Stolen from Guy Kawasaki (welcome to the blogroll, Guy) who stole it from Reuters, who stole it from Salary.com, here’s a nifty little calculator to determine how much a mother’s work is actually worth, if you were hiring people to do all of that instead. Sure, it’s timed to make news just before Mother’s Day, but they haven’t forgotten fathers either: they’ve got their own Dad’s Work Calculator.
Yes, it asks for a US zip code, and the only one I know is 90210, same as everyone else who grew up part of Generation X, but go ahead and put that in if you can’t think of another. It will even print you out a pretty sweet personalized cheque and annual earnings statement at the end, suitable for framing and/or sticking on the front of the fridge. Give it to your tax auditor and watch his head explode.
But I wouldn’t take it to the bank until your kids have been out of law school a few years.
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raincoaster media 
Metro
May 11, 2007
I have always felt that the benefits of a stay-home parent or partner are part of the calculation that is never seen when the economists and insurance adjusters set the numbers that make up our world.
It is much easier if one of you doesn’t have to worry about whether the house will be clean, food tabled, and the kids picked up/fed/whupped. Worry-free people are more productive, less stressed, less often sick …
The list could, I’m sure, go on.
I’d like to see non-working parents (not singles or simply partners: unfair but rational) get a non-refundable tax credit for the value they bring by allowing their partner to work the forty-hour treadmill of hopelessness that is modern work.
raincoaster
May 11, 2007
I believe they do, actually. And for those that are unemployed, the pressure to find a job is greatly lessened if they can’t find one that offers affordable daycare. Think of restaurant work, for example: it can pay well, but you start as a casual worker, with no notice of shifts. So you basically have to pay through the nose for child care. Unless you’re part of an informal co-op situation, daycare can easily cost more than the job will make. Fortunately, at least for now the government recognizes this and generally allows single parents with preschool children to stay home with them. A better situation would be, of course, if the government put some effort into encouraging (tax incentives again) companies to make daycare affordable and accessable, or offered some kind of socialized daycare. If everyone supported it directly, parents could afford to take lower paying jobs and get off welfare and back into the larger community faster.