The Value of Stay at Home Moms

"Salary.com recently calculated that, in 2013, a stay-at-home mom in the United States was worth about $114,000 per year," writes Dr. Susan Berry.

While that six-figure salary may sound good, in order to earn it, Mom put in a 94-hour work week.

If a full-time job is 40 hours per week, this outcome means that Mom’s base salary is $37,549. With 54 hours of overtime, worth $76,037, Mom’s total salary is thus $113,586.

These just-for-fun results were obtained by asking thousands of parents the amount of time they spend doing various domestic tasks or jobs. The researchers then calculated what the same amount of time spent in a workplace doing the same job would be worth.

For example, according to the study, per week Moms spend 14 hours as a Cook, 14.4 hours as a Maid, 8 hours as a Taxi Driver, 7.8 hours as a Janitor, 3.3 hours as a CEO, 7.3 hours as a Psychologist, 8.9 hours as a Computer Operator, 6.2 hours as a Laundry Operator, 10.8 hours as a Facilities Manager, and 13.3 hours as a Day Care Teacher.

The income Mom would earn performing these jobs in their environments for the given time periods amounts to nearly $114,000 per year.

If you’d like to calculate the value of the time you dedicate to your family, you can visit Salary.com’s MomSalaryWizard, which allows you to personalize the calculations for moms and dads when you provide the number of hours per week spent on cleaning, cooking, shopping, and driving to basketball practice, ballet, and piano lessons. Homeschooling moms need to be creative in how to fit educating children into the “mom” calculator.

In addition, Salary.com found that working moms who spend 40 hours per week at their jobs, come home to perform an average of 58 hours per week on household and childcare duties, amounting to a total “mom" salary of $67,436. Calculate mom’s full salary by adding in compensation for her job outside the home.

Interestingly, while Salary.com found that the stay-at-home mom’s average “work time” spent is 94 hours per week each week, the stay-at-home dad’s average is just 55.7 hours for the same number of children.