Okay, moms, how many hats do you wear on a daily basis? You’re a teacher, nurse, caregiver, chef, babysitter, chauffeur, housekeeper, therapist, tutor, coach..shall I go on?

A new study that made its rounds on parenting sites and social media this week found that all of this unpaid labor that a mom performs at home and for her family is economically worth more than $140K a year — $140,315, to be exact. 

This is not an arbitrary number. The stats come via the Mother’s Day Index 2024 from Insure.com, where researchers used data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to calculate the hourly wages of various jobs such as a chef and a babysitter. They crunched the numbers and concluded that if moms were paid for all the work they do, it’d be equal to a salary of just over $140K, a 5 percent increase from 2023. 

The point of this survey, according to Insure.com, is to acknowledge the work that moms do inside the home. Of course, this doesn’t include the labor moms put into balancing home life with a part-time or full-time traditional job, what Insure.com describes as “doing two jobs but only being financially compensated for one.”

I’m no mathematician (seriously, I can’t even do basic algebra which is why I took to writing as a career), but this amount seems low, especially given results from other studies that have shown how moms work an average of 2.5 full-time jobs, or approximately 98 hours a week, and should earn about $4,500 a month. There’s the 9-5 shift for traditional working moms, and then the 5-9 shift after that, since work doesn’t end when moms log off for the day.

Don’t get me started on the mental load that mostly falls on mothers too. These are the invisible tasks required to run a household, from restocking the pantry to buying birthday gifts for parties to keeping track of our kids’ after-school activities and commitments. Is it even possible to put an economic price tag on all of that?

Unfortunately, as parenting sites like Motherly point out, the system here in the United States doesn't make it easy for moms, nor does it acknowledge all the work we put in. For example, moms who stay at home don’t get Social Security benefits for their work taking care of their family. In many fields, moms sometimes have to choose between their career or their family. And then there’s the mom guilt that some of us might feel when the only two options presented to us are working and leaving our kids with a caregiver, or not working and therefore not contributing any income to the family. It’s hard either way.

This is all the more reason to make 2025 the year of moms’ self-care. Since having my second child, who’s now 8 months old, alone time is a rarity. So, I make an effort to do certain things just for me; that means two hours of alone time to go to the gym on weekend mornings, buying myself little treats like iced coffees and Diet Cokes, and making occasional appointments for manis, pedis, and massages.

Because even if you’re not making a literal $140K+ a year, you clearly deserve it.

What are your thoughts on this study about moms’ unpaid labor?

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