Supposedly the average mom’s salary would be $138,095 if they are a stay at home mom. While I don’t want to lessen the impact that mom’s have, and how much they are worth I think this whole thing is a big slight to dads. In the article (http://swz.salary.com/momsalarywizard/htmls/mswl_momcenter.html) stay at home moms are listed as housekeeper, day care center teacher, cook, computer operator, laundry machine operator, janitor, facilities manager, van driver, CEO and psychologists. Apparently, mom works over 50 hours a week of overtime. Evidently dad doesn’t do much at all judging from all of this.
In my home growing up this was true. My mom was a working single mother, so she definitely earned the money they attribute to her. But in many homes the dad is a very active part of the household. Does this mean we are assuming the average dad is pretty crappy and doesn’t help at all? I guess our society just doesn’t place much value on dad.
The devaluing of fathers is evident when you go to the mom.salary.com and dad.salary.com websites and compute how much a stay at home parent would make for 1 child not in school and one in school. The median income for a mother would be $138,095 for 91.8 hours of work. Dad is supposedly lazier, only working 81 hours for $125,340. Stay at home moms are housekeepers, while dads aren’t. This makes up a large part of the difference. Also, dads just suck at psychology, since they only do half of that. Same for laundry and computers. Dads get a little extra for being a groundskeeper and general maintenance worker. So it looks like stereotypes actually play a huge part in all of this. Dads just don’t do certain things right? After all, who needs dads.
Our society places so little value on fathers that in a divorce the mother almost always gets the children. Single moms get a lot of attention, but single dads often don’t. When dads do well we need to make sure they get the same attention as moms. When we don’t we do them a disservice and we also teach another generation that being a good father isn’t worth much, and that’s just wrong.
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