A study has revealed that the work done by stay-at-home parents is worth a wage of €44,000 by market rates.
Daily and weekly tasks of cleaning, cooking, childminding and acting as a taxi service were all included in the research carried out by Royal London.
The breakdown of jobs carried out by the average stay-at-home parent is estimated to be around 30 hours of childminding, 15 hours of cooking, eight hours of cleaning, five hours of teaching, four hours of handiwork, an hour of gardening and 10 taxi trips a week.
If those tasks were outsourced to the relevant professionals, then the cost would be a hefty €44,000 per year.
According to a 2016 census, there are 455,000 people in Ireland whose primary job is taking care of the home and family.
The majority of these are women, but the number of stay-at-home dads has doubled in the past 10 years.
However, of the 1,000 people surveyed, only 5% classed themselves as a stay-at-home dad, and 72% said they didn’t know anyone who had adopted that role in their family unit.
The survey also asked people how much they thought the jobs carried out by a stay-at-home parent would command in an annual salary.
Six out of ten people guessed it would be somewhere between €10,000 and €30,000, 17% said between €31,000 and €40,0000 and just 7% thought the work of a stay-at-home parent was worth more than €50,000.
The average estimated salary from those surveyed was €27,500, significantly less than the €44,000 figure from Royal London.
Sara Murphy of Royal London said: “The role of a stay-at-home parent could be described as priceless.”
Written by Andrew Moore
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