According to a "study" released by salary.com, stay-at-home moms would make close to $117,000 a year if they were compensated for their work. That figure was calculated based on the salaries of 10 jobs -- including housekeeper and CEO -- whose duties share something in common with motherhood.
Working moms, on the other hand, only earn $68,405 for their kid-rearing efforts. Because, you know, they're just mothering "part-time." These figures are slightly higher than the ones quoted in Brett's recent blog post about New York moms, who apparently are only worth $70K per year even when they're working the maternal shift full-time. (Don't they know how high the cost-of-living is in New York? Momma needs to pay the rent and buy a new pair of shoes, you know.)
It's fun to speculate about how much money each of us could earn if only we got paid for running a family.But it's also a depressing reminder that women in general, whether they are mothers or not, still aren't compensated at the same level as most men. And as a society, our attitude toward ambitious women is still pretty conflicted. (No, I'm not referring to Hillary Clinton, overtly or covertly, with these comments. But someone will probably assume I am, so whatev.)
It would be nice if SAHMs, working moms or even working women period actually were paid the money they deserve. Until that day comes, well, we always have another survey from salary.com to look forward to. Next time, I'd like them to look into how much money moms deserve to spend on their non-existent corporate credit cards. I think we have another pretend-$10 Grand coming our way.
