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What's a Mom Worth..

Ok All you moms out there (and dad's too ) What's your worth?

Being a mom could be a 6-figure job

Quote:

If mothers were hired to do all that they do, they'd be well compensated, says one survey.
By Jeanne Sahadi, CNNMoney.com senior staff writer
May 3, 2006: 9:20 AM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) – Raising children to be productive members of society is an invaluable contribution. But you don't get cold cash for that kind of work - this society values only those economic contributions one makes outside of the home.

So it's worth asking just how much would a mother be paid if she did all that she did in the world of real paychecks?

Salary.com on Wednesday released its annual market valuation of a mother's work. After talking with 400 stay-at-home and working mothers, it determined the 10 major jobs a mother performs at home and the number of hours she typically devotes to each of those jobs.

Researchers then tried to determine the competitive market value that an employer would pay for one person to do a blend of those 10 jobs seven days a week.

Salary.com determined that a stay-at-home mother might be paid as much as $134,121 for her contributions as a housekeeper, cook, day care center teacher, janitor and CEO, among other functions. (See full list at right.) The stay-at-home mothers surveyed said they logged a total of 92 hours a week performing those jobs.

The market valuation for working mothers – who make up close to 70 percent of all mothers with kids under 18 -- comes to $85,876, assuming a 50-hour week in the Mom role. That would be on top of whatever salary a working mother draws from her job outside the home, working 44 hours.

Salary.com's senior vice president of compensation, Bill Coleman, acknowledges that the inclusion of CEO as a function might skew the estimated pay for a mother's work toward the high end, since a CEO earns north of $600,000 a year, and while both roles involve a lot of decision-making, it's unrealistic to say that running a family and running a company are comparable in terms of size and scope of responsibility.

Running a household is more comparable, perhaps, to a top manager's job – a manager who in the workforce might make in the low six figures.

The mothers surveyed by Salary.com only reported performing CEO-like duties no more than 4.6 hours a week. That's a relatively small portion of their time -- unlike the very low-paying duties of housekeeping, laundry and janitorial work, which combined account for between 30 percent and 40 percent of mothers' time.

If you want to find out how much a mother might get paid in different parts of the country after factoring in cost-of-living differences, or to see how pay may change based on the number of kids a mother cares for, Salary.com has created a Mom Salary Wizard.

Code:

ALL IN A WEEK'S WORK

Here are 10 top duties mothers perform, the time they spend on them every week, and the annual salary they could generate. 

 

  Job                              Working mothers   Stay-at-home mothers  

 Housekeeper                   7.2 hours           22.1 hours  

 Cook                              6.5                   13.6  

 Day care center teacher    7.2                   15.7  

 Laundry machine operator  4.2                    6.7  

 CEO                                4.6                    4.2  

 Facilities manager              3.5                    5.8  

 Van driver                        2.8                    4.2  

 Psychologist                     3.5                     3.9  

 Computer operator            7.2                     9.1  

 Janitor                            3.1                     6.3  

 Total weekly hours            49.8                   91.6  

 ANNUAL PAYCHECK VALUE  $85,876  $134,121  

  

 

 *Working mothers also report working an average of 44 hours a week at their jobs. 

 Source:  Salary.com

How Much Do you Earn as Mom - a calculator based on part of the country

They do this every year around mother's day, and it's interesting stuff - nice to see the work that some moms put in is recognized... Gonna present your spouse with a bill for services? :D

as a stay-at-home dad I expect to earn 11% more ;)

Wow! I'm worth $154,310 annually. Of course, I have six kids (give or take one or two depending on my agency), two dogs, two foster kittens, and four adult cats... So I probably spend more time cleaning than average. ;) The calculator didn't allow for foster kids (whom I actually do get paid to keep) or homeschooling duties. I added our homeschool hours into the preschool teacher section, but it's really not the same...

I'm worth about $86k per year - woohoo!

This bullshit comes out all the time and its a joke really.

A mom is worth what you can get someone to do the job for if you want to talk about dollars, and guess what, nannies are cheap.

Its the kinda thing they put out to make stay at home moms feel better for staying at home in an age when women were told they should get a job like men. There is a lot of value to a stay at home mother but its not monitary and this sort of thing trivializes it with an assinine dollar amount.

My wife is a stay at home mom. Its the best thing for us right now and my son, but shes not working harder than she was when she had a job, and we do miss the pay check. Our priorities are different but the value of a mother isn't in dollars.

I agree with Ustwo. Oh, geez. Now I've done it. Well, I could be in worse company. This crap gets trotted out every year around Mother's Day to make the "I am my kid's mom" crowd feel better about their choices.

Here is the real facts as I see them. If my "stay at home mom" wife doesn't feel like cooking dinner that day, or burns the rice, or doesn't do a thorough job of cleaning the bathroom, or doesn't fold all of the laundry, she gets a pass, maybe even a pat on the back because she had a bad day and just couldn't get everything done. If I had hired a person to do any of these same things, and they failed in this way, they would fired! Immediately!

The idea of comparing a "stay at home" parent's worth to that of a paid employee is ridiculous since there is no penalty for failure.

For every working mom or dad out there who gave up lucrative and rewarding careers to stay at home and raise their offspring, there have got to be 5-10 unemployable, useless wastes of space who ended up getting knocked up and have now ascended to the praiseworthy position of stay at home parent simply by not going to work.

I'm sure that I am opening myself up to all sorts of hateful posting by the parents on here that are dedicated and working hard to raising their children. To them I say, I'm not talking about you. I just grow tired of seeing these ridiculous numbers thrown out year after year.