How much do you think a mom should be paid?
May 15th, 2007 | by mbhunter |If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
My Mother’s Day post reporting on the recent six-figure salary for moms from Salary.com drew some strong, legitimate opinions totally opposite to my thinking. (Which is great! I appreciate the comments! Thanks flifla and Chris!)
The two commenters thought that the figure was way too high:
“… Moms who cook Mac & Cheese would get paid the same as a professional chef, right?”
“… What wife would honestly demand payment for raising her own child? I keep my house clean because I WANT to, not for payment.”
I thought the figure was about right — in the same vein that good teachers and good nurses are paid far too little and beaten to a pulp at their jobs to boot. I also thought that no mother would expect payment for her job, as there are a lot of fringe benefits to raising your kids full-time at home. By the same token, though, there are times that they couldn’t pay her enough for what they have to go through on some days. It’s not always smooth. (Some might say it’s rarely smooth!)
I viewed the six-figure salary as an appreciative nod to everything that they do, and as a reminder the next time I find myself taking the mother of my daughter for granted to value what she does more highly than my own job.
But setting my thoughts aside, what do you think a stay-at-home mom’s job should be worth if put on the open market? What would you ask for as a stay-at-home mom if a family were to hire you for the position?
2 Responses to “How much do you think a mom should be paid?”
By Nathania Johnson on May 15, 2007 | Reply
Whoever compared a mom who cooks mac and cheese to a chef is an idiot. A chef doesn’t clean all the linens at the restaurant or sweep the floor or do his/her employees’ laundry.
As for what to pay a stay-at-home mom? well, if someone would just pay me my current salary (under $30k), then i could afford to stay home and that’s what i want. I’m trying to start my own ventures to make that happen.
By briana on May 15, 2007 | Reply
I picked up Your Money or Your Life on the advice of some PF bloggers, and one of the key points in it is to differentiate between ‘work’ and ‘income’. Just because you are not paid for your work does not make it valueless. For some work, such as being a stay-at-home parent, I don’t think you can put a value to it. I feel like it cheapens it to assign an invented salary value.
The value of a stay-at-home parent is not in the tasks she or he does, it’s in improving the quality of life for the family as a whole. If you try to break it down into pieces and assign a salary for time spent as a ‘baker’, ‘cook’, ‘psychologist,’ ‘cleaner,’ ‘doctor’, etc. it misses the mark. Parenthood isn’t a ‘job’ - it is meaningful *work.*
The challenge for today’s families is to bring in enough income to make choosing to stay home an option, and that isn’t addressed by games of make-believe.