of those things are often at least money generating or money moving things, which help contribute to the economy. You know, in general, that, there is, a significant amount of the economy is driven by consumers, and mothers are consumers. They are also, some of the time, they are spending at home, and now they can be shopping online.

Farai Chideya: Why did you decide to crunch¹ the numbers on what stay-at-home moms would make when, frankly⁹, they are not going to make it, just by the virtue¹⁰ of being stay-at-home moms, they are doing all of this work either uncompensated or almost uncompensated?

Bill Coleman: The reason we did this study is, er, we've gotten a lot of feedback from people and people come to Salary.com all the time asking what should people in this job or that job get paid. And around this time of year, around mother's day, we do get a lot of questions from mothers, or from, from kids writing in asking what should a mom get paid. And although, it is not a, you know, it's not a salary that would ever be written, it's sort of a, fun, timely way to educate people in the way compensation decisions are made. You know, this year, we, we even created a novelty paycheck. So, so if you wanted to show mom what the paycheck would look like, you could do that, as a nice little thank you and happy mother's day.

Farai Chideya: A paycheck and hopefully some flowers to go with it. Thank you very much, Bill Coleman!

Bill Coleman: Thank you!

Ed Gordon: That was NPR's Farai Chideya with Bill Coleman of Salary.com.

--------------------
Words in NPR
--------------------
grand total: used humorously when you think the final total is small; 总数之和
classified: a small advertisement you put in a newspaper to buy or sell something; 分类广告
janitor: someone whose job is to look after a school or other large building; 看门人

1 crunch   

n.关键时刻；艰难局面；v.发出碎裂声

参考例句：

• If it comes to the crunch they'll support us.关键时刻他们是会支持我们的。
• People who crunch nuts at the movies can be very annoying.看电影时嘎吱作声地嚼干果的人会使人十分讨厌。

2 crunched   

v.嘎吱嘎吱地咬嚼( crunch的过去式和过去分词 )；嘎吱作响；（快速大量地）处理信息；数字捣弄

参考例句：

• Our feet crunched on the frozen snow. 我们的脚嘎吱嘎吱地踩在冻雪上。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He closed his jaws on the bones and crunched. 他咬紧骨头，使劲地嚼。 来自英汉文学 - 热爱生命

3 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

4 vice   

n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的

参考例句：

• He guarded himself against vice.他避免染上坏习惯。
• They are sunk in the depth of vice.他们堕入了罪恶的深渊。

5 latching   

n.闭塞；闭锁；关闭；闭塞装置v.理解( latch的现在分词 )；纠缠；用碰锁锁上（门等）；附着（在某物上）

参考例句：

• They have a reputation for latching onto all the latest crazes. 大家都知道他们对所有的最新时尚都有兴趣。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Sometimes we should tolerate people's mistakes instead of latching on to them. 有的时候我们要能够容错，不要揪着对方的失误不放。 来自互联网

6 housekeeper   

n.管理家务的主妇，女管家

参考例句：

• A spotless stove told us that his mother is a diligent housekeeper.炉子清洁无瑕就表明他母亲是个勤劳的主妇。
• She is an economical housekeeper and feeds her family cheaply.她节约持家，一家人吃得很省。

7 janitor   

n.看门人，管门人

参考例句：

• The janitor wiped on the windows with his rags.看门人用褴褛的衣服擦着窗户。
• The janitor swept the floors and locked up the building every night.那个看门人每天晚上负责打扫大楼的地板和锁门。

8 full-time   

adj.满工作日的或工作周的，全时间的

参考例句：

• A full-time job may be too much for her.全天工作她恐怕吃不消。
• I don't know how she copes with looking after her family and doing a full-time job.既要照顾家庭又要全天工作，我不知道她是如何对付的。

9 frankly   

adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说

参考例句：

• To speak frankly, I don't like the idea at all.老实说，我一点也不赞成这个主意。
• Frankly speaking, I'm not opposed to reform.坦率地说，我不反对改革。

10 virtue   

n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力

参考例句：

• He was considered to be a paragon of virtue.他被认为是品德尽善尽美的典范。
• You need to decorate your mind with virtue.你应该用德行美化心灵。