What’s a Mom Worth These Days?

About a week ago, I came across an interesting item at Salary.com (which is where I go to find out if there is anyone in the world who makes less than I do; answer: no). Each year, they run an estimate that attempts to quantify what a stay-at-home mother does, if she were paid for all her various labors.

Forget the whole thing about why aren’t there any men in there. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume by stay-at-home mom they also included fathers and just didn’t say so.

Regardless, the number they came up with was $117,856 per year. That’s what you’d be required to pay an individual (or individuals) to do the cooking, cleaning, frying of bacon in pan, sexual servicing of lazy spouse, provision of love and support for offspring, ironing, minor auto repair work, laundry, and other miscellaneous tasks that go into Mommydom.

That’s a tidy sum, wouldn’t you say?

I’m not interested in quibbling with Salary about its math or how it came up with its estimate. The funny thing to me is that I don’t actually know any full-time, stay-at-home mothers. There’s one in my apartment building, but she’s a novelist. I know plenty of mothers who take on part-time work, or leave work for a year or so and then return, but in truth, I can’t think of a single laboring-only-in-the-abode parent. Seems like all the families I know need that second income, or if not, the parent needs that out-of-the-house time to remain sane.

This isn’t related to my incredibly sophisticated lifestyle in a major cosmopolitan city, either. My mother’s side of the family lives in Mississippi, and all of the moms down there work in some form or another (often more than the dads).

Morale of the story? Think of all the money left on the table in that regard. There’s the $100K-plus due for the housework, plus the extra dough earned in the traditional workplace. It’s a financial bonanza out there.

So then why is it that everyone I know is broke?