The Value of a Mother
May 9, 2008, by clarkp
Cooking dinner? $14 per hour
Cleaning the house? $10 per hour
Healing a scraped knee? $29 per hour
Being a stay-at-home mom? $117,000 per year (or $68,000 for working moms)
That’s the monetary compensation calculated by Salary.com, a provider of on-demand compensation software and data, in its annual Mom Salary Survey for the time spent performing the top 10 “Mom job functions,” including housekeeper, cook, janitor, chauffeur, and teacher. The primary driver of these figures is overtime, with stay-at-home and working moms putting in upwards of 90 overtime hours each week.
Not sure what you’re worth? Visit the Mom Salary Wizard to calculate the value of your work. You can even print out a personalized paycheck and pay stub. And not surprisingly, the wizard even illustrates the disparity in wages between men and women for the same jobs at home. For instance, the “salary” for a man in Virgnia to cook is $14.19 per hour, while that for a woman is $13.87 per hour.
So before you go out shopping for that perfect gift this Mother’s Day, consider writing mom a check, too. While she can’t cash it, the value will be priceless.