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Mother's
Day alert: Stay-at-home mom's worth $164,000 a year: Hugs and kisses
were also factored in, but there's more to it than that Motherhood may indeed be its own reward, but that isn't stopping labour analysts from putting a pricetag on stay-at-home parenting. And if their estimates are correct, Mother's Day is going to cost a lot more in compensation than a box of chocolates. According to a new report from Salary.com, modern moms would earn $163,852 ($131,471 U.S.) in annual salary, including overtime pay, if their workload was remunerated in current market terms. The estimate takes into account the average stay-at-home mom's job responsibilities, number of hours worked and frequency of time spent on specific tasks during a typical week. "This has really struck a chord with people about the value of staying home with your kids," says Tim Driver, vice-president of consumer products for Salary.com . "We've had a tremendous response from moms who are thrilled someone has gone to the trouble of putting a dollar-and-cents (amount) on their job." The median salary arrived at by Salary.com's compensation experts is based on a 100-hour work week, consisting of six 15-hour days and one 10-hour day. The figure assumes the mother has at least two children of school age and is predicated in part on the average U.S. salaries of daycare centre teachers, van drivers, housekeepers, cooks, CEOS, nurses and general maintenance workers. Reward in the form of a "steady flow of hugs and kisses" was also considered when determining a mom's $54,166 Cdn base pay and $109,686 in overtime. "A mother-in-chief has to be worth a lot of money," says Ann Douglas, a mother of four and one of Canada's most prolific parenting authors. "She's able to convince wilful toddlers that they really do want to get their rubber boots on, she's able to convince teenagers that life doesn't suck every single day. So she's clearly the best in her field." Ms. Douglas, who hasn't worked full-time outside her home since the birth of her children, says the biggest challenge is getting people to recognize work that's largely invisible. "I've heard probably every child on the planet turn to their mother at some point and say, 'But that's your job'," she says. "But there aren't enough hours in the day for moms to do all the stuff they're supposed to be doing." A study released in February by the University of Lethbridge and Vanier Institute of the Family found 90 per cent of Canadians feel that ideally, in two-parent households, one parent should stay home and take primary responsibility for the children. But a recent Statistics Canada report shows that 53 per cent of young children are in "some kind of child care," while 47 per cent are cared for by stay-at-home parents. "The attitudes of young women and men today are fundamentally different from those of their grandparents," says Bob Glossop, spokesman for the Vanier Institute. "Women today are better educated than any previous generation of women, and most of them expect to use those educations not just on the homefront, but also in the worlds of commerce and civic affairs." |