Your Paycheck for Mom Life Is Worth 6 Figures, According to New Data
by Sarah Shebek
Full disclosure, I’m super sentimental. I try really hard to keep this under wraps (but I guess not so much now. Oh boy, here I go). For example, I can sit on the couch lost in a box of childhood photos for hours, Kleenex on lap, getting teary eyed looking at the same photo over and over again that I’ve seen for years. The photos that get me mushy-watery eyed are the few I have with my mom. While I love my dad, he was in almost all of them! It was my mom I wanted to be close to – in the photos and in real life – but she didn’t know that, because we didn’t get along for most of my childhood. I challenged her on everything even before the teen years. I’m sure I broke her in some way. So it’s not a surprise I suppose there are very few photos I have of us together. If I could go back in time, I wish I could tell her, “listen, I’m going to be your difficult child but bear with me, because in the future, I promise to be more loving, understanding and supportive of you. Let’s pretend we get along for the time being so we have something to look back on.” If only life worked this way. That jerky “question everything” attitude I had toward my mom likely won’t happen until the teen years for your kiddos (if it happens, hopefully not). I guess what I’m getting at is either way, try to stay in the photo as much as you can. Now. Tomorrow. And the next day. In the present day, most kids can’t see the big picture of how valuable our time together is with you and how fleeting and temporary these moments might be. In the big picture, you’re mom, our rock, our guiding point, the woman we look up to even when our actions say otherwise; you mean the world to your child even when not being told so. When that camera is aimed in your direction, you might not be feeling it. Trust me, I get it. Sometimes it’s a mood thing or the-way-we-look thing, like our hair resembles a trash bag, our arms have missed a few push ups, we have morning pillow face, or the kids just flat out say no (likely what I did). In all of these up and down moments, try to remember these are memories that years from now, you and your child will sit on the couch and look at and maybe pull out the Kleenex together, like my mom and I did, just the other day. ............... Note to the reader: This might be better titled, “An Apology to My Mom”, but I chose to keep it as is. I come across a lot of moms that hold off on getting their photo taken and this is a gentle reminder to stay in the picture. It’ll be worth it later on. Also, since this was more personal than my norm, I reached out to my mom before publishing this, and her response was, “I wish things had been better between us. Moving forward our time together will be so much more than it has been.” And it’s true, it has been immensely better. Our bond is stronger than ever, it just took us longer than most. So, now we begin the picture taking. I guess it’s true, it’s never too late, but why wait?
In a dream world, you’d get paid to be a mom. And if you did, new data from Salary.com finds that you’d be making a fair market salary of $184,820, based on an average of 106 (!) hours of work a week. Of course, that doesn’t take hazard pay or retirement into account.
Those hours worked are up from 96.5 hours a week pre-pandemic and 75% of moms report putting in even more time––117 hours a week to be exact. With the additional burden of schooling and working at home, the most time-consuming and expanded roles reported were Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Chief Operating Officer (the role that makes sure everyone else is following the plan).
For the past two decades, Salary.com has surveyed tens of thousands of stay-at-home moms and working moms to determine the value of the job if it was paid fairly. Moms report their work profile across 20+ roles that make up the most time-consuming tasks from chauffeur, to CFO, to cook and more. Salary.com analyzes the hours spent and assigns an hourly wage rate to each role.
“In a year like no other, moms went to extraordinary lengths to keep things together on the home front, working, on average, 15.1 hours per day, seven days a week,” said Mary Crogan, Vice President of Marketing at Salary.com. “That’s an incredible workload, and one that encompasses everything from C-level responsibilities, to help desk manager, to teacher. It’s fitting that their salary value continues to rise, nearing the upper echelons of Corporate America.”
Of course, mom life doesn’t actually bring in a paycheck because no amount of money could compensate when the work you do is invaluable. But the next time someone downplays your role in the household, just remember you can tie a dollar amount to your hard work—and there’s data to prove it.
