How Much Should Stay-At-Home Mothers Get Paid?

Oftentimes, we talk about women's right to work and earn money as equally as men, but we forget a significant segment of women who choose to stay-at-home, where they actually do work, only in a form that is hardly noticed by society.

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Not only do working mothers deserve to be celebrated on Mother's Day for struggling all year long balancing their professional roles and their private lives, particularly as a parent, but also the many women who spend most of their lives at home, providing care for their kids without compensation.

While women represented 38.8% of the global workplace around the world by 2020, it is important to take a look at what the rest of them are doing and what contribution they are making in terms of economy.

Before and during the COVID19 pandemic, there have been numerous discussions over whether or not non-working mothers should receive financial support in the form of a stable salary, in acknowledgment of the hard work they do as they look after their children and households 24/7.

In fact, mothers who choose to stay at home to provide care and support for their children are greatly contributing to cutting family costs, as their at-home multiple roles help replace the ones played by nurseries, maids, and nannies, which supports the need to consider providing some sort of financial support for them as well.

One shared element between working and non-working mothers lies in the fact that both groups tend to work for endless hours both inside and outside of the household, sometimes exceeding 90 hours/week. 

Yet, working mothers get to feel compensated for the huge effort they exert into running matters at work and at home once they have their paychecks at the end of each month. Meanwhile, non-working mothers do not get to enjoy this feeling.

One more reason stay-at-home moms would enjoy some sort of financial support is that in many cases, they lack the financial resources needed to help them treat themselves every now and then, so they have an equivalent of annual leave and recharge their energy to handle unpaid chores again.

Another point of view suggests that stay-at-home mothers need recognition for the societal role they play in helping stabilize the economy, in the fact that they contribute to the peace of mind felt by their significant others, who rest assured that their kids and houses are well taken care of while they are away, and consequently help them achieve better results in their workplaces. 

Moreover, the argument that stay-at-home mothers need to be compensated for the work they do around their houses supports the fact that house chores are one of the hardest jobs ever taken, in terms of the physical effort required. Not to mention the mental and physical toll of being the primary source of care for children in the first place for a prolonged period of time.

In many communities where traditional gender roles are still unchallenged enough, women's work around the house is taken for granted that it is hard to bring up the topic of assigning a fixed salary in return, but with the struggles faced by parents during pandemic lockdowns, more and more people today realize how hard it is to be the manager of a house that is supposed to be as spotless as possible all while populated with little energetic children.

Discussions over financial pay provided to non-working mothers need to take into account the cost already saved by them since the first day they decide to run the affairs of their own houses, such as the money that would have been spent on hiring a full-time house worker or a child care provider. As a starting point, paying stay-at-home mothers the money they save every month can be a good start.