I have heard many numbers thrown around about the financial worth of a Stay At Home Mom, everything from $30,000 to $160,000 and even $500,000, but these are often times generalizations based off of things most families wouldn't buy regardless of whether one parent stayed at home or not. Such things these are often based off of include the cost of a maid, a nurse, a chauffeur and cook and with the higher numbers, paying these positions for a 24 hour, 7 day a week career. With or without my staying home, I can guarantee you, we would not be employing these workers in our household! So I got to wondering, what is MY personal worth as a Stay At Home Parent?
I researched extensively and found an average, annual daycare cost for an infant in Wisconsin, full time, to be roughly $10,500! Multiply that by two and we're looking at $21,000 a year for just my twins. My daughter is nearing 2, so no longer an infant, not yet preschool, but the closest average I could find for her was preschool age, factoring in at roughly $9,000 a year. For my three children (once the twins are born), in one year of full time daycare, necessary for having a full time job, it would cost us, roughly, $30,000, more than some minimum wage jobs would bring home. I will not factor in any overtime I possibly may have had to work or any late fees for picking up children late.
Next, I factored in gas to and from a job. For a job worth covering the astronomical daycare prices, I picked a city nearby, but much larger with much better opportunities at a better than minimum wage job, approximately 45 miles away, or 90 miles round day daily, 5 days a week. Current average price for gas is $2.86 a gallon, and rising nearly daily it seems. My car gets approximately 27 miles to the gallon (it's a gas guzzler!) So, I would be looking at 450 miles of driving for a 5 day work week, with my gas mileage I would be using about 16 and half gallons of gas each week costing me nearly $50.00 each week just in gas. There are 52 weeks in a year, so we're looking at an annual gas price of $2,600 a year, assuming the price of gas didn't raise and that I didn't have to drive out of my way to drop my kids off at daycare.
Let's talk food now, while I'm an advocate for bringing a lunch to work to save money, with three kids, a full time job and myself to tend to, I figure I would be purchasing a ready made lunch twice a week (and that is potentially the understatement of the year!). Let's take a super cheap meal at a fast food joint costing $5.00, twice a week for 52 weeks is $520 a year. That's assuming I didn't go to a restaurant with a pricier menu, didn't purchase soda or a candy bar or chips from a vending machine.
Just in these three areas, we are looking at an annual cost of $33,120 dollars. My job as a Stay At Home Parent saves us more than some minimum wage jobs! This does not factor in pays lost due to taking time off for child sickness or daycare inability to watch children, it also doesn't factor in the extra electricity and utilities I currently use as a Stay At Home Parent. It does not factor in the money saved by cooking homemade meals vs buying insta-meals (aka, frozen meals or meals from a can), coupon clipping or budget shopping, which I may not have time for with a full time job.
My economic, financial worth may not be $160,000 a year, but knowing my job saves us the cost associated with my getting at least one job sure makes me feel pretty good. Regardless of what the number crunching comes to, a price sticker cannot be put on my worth as a Stay At Home Parent. I get to raise my daughter (s) with my values and morals, teach them the things they need to know, give them more individualized attention than they would in a daycare setting, make memories with them, see all of the "firsts", create a bond nobody can touch and reap a satisfaction I never knew possible. I don't receive a paycheck, sick time, vacation time or bonuses, heck, I don't ever even get to be off-call, I get paid in kisses, hugs, smiles and the satisfaction of seeing my hard work turn into a thriving person, no paycheck could compare to my "salary".
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