Since it's Father's Day this weekend, the Home Cents crew thought it might be interesting to take a look at how much a dad's contribution to household duties is worth in dollars and cents.
The answer? About $20,415 (U.S.) annually -- or a third of what a mum is worth, according to the brains at U.S. website insure.com. They calculated the number based on "sample replacement costs for dad duties," such as helping with homework ($19 an hour), chauffeur duties ($12/hr), yard work ($14/hr) and even plumbing ($24/hr).
Their assumptions include three hours of cooking per week, four hours of general home maintenance a week, 10 hours of helping with home work every week, and 20 hours of car maintenance a year. (A lot of laughter in the Home Cents group about these assumptions, by the way.)
Insure.com also came up with a variety of extra jobs that a dad might handle to boost his value.
"Those include changing flat tires, coaching sports teams, telling stories about 'the good old days' and laying down the law to misbehaving youngsters. Throw in pay as an audio and video technician (to cover his penchant for hogging the TV remote control) and it brings his total annual contribution to $51,208 – but still not as impressive as Mom’s worth."
By comparison, their calculation for a mother's duties came to $61,436 a year.
A more sympathetic survey on the salary.com website found that stay-at-home dads work an average of 52.9 hours a week. "Factoring in base pay plus overtime, these dads would earn $60,128 a year," it says.
Working fathers would be paid $33,858 a year after spending 30.6 hours a week on parenting duties. Working mothers would make $63,472 a year after putting in 55.9 hours of mom-related work every week.
The website also provides a calculator that figures out exactly what the dad in question is worth, based on how many kids you have, their ages, and whether he stays at home or works outside. (To truly customize it for local wages, though, you need a U.S. postal code.)
It also carries an interview (featuring middle-of-the-night shifts and waste-management issues) that prospective dads should have to go through to get the job.
And, reinforcing what some mums already knew, Insure.com points out that the 21st-century dad is not that different from fathers at the turn of the millennium. Their replacement value hasn’t increased much more than the rate of inflation because the same duties were worth $16,279 in 2000.
Yet, the website concedes, "those figures ignore the intangibles. Statisticians don’t track the value of a well-caught pop fly, or the slaying of edge-of-the-bed monsters."
To which I'd like to add: This research does not apply to my sweetie, who really does pull his own weight around the house, particularly where our kids are involved. Happy Father's Day!
