Price Of Parenthood: Mums Are ‘Worth’ £50,000 – But Is That Enough?

You could argue that being a parent is one of the toughest jobs in the world. It's round-the-clock and seemingly never-ending – not to mention stressful.

So is £50,000 really a just annual salary?

That’s how much experts reckon the role of parenthood is worth a year, give or take a hundred pounds.

Taking into account all of the jobs that mums typically do around the house plus the work that they do for their children, calculations from Ocean Finance have deduced that if parenthood did pay then it would be £49,807 a year.

From chauffeuring the kids to school, to offering therapy sessions for broken hearts, mums do take on a lot of varying responsibilities, which the researchers took into account when working out the overall ‘value of a mum’.

This £50,000 figure is made up of many tasks that mums do – the biggest of which is childcare, which alone is worth almost £12,000 a year.

Next up is the role of chef, which, taking into account all of those lunch boxes and dinnertime prep would accumulate to be worth around £8,700 per annum.

Other roles include playing nurse – from patching up cuts and scratches to caring for their children through chicken pox, flu and other illnesses.

And let’s not forget the help with homework, getting their child to and from school and generally keeping the house clean and tidy.

It’s a big job. Here’s the full break down...

Childcare £11,999.52
Chef £8,714.16
Therapist £6,314
Housekeeper £6,094
Buyer £5,077.80
Chauffeur £4,165
Dietician £3,292
Nurse £2,719.80
Activity coach £750
Home tutor £680.76

Is £50,000 Enough?
The researchers asked a panel of mums what the salary of a ‘full time’ mum should be, if it was a job.

Some 16 per cent of the mums said it should have a salary of over £35,000 but over half say that the work a mother does is priceless.

“Of course these days there are as many different types of mum as there are families,” says Ian Williams, spokesman for Ocean.

“Many mums have full or part time jobs and, if they have a partner, then they may take on many or all of these roles. Whatever roles mums take on the reality, of course, is that it isn’t possible to put a value on how much a mum is worth in terms of her love and care, but it’s certainly interesting to see how much it would cost to replace some common tasks.”

How much do you think being a parent is worthy of? Let us know in the comments below.

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