This Is How Much Money You’d Make if Parenting Paid

“Parent” is an umbrella term used to describe an individual who, in addition to being Mom or Dad, holds several other job titles, such as housekeeper, cook, event planner, taxi driver, nurse…The list goes on and on, which is why a parent’s job truly never ends.

When you’re scrubbing down the bathroom floor between laundry loads while the roast is cooking in the oven, have you ever paused to think about how much money you’d make if you actually got paid for all of the jobs you do? This calculator from FunkyPigeon will help you figure it out. First you put in the city where you live, then you list how many hours per week you spend doing a handful of tasks. Once it’s all accountained for, you hit the button to calculate your salary.

There’s a method to the madness behind FunkyPigeon’s calculator. It started with identifying eight tasks most parents spend their time doing, including cooking, cleaning, driving, teaching, doing laundry and acting as a personal assistant, nurse and psychologist. For each task listed, they compared it to the salary of the closest profession. Then they gathered US wage and salary data for those eight jobs across all 50 states, including more than 2,000 towns and cities nationwide. After a parent enters their weekly hours in to the calculator, it converts them into yearly salaries for each of those jobs near them and adds them up for one salary.

Considering most moms are forced to carry the burden of parenting on their shoulders, we can imagine their salaries are pretty steep. In fact, after years of research, a sociologist came to the conclusion that moms in the US have it the worst. Yikes.

The calculator is silly and fun to use, but if you and your partner end up having completely different salaries, it may be a telling sign that it’s time to talk about divvying up some of the family roles. If you need a little help bridging the gap in the conversation, Lasting can lend a hand. The app is a modern-day relationship counselor that works right from the palm of your hands. Parenting should be a team effort, and science says partners who work together have better sex lives, too!