What’s a mom really worth?
May 10, 2013, 3:08 PM | Updated: Oct 14, 2024, 1:52 pm
What's a mom really worth? About $60,000 a year if she actually got paid for all the work at home, according to some estimates. But one expert argues the value is incalculable. (AP image)
(AP image)
What’s a mom really worth? About $60,000 a year if she actually got paid for all the work at home, according to some estimates.
Insure.com’s Mother’s Day Index averaged the value of 14 jobs mom’s commonly done at home, from cooking to driving. Based on the going wages for those jobs, the index says mom should make about $59,862.
That’s a drop from $60,182 in 2012 and $61,436 in 2011, Amy Danise, a spokeswoman for Insure.com told NBC News.
But noted psychologist, author, and stay-at-home mom Diane Medved argues the value of a mother is actually incalculable.
“I think the main value is to the family cohesion and to the sense that the child has, growing up, that there’s security always in his or her life … he doesn’t have to worry about being loved,” says Medved in an interview with KTTH 770’s David Boze Show.
Medved acknowledges many mothers simply can’t afford to stay at home. She admits even though she can, she often feels the societal pressure to tout her professional credentials ahead of her primary role as mom.
“That justifies me, that gives me an identity in a culture where feminism has taken over and made it such that if you don’t have a career, you’re made to feel like you’re some kind of schlub,” she says.
Still, Medved says staying home isn’t necessarily a good thing in all situations.
“An unhappy mom doing something she doesn’t want to do has no benefits for her or the child.”
Ultimately though, for this Mother’s Day she’d love to see a society that stops undervaluing stay at home moms and places such an emphasis on career. She’d also love some flowers.
