Did the title catch your eye? Curious to know what it is? What if I told you that it required 24 hour on-call service? But a typical day requires about twelve hours full-time from start to finish.
The pay? Generally speaking the pay is zero.
What about holidays? They are so rare as mostly not even be worth mentioning? The job description includes all the duties of a maid, chauffer, cook, nurse and teacher.
So why would you actually love such a job? Only one simple reason...
your child or children.
The position I described is that of stay-at-home parent.
Notice I did not say mum? That is because I am still liberated enough to believe that fathers can be just as good as the daily care of their prodigy as mothers.
What bothers me horribly is the low value that our greedy, self-centred cultures put upon the one job that it most centrally relies upon.
I know I am about to make a lot of women and some men very mad.
The one thing that has been forgotten in our hurried modern lives, our search for self-fulfilment, our liberation from gender and sexual constraints, and our drive for more things faster is our children.
The stark truth is that no matter how qualified or genuine a person you hire is he or she can never care for your child as well as a parent...
or in a pinch extended family.
The simple reality is that our children need someone at home for them that have a personal stake in their upbringing...
not just a pay cheque/check.
Yet our societies and tax structures actually penalize stay-at-home parents with lower pensions and sometimes higher tax burdens.
If that isn't bad enough, try enduring the endless looks of pity you receive every time you answer the question, 'so what do you do,' with the response 'I provide loving care for my child.
' The most critical job on this planet...
the care of the next generation...
has been demeaned to the point that few women or men feel comfortable claiming this role.
And what have been the results on our children? Educational standards in both the US and UK are on the decline; with school blaming parents and parents blaming the schools.
Our streets and communities have become war zones with barely a week and sometimes a day going by without another death from guns or knives.
Our prisons are full to capacity.
They are angry and hopeless.
And we wonder why? We too are paying a high price for this modern lifestyle.
While life spans have steadily increased during the last century, we are now seeing an epidemic of stress and lifestyle related diseases.
Depression that was once considered a serious and rare condition is now almost as common as a cold; with adults popping pills just to make them happy.
Our relationships are falling apart as we abandon our partners and our children, because the sex isn't as good as it was so I must not love you anymore.
As I enumerated earlier, our societies are barely surviving the on-slaught of poverty, crime and hopelessness.
One has to question how much longer they can survive this 'freedom.
' You may think that I am some right-wing, religious zealot.
Actually I am so liberal as to be almost a socialist...
at least that is what my eighteen year old son accuses me of being anyway.
But I am also the mother of six, all of whom have either been cared for in their homes by a parent (sometimes me and sometimes their dads) or close family.
And the dividends are well worth it...
touch wood, no violence, teen pregnancy or serious drug or alcohol abuse among the four adults...
and they were from a broken home.
The truth is that we need our political parties to stop talking about family values and as Hillary Clinton extols...
start valuing families.
We need tax and pension systems that reward parents for their contribution to the long term viability of our societies.
We need government to stop pushing people into low paid work that require them to work not just one job but two or more; and instead pay them to care for their own child instead of childcare from well-meaning strangers.
And we need respect...
to stop being second class citizens and be honoured for our contributions without which the future is bleak.