Why Stay-At-Home Moms Are Worth More than $100K a Year

USA-CAMPAIGN/ROMNEY

Whether you are a mom telecommuting, operating a business from your home, or working full time as a stay-at-home mother, chances are you have your hands full.

The stay-at-home-mom topic entered the 2012 election firestorm Wednesday night, when Hilary Rosen, a top Democratic strategist, told CNN “Guess what, [Romney’s] wife has actually never worked a day in her life.”

Sixty-four-year-old Romney, a mother of five and grandmother of 16, fired back on Twitter with her first-ever tweet, “I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work.”

She’s not alone. According to the U.S. Census, there were 5 million stay-at-home moms in 2010 — down from 5.1 million in 2009 and 5.3 million in 2008.

According to Salary.com, the average stay-at-home mom’s task load equates to a 95-hour work week. This breaks down to 40 hours at base pay and 54.7 hours of overtime on their “mom duties.” This is good for an annual salary of $112,940.45, or $17.80 an hour.

Salary.com surveyed more than 8,000 moms to find out how much time they spend on common tasks, and calculated the pay they would get for managing the same services in the corporate arena. For example, being the CEO of the household comes out to a salary of $171,824 a year, or $55.07 an hour.

According to the survey, “Our CEO job description states: Responsible for the short- and long-term profitability and growth of the company.  Substitute the word ‘children’ for ‘company’ and you have an apt description of what mothers do every day.”