{"id":1962,"date":"2005-02-14T14:13:46","date_gmt":"2005-02-14T19:13:46","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=1962"},"modified":"2005-02-14T14:18:15","modified_gmt":"2005-02-14T19:18:15","slug":"church-salaries-and-working-wives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2005\/02\/church-salaries-and-working-wives\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Church Salaries Drive Mothers into the Workforce?"},"content":{"rendered":"

My wife just mentioned this to me, and it has me wondering. If the church really wants mothers to stay at home, then why do many full-time church employees seem not to be paid enough to make that happen?<\/p>\n

A case in point is one full-time church employee who my wife knows. I’m going to keep the details a bit fuzzy, for privacy reasons. This person works as a skilled laborer in a job position requiring some expertise. He has several years experience in his work, and his job also requires him to supervise other church employees in his field and perform various administrative tasks. <\/p>\n

He has a wife and four children, and lives in a mid-sized city in the West. He makes a little over $30,000 per year. To make ends meet, his wife works as well.<\/p>\n

We’ve wondered on this blog about what the Proclamation means, about whether women should feel they are able to work outside the home, and so forth. We’ve discussed how we might try to get parents to spend more time with their children and less time in the office.<\/a><\/p>\n

Whatever our answers to these questions, one thing seems clear to me: if we are serious about our claims — “fathers . . . are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families; Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children” — then the very least that the church should do is provide sufficient salaries to its own full-time male employees (especially those with children) so that their wives do not feel compelled to work for financial reasons. (The same probably applies to its female employees, though there may be counter-arguments based on different readings of the Proclamation).<\/p>\n

Now I don’t know the nuances of church pay, and perhaps others can fill me in here. Is there already some sort of support system in place? If so, is it working? Is my wife’s acquaintance an outlier? Or is it the norm for full-time church employees to feel that the husband’s income alone is not enough to support a family?<\/p>\n

And if this is the case, then could it be remedied? Would it make sense to give additional pay per child, if the spouse is not working? (Frank, would the economics on that make sense?). (Are there counter-examples? Matt tells me that Seminary teachers are paid more than high school teachers. Why? And why not extend this to laborers, professors, security guards, other full-time employees?).<\/p>\n

If the leaders and members of the church are really serious about putting the principles of the Proclamation in place, this seems to be one place where the church could take a big step forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My wife just mentioned this to me, and it has me wondering. If the church really wants mothers to stay at home, then why do many full-time church employees seem not to be paid enough to make that happen?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1962\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}