$138,095

I just got yet another “mommy joke” e-mail. Complete with lots of pink and animated gifs. I admit, sometimes particularly saccharine ones bring a tear to my eye–even when they annoy me, but I’m like that: easily teary-eyed.

But this one, which I’ve seen in various forms, just irritates me. It tells of a woman who is asked what she “does” and gives this long, complicated job description, social-engineer-human-development-research-director type thing, when she is actually a mother. It’s just not funny to me to have to think of cute and clever ways to say I’m a mother. Why isn’t that enough?

It reminds me of the lists of paying jobs that a parent may do in the course of a day to determine what salary ($138,095) he or she might earn. I suppose these lists illustrate certain facets of parenting that may not be obvious, but it defines motherhood (and parenthood, but these types of articles seem focused on mothers) by forcing it into other categories. Am I supposed to crow about articles like this: I really am worth a whole bunch of money! See, this list proves you have to respect me now! I may as well be a part-time laundry machine operator!

I get the reasoning behind trying to figure out a mother’s financial worth, and I get why a bunch of mother-friends e-mail these articles out when they are published, but I’m discouraged it has to be done at all.