Moms Worth More Than Dads?
Who’s worth more to the family household? Mom or dad? Insure.com has taken a light-hearted approach to this question with two new indexes comparing their cash values and sorry dads, but it’s the moms who come out on top.
The website has compiled an index listing the duties that a typical father might perform around the house and measured the cost to hire someone to perform the same functions based on average job rates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
They then compare this to another index looking at the tasks of a typical mother performed around the house in a year and how much it would cost to replace her with a hired hand.
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When it comes to the cash value of their household contribution, moms trounce the fathers by carrying out tasks that amount to an impressive $61,436 a year.
With a worth of around $20,415, the tasks carried out by dads amount to only a third of the cash value of the duties performed by the typical mom.
The bottom line, according to Insure.com, is that dad’s tasks, while important, don’t have the same cash value as mom’s.
Some of the typical “dad’s duties” from the website’s 2011 Father’s Day Index include helping with homework at $19/hr, chauffeur duties at $12/hr, pest removal at $16/hr, and yard work at $14/hr.
Mom’s duties include cooking at $10/hr, nursing wounds at $18hr, planning parties at $23/hr, keeping the family finances in order at $24/hr, fixing the house at $25/hr and finding out what the kids are up to at $20/hr.
So is modern dad a loafer who isn’t worth his Father’s Day present? Not at all, says the insurance website.
“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.”
The website has also come up with a variety of extra jobs a dad might handle that would bump up his annual cash value, including changing flat tires, coaching sports teams, telling stories about “the good old days” and laying down the law to misbehaving youngsters.
The website concludes: “Throw in pay as an audio and video technician – to cover his penchant for hogging the TV remote control – and it brings his total contribution to $51,208.”
