According to a story in Reuters, Salary.com released a study that shows that a stay-at-home mom should earn $138,095/year for what she does. Salary.com provides this online tool so that people can calculate how much a particular mom’s work is worth. I hope lots of moms forward this information…
Zum Muttertag: der Gehaltsscheck.
Haben wir nicht alle schon einmal darber nachgedacht?
Was kme dabei heraus, wenn jede einzelne Stunde, die ich arbeite- Kinder, Kche und Computer- bezahlt werden wrde. Heute habe ich die Antwort durch Guy Kawasaki gefunden. S…
I wonder if they will start teaching stay at home mom degrees in college or some sort of extended school.
That would be interesting.
*************
MBA = Mothers of Business Administration
What’s the purpose of pulling a number like this out of someone’s ass? OK, we get it… moms do a lot of valuable work at home. Only an arsehole wouldn’t see that.
But, since people insist on calculating what Mom’s salary should be, why not estimating the value of Dad’s work at home? I do all of the cooking for dinner plus all cooking on the weekend. I do all of the yard work and all home maintenance and repairs that don’t require a tradesman. I maintain the cars. I take the dogs for their twice-daily walks. All of this on top of working my full-time job. I want MY paycheck!
Let’s start by saying that both mom’s and dad’s efforts are priceless. After all, they would give their life for their children.
This “survey” and the associated calculator are absurd in so many ways and the numbers they report only do a disservice to all.
The only usefulness of this survey is to market Salary.com’s services, and all of the folks that quote the info are nothing more than mindless PR firms for them.
That’s a lot of money.
Stay at Home Mom
I was working on some paperwork and I came across a question that made me pause. It asked my wife’s employment information. Technically, she doesn’t have an employer. She doesn’t have a job where she goes to the office, work,
I agree that this is more than a bit absurd. Entertaining? Maybe.
To assign all those occupations to mothers based on an “average” stay-at-home mothers grind is fine by me. SAH Moms do a lot of work and should be highly valued.
The problem I have is assigning them (I assume) average hourly rates for each of those occupations. Example: Computer operator I. Is the average SAH mom capable of operating a computer with the same level of competence as the average Computer Operator I. If so, great, then that rate fits, but I’ve found the vast majority of SAH moms don’t have a lot of sophisticated computer use knowledge.
The other one that jumps right out at me is CEO. That’s the one that tells you this is clearly a joke. Given an hourly rate of nearly $160/hr, this was thrown in to give the ole salary a boost, from around $85k to $135k. About $15k of that is due to additional OT, but $160/hr at 4.2hrs/wk for 52 weeks is around $35k alone.
If they showed a way to determine the average SAH mom’s level of competency in each of this areas (how many SAH moms have vans for their shift as van driver?), and then could apply rates based on THAT, then this would be meaningful. AND that would be a killer tool for others to use.
Right now, this is a PR move (although one that I think has a good chance at being successful), but I can’t believe it will have much lasting value.
You see no mother has commented here yet, only men of whom I presume some are dads. Shows who is working on ferrying kids to and fro schools and doing other stuff, while some sit here and type (I am not a mother so I can comment; you see that is all women with no children do is sit around reading blogs and clearly we do not need to get paid for it, do we?)
However if people want to get paid for this work, then how about a carers’ day (for those who look after elderly or incapable relatives)? A siblings’ day (to celebrate those who help their siblings)? And so on..
If people have children, some one has to look after them. Why the fuss?
I agree that the results of this sort of survey are misleading, at best. My wife stays home and takes care of our daughter. I appreciate her very much and think it’s great we can afford to do that. However, she is in no way a CEO. She makes decisions regarding one household and one child. I was once a Vice President and managed 100+ employees. I earned less that $160/hour for that work.
Of course, I do my share around the house also. So, although I earn a salary outside of the house, my true value should include “botanist” (I take care of the lawn), “chauffeur” (I drive often in the evenings and weekends), “CFO” (I pay the bills), “CIO” (I care for our network and computers), and on and on.
Finally, I have worked as a professional for 19 years. Until two years ago, I earned less than a stay-at-home mom’s equivalent. So, a 22-year-old with no college degree who takes care of two kids is worth the same salary as I am today? Silly. If so, that 22-year-old should see if she can find a job paying $138,000 and consider hiring a nanny, or maybe her husband should stay home instead.
Wow- most of the commenters above should be ashamed of themselves, or at least your mothers and wives should be ashamed of you.
The point of the survey is to show that there is monetary value to what stay at home mothers do at no charge to you.
It is about respect for women who have chosen to stay home with their families. How about a little thankfulness? Obviously Guy has respect for mothers and the mother of his children.
Besides the survey doesn’t factor in all it costs a woman to make the choice to be at home:
lost experience and time at a career, lost retirement and other benefits that often accompany a job, and her own money from a job or career and all the investments, etc she could have done with that money- that is a hell of a lot more than $138K a year.
I have chosen to be a work from home mother- I have friends who stay at home and I have friends who have careers- the bottom line is is costs to be a woman and have children.
Not looking for sympathy or special help, but at least take a good hard look and acknowledge the women who made and make sacrifices like this everyday.
These kinds of surveys are insulting to fathers – and for that matter, patronizing to working mothers who don’t have the luxury of staying at home.
Bleh. We hear about this every year, and it gets dumber and dumber. Stay at home Moms are great and beyond reproach.
You know what? Hogwash. Being a stay at home mom or dad is rarely anything but a high-and-mighty form of conspicuous display of wealth and status, mixed in with a little “it’s for the children” kool-aid so that you can’t be allowed to think about it’s downsides in mixed company.
As prlinkbiz kindly reminds us, it is about the ‘choice’ people make. Others here had been making a similar point, and as a woman, I do not see why their wives and mothers have to be ashamed of them.
Many women do not have a choice but to go to work; likewise many have the choice but still go to work. Some others make a choice to stay at home to be full-time mothers (and wives).
Children are not an inevitability, they are a choice. Choices have costs and consequences. Not all costs are paid off in monetary terms. That is life and I do think chest-thumping to suggest some medals are deserved misses the point of that choice.
Everybody makes their choices. In case of children, where there is a dad still on the scene, that choice is also about trade-offs in the family unit and negotiation (between spouses, where applicable).
Some may argue that children are investments. In which case the value is only apparent at ‘exit’, or what they make of themselves after all the work parents (mother AND father) put in.
One could also argue that women who give up their lives to enable high-flying husbands (case in point: Jack Welch’s wife who could have been a great lawyer). But then again that money is only realisable at ‘exit’… While we are at it, why not also have a Wives’ Day?
Such surveys are simplistic, stylised, reductionist and broadly useless. The best way to deal with them is to take them as such and not give them importance as any sort of pro- or anti- feminist or social commentary of any significance.
Hhhmmm…according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the 2004 median income for full time year round workers was $40,798 for males and $31,223 for females.
That means that SAHM’s is making the equivalent of about 3.5 full time workers.
The most common work week in the U.S. is 40 hours (1997 Bureau of National Affairs) which means that our dear SAHM is working 20 hours a day, every day.
Do I think that SAHM’s add value to the world? Of course. But I also think the high price tag assigned is a marketing gimmick
What Is A Stay At Home Mom Worth?
Reuters had an article about Stay-at-home mother’s work worth $138,095 a year: NEW YORK (Reuters) – If the typical stay-at-home mother in the United States were paid for her work as a housekeeper, cook and psychologist among other roles, she…
I think that salary is commensurate to just how much our mothers do for us.
***********
Amen. That’s the point of my post. People want to argue whether it’s accurate, scientific, whatever. The real point is that no mother should ever say/believe that she’s not “employed” and not “working.” She is doing a ton of work and has, arguably, the most important job in the household.
And there is great value in this that is often not sufficiently recognized.
Guy
This dad forwards it as well.
Wow, what a controversy. Whowouldhavethought. (Yeah, right.)
I only have a couple of minutes to write this because I have to go to the kitchen to wipe up some milk (hope that’s all there is to wipe up).
1, Yes, it is a PR move on Salary.com’s side. Of course. Come on!
2, But besides that, come on. Where is the respect? We are talking about Mothers. Let’s put your own self-esteem issues and disgruntled attitude aside. Those of you that belittle what stay-at-home Mothers do should be ashamed of yourselves.
3, For all those Dads (including stay-at-home Dads) who are dissatisfied because you don’t have a fat “paycheck”: Just wait until Father’s Day. I smell another publicity stunt right around the corner.
Sincerely,
Rita Fisher
Stay-at-home Mom of 2 small boys
Note what I said in my first comment:
SAH Moms do a lot of work and should be highly valued.
I don’t think that anyone is saying that SAH Moms have a cush job, but come on!
Nicholas, you say, “I think that salary is commensurate to just how much our mothers do for us.”
Honestly, what my mother (not a stay at home mom) did in helping my father raise me is worth far, far more than $135k/year. But that doesn’t mean that her worth should be used to push traffic to a site that (I’m relatively certain) will have zero openings for Stay At Home Moms in the relatively near future, and certainly not at that salary level.
Why not strut your stuff about jobs you can actually offer?
In other news, Salary.com estimated Majora Carter’s speaking revenue at 17 billion dollars based on Steve Jobs net worth…
;-)
LOL…I wish that I could make that much money.
Guy, I read this to my wife and she said, “yeh, good in theory.”
;)
-Eric
I can’t think of a single child, or even one with the help of their siblings, that could afford to keep their mom at that price. And yet I haven’t heard of a single instance where a child had to lay off their mom due to lack of funds for payroll. So maybe the salary estimate is wrong? (*wink wink*) (Happy Mother’s Day!)
Why is it that there are never any figures released for how much Dad’s efforts are worth? (Even those Dad’s who work full-time?)
Is this because Dads, in general, are lame? Or is it that we don’t value Dads as much as Moms.
Technically, shouldn’t Dad ‘earn’ a little money for reading bedtime stories – say, $10-20k for speaking and presentations? Surely, I could go on.
Isn’t it cute how we monetized parenting and household care – as if it pays any bills or sends any of those kids to college?
Yet our kids are more medicated than any previous generation, grow up in more divorce and as adults are more depressed, more ADD and less capable of thriving or even surviving in today’s society.
Hmmm…maybe we should stop bragging about what a great job we are all worth as parents and actually work on doing a better job as parents and spouses.
What’s would that be worth? Priceless.
Wow. I feel like I need to defend myself as a Stay at home Mom now. And Aaron? Who said “You know what? Hogwash. Being a stay at home mom or dad is rarely anything but a high-and-mighty form of conspicuous display of wealth and status, mixed in with a little “it’s for the children” kool-aid so that you can’t be allowed to think about it’s downsides in mixed company.” That is RIDICULOUS. Oh yeah, I’m really displaying my “wealth and status” by driving a ten year old minivan to Goodwill to purchase secondhand clothing for my children. And yes, I am making a CHOICE to stay home, drive a used van, purchase clothes at Goodwill.
What is my alternative? Well, I do have a B.A. in Liberal Arts, and I could probably get a job as, say, a bank teller, making $8.50 an hour to start. That would be a weekly paycheck of $340.00. Let’s say that after taxes and FICA, I bring home $220.00 a week, okay? My 18 month old daughter would need full-time daycare, that costs $3.50 an hour at a nearby daycare center, she would be there 9 hours a day factoring in pickup and drop-off time, so that’s $157.50 for one week. Now I’m down to $62.50 for the week. My elementary school age boys would need to stay in the after-care program at school, which costs $30 a week per child, or $60.00.
Wow. I’ve made a whole $2.50 for MYSELF! Again, I know I CHOSE to have three children, instead of CHOOSING to have a career. But the fact is, I don’t get any compensation for the fact that I am raising my children instead of paying someone else to raise them for me. I’m not asking for $138,000 a year, I know that’s unrealistic. How about a better tax break, or a few years of FREE childcare until my daughter is ready for kindergarten? It won’t happen, but it sure would be nice.
I wonder if any of you “skeptics” are either: 1) married to a mother of children; or 2) or hoping like heck that your bride doesn’t see your comment! ;-)
How Bad Design IncreasesBusiness
Sorry for you designers who read my blog regularly. Let me explain something though:
Better Design does NOT mean Better Website.
Ill give you the background:
Im looking to get HireAHelper designed and I know a guy who does a decent job o…
My wife and I try to be home for the children. As newly married (almost 6 years) and two children (3.5 and 2) the bills seem to a little higher than the income. We nearly make it on one income and my wife is a nurse. She works the minimum 3 days usually. Sacrifice is key. Both my wife and I realize why we do this and the cost. Our minivan (9 years old) was inherited, our Focus is five years new. The car is paid for, we have little debt, and are happy. We save for family trips, my wife is from the Caribbean so it is quite a bit of money for her to go back.
We will not have these though: a boat, a luxury car, McMansion, all the tech stuff for the home, a pool, etc.
The low income is not a huge problem. I will be working soon, so we are trying to figure a way around day care, we not be able to avoid it. School is soon though. However, the low income does not affect sharing time with friends and family which are our favorite pasttimes.
This info. is free from this SAHD and full time graduate student, and now part time worker.
But, since people insist on calculating what Mom’s salary should be, why not estimating the value of Dad’s work at home? I do all of the cooking for dinner plus all cooking on the weekend. I do all of the yard work and all home maintenance and repairs that don’t require a tradesman. I maintain the cars. I take the dogs for their twice-daily walks. All of this on top of working my full-time job. I want MY paycheck!
“I wonder if they will start teaching stay at home mom degrees in college or some sort of extended school.”
And everyone should give an exam, what looks like that a wife has to feed the child, take the dust, wash dishes, make a cake and so on AT THE SAME TIME :D ? Right?
My mom is worth way more than $140,000 year. Or $140 million for that matter. So is my dad.
You can’t put a price on everything.
Thank you, Guy, for posting this piece (PR it may be, but so what?), out of (I hope and assume) respect for mothering.
Let’s put aside the silly hourly calculations and use this as an opportunity to look at our system and culture that do not really value mothering, financially or otherwise. Some of these blog comments sadly prove this point.
The hard fact is, the U.S. is the only industrialized country without legislated paid maternity leave, period. We pale in comparison to most European countries when it comes to making it at all affordable for families/mothers to raise children in the critical first years — as well as when it comes to helping women transition back into the working world when the kids go to school. Many nations do, in fact, pay stay-home mothers for the first critical years. Not six figures, but enough to show that they value the job of raising the country’s next generation. (This all goes for fathers too, but, come on, studies show and we all know that the lion’s share of this work is done by women, throughout the world.)
I am irked when the conversation turns to our individual “choices” with a system so behind the rest of the developed world. There is only a facade of choice for women in the United States because so many organizations offer only full-time work or nothing. (Mine did.) This is not a choice that works well for most families.
Please read The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars by Miriam Peskowitz for an intelligent, important discussion of how the system is the problem here. Please visit www.momsrising.org to see work being done to change the United States’ archaic, anti-“family values” system.
The attitudes of some of these readers make me sad for this country. Yes, I am a mom, I work from home as a freelancer, but my real work is raising my children to be responsible citizens and good people. That takes time, attention and, yes, money.
They should offer parenting degrees in college. Maybe it would improve the product.
This is nothing more than a factoid, of the same value as the canard that “women earn only 71 cents for every dollar earned by men”. In an economic sense, any work is worth exactly what the market pays for it, so only if there are “professional mothers” in the marketplace actually making $138K does this have any real meaning.
But of course, economic “worth” as represented by salaries is not the only kind of worth.
The world would fall apart if women didn’t do what they did for their kids and dependent parents. Women are the primary decision makers and caregivers in both cases – over 75%. You can’t put a monetary figure on an activity that essentially keeps our society going. It is priceless.
After reading all these comments, the one that makes most sense to me is that of Elizabeth. I don’t understand why the government does not give subsidies to SAH moms (for example, free daycare).
I am a 23 year old from India, studying in the USA. I have a brother who is 5 years younger to me. My mom has been at home for the sake of our education pretty much all her life. I feel really bad that she had to sacrifice her life’s goals for our sake (she has a Masters). A month after writing this post, I am going to earn $105,000. I would have been nowhere today, if it were not for my parents (more so, my mom).
At this point, I am feeling very guilty about the whole thing. I want to give back my mom something, but I don’t know how I am going to repay the incalculable debt that I owe her. I think the only justifiable repayment at this point is to make them proud.