That’s more than the prime minister
We’re all for parents mixing paid work and home life, whether they’re men or women.
We’re also pro mums and dads and carers choosing not to work and to bring up their kids full-time instead.
After all, being a stay-at-home parent is often a more demanding job than about 99% of the paid-for positions out there.
So we like Interflora’s Mother’s Day campaign this year, which calculates how much the average mum would earn if they were paid for their work raising kids.
(The campaign is in aid of Mother’s Day, but presumably the figures would be the same for stay-at-home dads and other guardians and carers.)
A survey by the flower delivery company found the average mum works 119 hours a week, 52 weeks a year.
It looks at the different functions the role of mother encompasses and the average hourly rate for each, then tots up the total to come to the figure of £172,000 a year – more than the prime minister earns!
The infographic below explains all.
You can also calculate your own mum/parent/carer salary on the website, here.
It’s a pretty clever campaign, of course, because as soon as you go on to find out the stats and play with the calculator, you instantly think you should buy someone some flowers for Mother’s Day.
The research is also interesting from an economic standpoint. Our national measure of economic health, gross domestic product (GDP), measures the value of goods and services that have been transacted for money.
That means it doesn’t account for anything produced or done that doesn’t get paid for with money.
You can’t help but wonder what our economy might look like in statistical terms if it somehow included a measure of all the hours people put into parenting, and other unpaid endeavours that aren’t accounted for by GDP.
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