Study: US mothers deserve $134,121 in salary

[whimsicaldeb]

Study: US mothers deserve $134,121 in salary
By Ellen Wulfhorst
Wed May 3, 9:11 AM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A full-time stay-at-home mother would earn $134,121 a year if paid for all her work, an amount similar to a top U.S. ad executive, a marketing director or a judge, according to a study released Wednesday.

A mother who works outside the home would earn an extra $85,876 annually on top of her actual wages for the work she does at home, according to the study by Waltham, Massachusetts-based compensation experts Salary.com.

To reach the projected pay figures, the survey calculated the earning power of the 10 jobs respondents said most closely comprise a mother's role -- housekeeper, day-care teacher, cook, computer operator, laundry machine operator, janitor, facilities manager, van driver, chief executive and psychologist.

"You can't put a dollar value on it. It's worth a lot more," said Kristen Krauss, 35, as she hurriedly packed her four children, all aged under 8, into a minivan in New York while searching frantically for her keys. "Just look at me."

Employed mothers reported spending on average 44 hours a week at their outside job and 49.8 hours at their home job, while the stay-at-home mother worked 91.6 hours a week, it showed.

An estimated 5.6 million women in the United States are stay-at-home mothers with children under age 15, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data.

NOT 'JUST A MOM'

"It's good to acknowledge the job that's being done, and that it's not that these women are settling for 'just a mom,"' said Bill Coleman, senior vice president of compensation at Salary.com. "They are actually doing an awful lot."

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, some 26 million women with children under age 18 work in the nation's paid labor force.

Both employed and stay-at-home mothers said the lowest-paying job of housekeeper was their most common role, with employed mothers working 7.2 hours a week as housekeeper and stay-at-home mothers working 22.1 hours in that role.

"Every husband I've ever spoken to said, 'I'm keeping my job. You keep yours.' It's a tough one," said Gillian Forrest, 39, a stay-at-home mother of 22-month-old Alex in New York. "I don't know if you could put a dollar amount on it but it would be nice to get something."

To compile its study, Salary.com surveyed about 400 mothers online over the last two months.

Salary.com offers a Web site (http://www.mom.salary.com) where mothers can calculate what they could be paid, based on how many children they have, where they live and other factors. The site will produce a printable document that looks like a paycheck, Coleman said.

"It's obviously not negotiable," he said.

On average, the mother who works outside the house earns a base pay of $62,798 for a 40-hour at-home work week and $23,078 in overtime; a stay-at-home mother earned a base pay of $45,697 and $88,424 in overtime, it said.

In a Salary.com study conducted last year, stay-at-home mothers earned $131,471. The potential earnings of mothers who work outside the home was not calculated in the previous study.

Source:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060503/ts_nm/life_work_dc

--end of article

I agree that moms deserve that much in salary, and more! And I don't mean a card and a flower either.

Here's something else to consider when looking at there figures:

...the mother who works outside the house earns a base pay of $62,798 for a 40-hour at-home work week and $23,078 in overtime...

And out of that base pay are taxes followed by child care costs (some one has to watch that child) then medical premiums, commute costs, clothing costs, lunch/entertainment costs etc., so that in the end, your take home pay is, at best, 1/2 of that base pay - more realistically only a 1/3.

That's the question, overall, about going back to work in the work force. And what usually wins out in the end is not the money, but how it feels to be back at work, doing something you feel productive about with other adults, instead of working behind the scenes in an under-appreciated profession.

The hardest job in the world: a stay-at-home mom.

[firsty]

well, dad would be co-CEO, right, so that would affect things. you also have other thankless jobs that dont provide income, such as fixing the roof, mowing the lawn, trimming the hedges, taking out the garbage, painting the fence, cleaning the garage, emergency medicine, family counseling, sports coach, etc etc etc.

all people everywhere do thankless things for free, every day, for the people they love, the people who love them, and the people for whom life circumstances have made them responsible.

to put a dollar amount on any of those tasks is insulting to humanity.

to have a study focused on mothers and pretending that their duties are comparable to those of a CEO, a janitor or a computer operator is just plain silly, and rather sexist.

dollar values only have meaning within an economic system. a person is worth only what another person will pay them. and, without doing a study and without trying to force gender inequality into somewhere it doesnt belong, what a stay at home parent does is actually worth something very tangible - the cost of paying someone else to watch the kids. specifically, child care. a stay at home mother's value is worth what a child care worker makes. because thats what actual parents pay actual people to watch actual children.

in my job, i have to be a computer expert, even tho it's not in my job description. i also have to make executive decisions, just like a CEO, and i have to mediate conflict when HR isnt around, making me as much of a psychologist as any stay at home mom, yet my work salary is in no way determined by the salary earned by actual psychologists who go to school for it.

studies like this serve to promote an exaggeration that women are undervalued and underpaid.

every hardworking person is underpaid. every member of a family is underpaid for the work they do.

when i was 7, the oldest of 3 children, my parents drove us around in one car, a rusty blue dodge dart. we called it "freckles." my mom stayed at home without a car in the driveway. if she needed the car that day, we'd all drop dad off at work in the morning. now, kristen krauss, 33, of new york, drives her kids around in a minivan. if kristen krauss was driving a rusty blue dodge dart, in 2006, people would really be complaining.

life is what you make of it. if you make of it that 90% of your time is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars that you'll never see, you're in for a world of disappointment.

wa wa wa.

[whimsicaldeb]

dollar values only have meaning within an economic system. a person is worth only what another person will pay them. and, without doing a study and without trying to force gender inequality into somewhere it doesnt belong, what a stay at home parent does is actually worth something very tangible - the cost of paying someone else to watch the kids. specifically, child care. a stay at home mother's value is worth what a child care worker makes. because thats what actual parents pay actual people to watch actual children.

Well then, that's not much because child care workers are some of the lowest paid workers, and they do this work without receiving even a minimum of benefits as well. So you're correct, it does show the worth (the value) that people put on taking care of children, as well as stay at home moms ... which (imo) is very little.

studies like this serve to promote an exaggeration that women are undervalued and underpaid.

They point out what's there, what's happening - like you did with your "a person is worth only what another person will pay them" comment above ... it's an accurate statement... and it's an accurate fact: women are undervalued and underpaid.

every hardworking person is underpaid. every member of a family is underpaid for the work they do.

To a degree, yes.

But, there is another part to this, as there is to everything. In the end it's the person themselves who determine whether they are being underpaid, or appreciated. Many times our rewards, compensations, for our hard work comes back to us in other forms besides money. So worth is not just from what others would put on us, but what we feel inside as well. It's individual. And that I know you already understand cuz you wrote ...

life is what you make of it.

Yep, yep, yep ~ exactly.

And, I thought your points about the unpaid work that dads do was well said.