150,000 hryvnias monthly. That’s precisely how much, according to participants in a discussion, it costs to be a wife if one were to bill their husband at market rates. The logic is irrefutable: 30,000 for cleaning and cooking (domestic help services), plus 120,000 for intimacy (calculated at 4,000 UAH per half-hour daily), informs Ukr.Media.
An immediate question arises: why do women do this for free if it commands a decent sum on the market? After perusing numerous comments, I realized we are attempting to measure temperature with a ruler. Viewing family through the lens of service pricing is an interesting mathematical exercise, but it suffers from several critical flaws.
Let’s dissect this domestic paradox.
Why Homemade Borscht Isn’t Traded on an Exchange
When we multiply hours spent at the stove by the rates of professional cleaning or culinary services, we fall into a trap that economists call the “illusion of equivalence.” One commenter in the discussion astutely noted: a professional can clean 250 square meters to a mirror shine and prepare food at a level comparable to a good restaurant.
Most of us perform household chores at a solid “three out of five” standard. It’s akin to comparing the price of amateur video shot on a phone with a Hollywood production. The market pays 30,000 not merely for the act of cleaning floors but for delegating responsibility, saving the client time, and ensuring a guaranteed quality standard. At home, we often cook with whatever is at hand.
Sexual Accounting
Valuing intimacy within marriage at the price of escort services is the most amusing glitch in this system. If we were to charge 4,000 hryvnias per session, a reciprocal logical question emerges: who owes whom?
The physics of the process dictate that both parties derive pleasure. If we transition to strict market relations, we would have to calculate the difference. Did you achieve multiple orgasms? Perhaps you’ll need to give change.
Furthermore, as jokes in the comments suggest, the rates for male gigolos in the market are even higher.
Intimacy in a healthy partnership is not a service one party provides to another. It’s a joint investment in endorphins, functioning like Wi-Fi in an apartment: both connect, but the router is shared.
Where Do Men’s Kilocalories Disappear?
The system completely collapses if only the woman’s contribution is accounted for. In this financial model, the man inexplicably acts solely as a consumer of services. Yet, consider the logistics of real life:
- Any “handyman for an hour” has their own price for fixing a faucet, assembling a wardrobe, or carrying a heavy box to the fifth floor.
- Someone must act as the driver, the carrier of grocery bags, and the crisis manager when “everything is going wrong at once.”
- In many families, there’s a division where the man takes on the role of the primary financial generator, covering the family’s needs for major purchases.
If one were to bill for all of this, we wouldn’t have a family but two limited liability companies, exchanging acts of completed work monthly and transferring money back and forth with a zero-sum balance.
Where the Real Benefit is Hidden
A family is not a marketplace. It’s more akin to a closed investment fund. One participant in the discussion perfectly described a functional model: everyone has a job they enjoy, cleaning is done together once a week, during the week things are left scattered—and everyone is indifferent.
A person needs a witness to their life. A mirror. A partner with whom you navigate crises, after which an incredible sense of closeness emerges.
The moment the phrase “what can you give me?” is uttered, a tug-of-war begins where there are no winners. We unite not to save money on a housekeeper. We create a system where it is safer and easier for us to cushion the blows of the external world.
If you perceive marriage as unpaid drudgery for service provision, the issue isn’t that you aren’t being paid. The problem is that you’ve been hired for the wrong job and by the wrong employer.
The market can indeed offer decent money for your skills (real figures from comments: in Germany, 10 hours of cleaning per week yield around 560 euros in additional income). But billing your own partner for this is like trying to sell yourself the air you breathe in your own bedroom.
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