Being a stay-at-home parent is one of the toughest jobs out there—and it's unpaid. If it were paid, the median annual salary would be $178,201, according to 2019 data from Salary.com. The total we calculated i﷽s even higher than that, at nearly $205,000 a year.
Why? Because many stay-at-home parents work around the clock, with 14-hour days—that's a 98-hour work week. Managing a household comes with countless demands and to-dos, along with the stress of child-rearing. Younger children, especially, are particularly time-intensive, with nighttime feedings that make sleep a far-away fantasy. A stay-at-home parent wears many hats, from chauffeur to chef to laundry worker to house cleaner.
Key Takeaways
- Roughly one in five parents are stay-at-home parents, according to the Pew Research Center.
- Stay-at-home parents often act as chauffeurs, chefs, nannies, tutors, and housecleaners.
- During the pandemic, lockdowns left millions working remotely from home, and people became aware of what it is like to be a stay-at-home parent.
Child Care Provider
Stay-at-home parents provide full-time, live-in 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:child care. This type of service from a professional provider usually comes with a host of perks, including 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:health insurance, paid vacation, sick days, federa𝐆l holidays, and bonuses. These benefits are in addition to drawing a salary.
According to the International Nanny Association, the median hourly rate for a nanny is $25 an hour. For a 98-hour week (with 14-hour days—💜say, 6:30 AM to 8:30 PM), a stay-at-home parent with that hourly rate would make $2,450 a week or $10,608.50 a month.
Note: parents with children who don't sleep through the night work even longer hours.
Private Chef
Meal preparation is one of the major tasks of most stay-at-home parents. From breakfast to dinner, there's plenty of meal planning and cooking to be done. According to PayScale, a personal chef can earn an average of $25.86 an hour. If three meals ꦗand two snacks take someone two hours a day to prepare, that's $362.04 a week, or $1567.63 a month.
澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:Grocery shopping is another chore that needs to be factored in. A stay-at-home parent must drive to the supermarket, purchase the food and unpack it at home. Let's say grocery delivery services charge a delivery fee of $20, and a stay-at-home parent shops twice a week. It would equ♍al $173.20 a month ($40 / week x 4.33 weeks in a month) to get groceries.
House Cleaner
A clean and tidy home is the foundation of an efficient household. Typical cleaning duties include vacuuming, d♊ustingꦐ, sweeping, scrubbing sinks, washing dishes, and making beds.
Professional 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:maids or house cleaning service providers often charge by the hour, the number of rooms, or the home's square footage. According to Housekeeper.com, cleaners make between $20 to $40 an hour on average in the U.S. Taking a median of $30 an hour, a stay-at-home parent working three hours a dဣay for sevenꦯ days a week would make $630 a week, or $2727.90 a month.
Important
If a stay-at-home parent were paid, their median annual salary would be over $178,000, according to Salary.com. Our total is even higher than that: $204,932.28 a year.
Driver
A private car service might seem like a high-end luxury to most, but the children of a stay-at-home parent get this service daily. Companies like Dryver, which provides personal drivers that use the client's own car as the means of transportation, offer a glimpse into the cost of this task. If you hire Dryver, it costs between $25.95 and $32.95 an hour. If a stay-at-home parent were paid $30 an hour, they could $1818.6 a month driving two hours a day, seven days a week.
Laundry Worker
Professional laundry services charge by the pound. According to the website StreetEasy, laundry services in New York City, for example, charge anywhere from $1 to $2 a pound.
If a stay-at-home parent does foꦛur pounds of laundry per day, seven days a week, for $1.50 a pound, they woul🦋d earn $181.86 a month.
How Many Stay-at-Home Parents Are Fathers?
About one in five (18%) of stay-at-home parents are fathers, according to Pew Research Center.
Do Stay-at-Home Parents Earn Money?
Some stay-at-home parents work part-time or freelance jobs to earn money but the role of a stay-at-home parent is a non-pay𒁃ing job in the traditional sꦑense.
What Does a Homemaker Do?
A homemaker often cooks, cleans, cares for children, helps with homework, and may pay bills, keep ho🐲usehold schedules, and do the shopping. An ability to juggle responsibilities and multi-task are key skills to have as a homemaker.
The Bottom Line
The daily work of a stay-at-home parent or homemaker can sometimes be taken for gr🐭anted by other family members. However, these services could earn a homemaker a considerable wage if they took those sk🌳ills to the marketplace.
Homemakers, in general, contribute a lot m𒀰ore to the home in addition to these tasks, and ﷽no amount of money can fill those needs.