Mother's Day article

Hey everyone, today is mother's day. I found this interesting article oh the front page of The Sunday Times, about how much mothers 'earn' by not 'earning money' by looking for a job but become housewives.

"Mum, you could be paid $23k a month"

This article is about how much HR EXPERTS estimate a stay-home mum each per month. Summarised in points:

1)  Five roles that mothers perform daily, Executive housekeeper (5hr - $280), childcare teacher (5 - $193), chef (3hrs - $170), personal assistant (2hr - $90), driver (2hr - $73) are calculated to give a Mum a daily pay of around $800, and a month pay of $22,568!

2) This is according to the market rate for such jobs assuming a Mum works 17 hours a day.

3) In the United States, a full-time mum can earn up to US$117000 (S$160000) per year, with 10 jobs (from housekeeping to psychologist and chief executive)

4) With rest days and other factors, a Singapore mother can easily be worth $8481 per month.


This is an example of incurring implicit costs which do not involve a direct payment of money, but involves a sacrifice of some alternative which means an opportunity cost is incurred. In this case, a working mum incurs an opportunity cost of $8000 if she does not become a housewife.

However, mothers' roles are very important and should not be quantified like that. Moreover, some mothers do not have the necessary skills like driving or cooking, which means it is very hard to put in a monetary value to what mothers do. Mothers also take care of emotional and physical needs of the family.

question....

Does that mean that just because housework cannot be valued in economic terms, they don't get the appreciation they deserve?

Mother's worth in terms of money?  
$8000 or $23000 a month

Mother's role?
Priceless

-Zhi Yang =)



Output time: 8:57 PM