The Check Probably Isn't In the Mail....

Yesterday I emailed myself this link so I’d remember to blog about it. Then my husband emailed it to me, thinking I’d want to blog about it. Then Rona emailed me about it. So I guess I'll blog about it.

It, if you haven't already heard, is the estimate that a stay-at-home mom is worth about $138,000 a year. Rona notes in her blog that there’s a calculator at salary.com where you can figure out what you personally are worth as a homemaker and mom.

All these calculations are fine, but they invariably do not include the time I spend teaching my children, and I’ve done a lot of that over twenty years of homeschooling. So I think my “pay” should include my primary occupation.

Here in Illinois, the median pay for a high school teacher is $42,742, although they make a lot more than that in the Chicago suburbs (around $80,000), and some make 6 or 8 times that much.

But let’s go with that $80,000 figure, since it comes from my area. That means that the work I do is worth about $218,000 a year. I won’t hold my breath waiting for that check, but I’m grateful that I get to live the rewards of this lifestyle every day, even though I don’t get paid. Motherhood and homeschooling each qualify as a labor of love.