A Mother’s Love is Worth $117,000 Per Year
According to this CNN article:
If a stay-at-home mom could be compensated in dollars rather than personal satisfaction and unconditional love, she’d rake in a nifty sum of nearly $117,000 a year.
The eighth annual survey calculated a mom’s market value by studying pay levels for 10 job titles with duties that a typical mom performs, ranging from housekeeper and day care center teacher to van driver, psychologist and chief executive officer.
…the annual salary for a stay-at-home mom would be $116,805, while a working mom who also juggles an outside job would get $68,405 for her motherly duties.
Well damn! If they g’on cut my salary in half for working outside the home, can a sista get a vacation or something?
And umm, I need compensation for my labor pains too.
Oh yea, one more thing. Now that I’m raising a teenager, I need a 25% premium for hazardous duty pay. This ish is dangerous to your health!
What do you think of this silly survey?
[hat tip to BK for sending]
~*~*~*~*~*~Work to achieve, not to acquire.
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Silly is right! For some reasons, articles like that make me want to throw up a little.
And I support stay at home moms. I just think it’s silly to attempt to put a monetary value on it.
Hazardous pay? you are hilarious.
I read it and thought, so every working woman in the country is an idiot? Going to work and raising your kids means you’re earning half the booty? That’s plain stupid. And if a mother’s love is worth that, then who’s cutting the checks!?
I’ve heard about this story for the last two Mother’s Days in a row before this year, and I think exactly what I thought before: a job is only worth what someone will pay you to do it. If someone wants to pay me $117K to stay at home, I’m all over it, but that is never going to happen. Besides, everyone has to manage their home (pay bills, take care of the budget, and so on)… so are we going to talk about what my work as a single person without kids is worth? No?
Yeah when I read this you know it was a QUICK forward to you and DH!!! I said OH HELL TO DA NAW.. I mean seriously I don’t knock SAHM’s at all.. they have just as hard a job as anyone else.. but this “survey” just made me wanna say whatdafuggineva!
I have full support for your claims. I strongly believe that stay-at-home moms deliver the maximum over endless hours each day without a single day’s break and deserve compensation.
Why would I pay someone to do something that they have thus far been willing to do for free?
Now, I’m not saying that what SAHM’s do is not valuable… but people who have jobs outside the home are essentially getting paid to do something that the employer is unwilling or unable to do on their own & which the employer believes is beneficial to them. Raising your own children cannot be classified as a “job” under that definition, and so monetary compensation is not a factor.
Hazard pay… that’s funny.
Did working mothers conduct this survey? I think the results undervalue working mothers’ responsibilities. For example, last night I came home and made dinner, played with my daughter and then cleaned our bathroom while my daughter was in the tub. Working outside the home doesn’t absolve you from working inside the home. Sheesh.
Jane’s comment is absolutely true; as a single mother your homelife responsibiliteis are not disolved or from my expereince even reduce by any ammount when you go to work outside of the home. I put in my 45-50 hours at the office and then come home and do everything that needs done at home from dinner to laundry to house cleaning to supervising homework, and mowing the lawn all in the few hours left in the day and all of which my stay-at-home mom friends have had all day to do. Single working mothers do more in less time; we have to; it’s the nature of being a single working mother. There’s just lees time to stop and smell the flowers.
In total agreement with the hazard pay, and mine are all under 9. heh.
I am currently a SAHM and I agree that this amount is ridiculous. However, the idea of attaching a monetary value to “my job” is not necessarily bad, especially if someone is trying to decide whether or not to keep working or stay at home. BUT, in my analysis, I am only considering direct savings by not working, such as:
1. The avoidance of paying for quality daycare: (in my area, this runs roughly $45/kid/day, or about $25k over a yr for 2 children).
2. Savings from always cooking at home/not eating out, taking careful advantage of grocery sales instead of grabbing whatever, and spending a lot less $ on clothes/dry cleaning/etc. Also less gas/transportation costs. I’m going to ballpark this one at $8k, higher than some maybe but I previously had a long commute.
3. Savings from not paying taxes on salary $ earned, and also savings from my husband’s income being taxed in a lower bracket than if I were working. For us, this is around $12k.
So for us for now, I would need to earn more than $45k to come out ahead. Which is right about what I was making when I left after having child #2…. Obviously, no one is handing me $45k for the responsibilities I have, but I AM saving our family about that amount by doing what I do.
I’m probably in the minority here, but what was the problem with the article? It simply stated what the value is for a mom’s duties and how much a working mom is paid on her job. What was so deep about it?
As an aside — remember when Pilar did the exact same thing on Prime Time Love? LOL
What gets me is when in a divorce, the husband and SAHW assume that he deserves more of the money because he “earned” it all. They may not come out and say it, but it clouds both their judgments.
Damn wrong, however. He might not be able to afford that $117k worth of care a year, but he’d sure as hell have to spend a lot more money if he didn’t have a live in housekeeper and someone to care for any children (a SAHW/M is much more than a housekeeper and babysitter but she fills those needs as well). The money they have as a couple is dependent in part on how much money her presence there saves them.
So while a mom’s love and care whether she’s at home or work are really priceless, I hope that this sort of thing will help women in particular feel their own value.
Hazard pay…labor pay….that’s great!
They come out with this thing every year and it never says anything new. It’s quite silly and ridiculous. I had to write something on it myself.
Linked to your post, BTW.