However you slice it, being a stay-at-home mom is a round-the-clock job. From waking up in the middle of the night to a hungry baby until the moment all the little ones are fed, bathed, and sound asleep in bed, they’re on call for every second of it. Due to the many hats they wear on a daily basis, it’s almost impossible to put a price on just how much everything they do would be worth financially in the working world, but a recent survey tried to figure it out. So, how much would a stay-at-home mom’s salary be if she were actually compensated for this full-time job? Well, some finance experts say she’d be looking at a six-figure annual salary.
According to a survey conducted by Salary.com, a stay-at-home mom’s salary would be worth $143,102. That includes a base salary of $48,509 for the standard 40-hour work week as well as 52 hours of overtime that equate for the extra $94,593. And honestly, it’s worth every penny.
Researchers for the finance site got to these figures by looking at how 15,000 moms spent their days and what each of those responsibilities would be worth as a job on its own. From there, they factored in the average amount of hours worked within each of those professions — for example, more than 11 hours a day as a chef whipping up snacks and meals for the day, nearly five hours as a judge laying down the law on whichever silly argument their kids are fired up about today, and about three hours working as a psychologist — and crunched the numbers to get to the well-deserved estimate.
The modern stay-at-home mom's jobs also consist of the following: housekeeper, athletic trainer, photographer, social media marketing manager, academic advisor, tailor, recreational therapist, coach, tax accountant, school teacher, groundskeeper, plumber, nutritionist, and nurse. While those are just a sampling of their many indispensable responsibilities moms do on a daily basis, seeing it in writing totally justifies that hefty income (if it were a reality, of course).
Whether you're a mom at home with the kids or you're part of the growing number of stay-at-home dads in the United States, everything you do is an incredibly important, and often thankless, job that shapes how your little ones are raised. Even though this is an imaginary salary, those six figures and the long list of daily tasks shows just how much stay-at-home moms (and dads) are absolutely crushing it as parents.
