What is a stay-at-home parent's work actually worth?
Every Mother's Day and Father's Day, some version of this question resurfaces: if a stay-at-home parent's work were paid at market rates, what would the salary be? Too many answers to this question are built to go viral rather than survive a fact-check, stacking overtime multipliers and padded hours until they hit a shocking six-figure number. We built this calculator to do the opposite: a number a journalist can defend, built from named, published wage data, with the assumptions in the open.
Our model prices a stay-at-home parent's work as a bundle of real jobs: childcare provider, cook, house cleaner, driver, laundry service, tutor, household manager, and sick-care nurse, each valued at its published U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics median hourly wage. At a typical 65-hour week, that comes to about $56,964 a year, a blended rate of $16.85 an hour. Move the sliders for your own household and the number updates instantly.
How the stay-at-home parent salary calculator works
- Pick the number of kids and their ages. More children, and younger children especially, increase hours in childcare, driving, tutoring, and sick care. Household-wide tasks like cooking and cleaning scale more gently with family size.
- Pick a workload preset. Light (about 37 hours a week), Typical (about 65 hours), or Intense (about 97 hours), reflecting lighter, average, and heavier caregiving loads based on American Time Use Survey patterns.
- Optionally adjust for region. Wage levels differ across the country; our regional multiplier reflects that using published wage index differentials.
- We price every hour at a straight rate. No overtime multiplier, ever. We separately show the value of the first 40 hours (what a standard full-time job would pay at the same blended rate) next to the value of all actual hours worked, so the honest gap between "full-time" and "actual" is visible rather than hidden inside one inflated number.
A worked example
Take the default profile: two kids of mixed ages, a Typical workload, national average region. The role table breaks down like this for a single week:
| Role | Hours/week | Wage/hr | Weekly value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Childcare provider | 30.0 | $14.60 | $438 |
| Household manager / scheduler | 6.0 | $26.42 | $159 |
| Cook | 9.0 | $16.09 | $145 |
| House cleaner | 7.0 | $14.89 | $104 |
| Tutor / homework help | 4.0 | $21.80 | $87 |
| Driver / chauffeur | 4.0 | $16.85 | $67 |
| Nurse (sick care) | 2.0 | $26.26 | $53 |
| Laundry service | 3.0 | $14.26 | $43 |
That is 65 hours and about $1,095 a week, which is $56,964 a year at the actual hours worked. Priced as a standard 40-hour week at the same $16.85 blended rate, the equivalent full-time salary would be about $35,055; the roughly $22,000 gap between those two numbers is the honest, undramatized cost of the extra 25 hours a week most caregiving parents put in beyond a standard job, valued at the same rate rather than an inflated one.
Now switch to four kids, ages 0 to 2, an Intense workload, the Northeast region, with yard work included. The total climbs to about 134 hours a week and roughly $128,196 a year, driven almost entirely by the childcare and nurse-care hours a household of young children actually requires. At the lighter end, one school-age child on a Light preset in the South comes to about $25,721 a year. The range across real households is wide, which is exactly why we built a calculator instead of publishing one number.
For journalists & bloggers
Reuse our numbers, with attribution
You are welcome to cite the figures from this calculator in an article, broadcast segment, or blog post, provided you credit PapaCalcs.com and link back to this page. We built this tool to be checked, not just quoted, so please do check it: every wage source and occupation code is listed in the methodology section below.
Methodology: every wage, sourced
Credibility is the whole strategy behind this page, so here is exactly where every number comes from.
| Role | Occupation (BLS OES) | SOC code | Median wage/hr |
|---|---|---|---|
| Childcare provider | Childcare Workers | 39-9011 | $14.60 |
| Cook | Cooks, Restaurant | 35-2014 | $16.09 |
| House cleaner | Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners | 37-2012 | $14.89 |
| Driver / chauffeur | Taxi Drivers | 53-3053 | $16.85 |
| Laundry service | Laundry and Dry-Cleaning Workers | 51-6011 | $14.26 |
| Tutor / homework help | Tutors | 25-3041 | $21.80 |
| Household manager / scheduler | Executive Secretaries and Executive Administrative Assistants | 43-6011 | $26.42 |
| Nurse (sick care) | Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses | 29-2061 | $26.26 |
| Yard & maintenance (optional) | Grounds Maintenance Workers | 37-3011 | $16.08 |
- Wage source. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OES), most recent published release, median hourly wage by occupation code as listed above.
- Default hours source. Starting hours-per-role in each workload preset are informed by American Time Use Survey (ATUS) patterns for parents of children in the relevant age ranges. They are starting points, not a claim about your specific week, and every role's hours are visible and adjustable through the workload preset and kid/age controls.
- No overtime inflation. Every hour, whether the 5th or the 65th in a week, is priced at the same straight median wage. We never apply a 1.5x or 2x multiplier. The separate 40-hour-equivalent figure exists specifically so nobody can accuse this calculator of hiding fake overtime inside the headline number.
- Regional adjustment. The optional region control applies an approximate multiplier based on published regional wage-level differences, not a precise state-by-state index.
- Default values. The tool loads with 2 kids, mixed ages, a Typical workload, national average region, and yard work off, producing the default estimate of $56,964 a year.
Frequently asked questions
What would a stay-at-home mom's salary be?
For a typical week of childcare and household work (about 65 hours across roles like childcare, cooking, cleaning, driving, and tutoring), the market-rate replacement value comes to about $56,964 a year, using published BLS median wages for each role. The number is the same regardless of whether the stay-at-home parent is a mom or a dad; it depends on the hours and roles, not gender.
What would a stay-at-home dad's salary be?
The same as a stay-at-home mom performing the same roles and hours, about $56,964 a year at the typical preset. This calculator prices labor, not the parent's identity, so a stay-at-home dad and a stay-at-home mom doing identical work get an identical number.
Is this number inflated?
No. We deliberately avoided overtime multipliers and clickbait math. Every role is priced at its straight published BLS median hourly wage, with no 1.5x or 2x multiplier for hours beyond 40 a week. We show the 40-hour-equivalent value and the total-hours value side by side specifically so the honest math is visible, not hidden behind one inflated headline.
Is this the same as lost wages from not working?
No, and this is an important distinction. This number is a replacement cost: what it would cost to hire people to do this work. It is not the same as opportunity cost, which is the wages a specific parent gives up by not working their own job. For that comparison, see our daycare vs stay-at-home calculator.
Where do the wage numbers come from?
Each role is priced using U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OES) median hourly wages for a specific, named occupation code, such as Childcare Workers (SOC 39-9011) or Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses (SOC 29-2061). Every code is listed in the methodology section below so the numbers can be independently checked.