A Mother’s Worth

Last week Salary.com came out with a survey valuing a mother’s work in the home (cooking, cleaning, laundry, childcare etc.) at $122,732 for stay-at-home moms, and an additional $76,184 for working mothers.  I had a few issues with the survey, and I am glad to know that I wasn’t alone: economist Nancy Folbre, who write the Economix blog at The New York Times, took the survey to task in an interesting and well-written analysis.

The Salary.com survey, and the accompanying application that allows parents to value household chores at average levels of compensation, are essentially PR stunts to draw attention to the company, and to a lesser degree, to the value of “women’s work.”  But I don’t think this kind of gimmick does women any favors; here’s why:

First, estimating a salary for a mother is a false proposition because this kind of job doesn’t exist on the open market.  The closest thing might be a housekeeper or babysitter, but those jobs don’t even come close to including the range of responsibilities of a mother.  And even the best nanny makes only a fraction of the dollar amounts suggested by Salary.com.  It’s meaningless to quantify a job that essentially doesn’t exist.

Second, by valuing these tasks and then lumping them together, the survey suggests that if these jobs were to be outsourced — say to a nanny or housekeeper — you would pay this much.  But that’s clearly not true, and it gives the impression that hiring help is out of reach for many women.  I’m not suggesting that childcare and housekeeping is affordable for everyone, but it’s important that we recognize that hiring someone for a few hours can relieve tremendous pressure on mothers, and doesn’t have to be a huge financial burden.

Finally, this may sound cliche, but you can’t put a value on being a mother.  I choose to do many of these tasks in the home because I love doing them, and there’s no compensation that can measure that.

As Nancy Folbre says, calling attention to the need for family support systems that recognize the time and energy spent on running a household is a good thing, but misrepresenting the dollars associated with these taks is not.  We need real studies that can help us find solutions to the stressed out modern family, and encourage our institutions — government, business and social service — to respond based on the research.

Related links:

• Francine Huff at Walletpop comments on the Salary.com survey.
• Writer Mom’s take on the survey.
• Lisa Takeuchi Cullen at Time asks whether stay-at-home moms are really worth more.
• Ashley Merryman talks about why she thinks the “mom’s salary” survey does more harm than good here and here.  Her comments are a few years old, but much of what she says still holds true.