There’s Now a “Parenting Calculator” to Quantify Your Household Labor

In 2019, the ongoing battle for equal labor (emotional and otherwise) between different-sex partners is one of the most contested feminist debates. In other words, most women are tired of carrying the burden of solving all the problems at home and at work while men only focus on the latter. In Harper’s Bazaar’s viral 2017 essay, Women Aren’t Nags — We’re Just Fed Up, Gemma Hartley lists various emotional labor duties allocated primarily to women —such as reminding a male partner of his family’s birthdays, knowing dietary guidelines for kids’ lunches, calling a babysitter, and scheduling doctor’s appointments, among other thankless tasks. But what happens when mothers can suddenly quantify their profitless household work — and put a price tag on it?

According to Life Hacker, there’s a “Parenting Calculator” from Funky Pigeon that can determine how much you would earn as a parent if you were paid for all of your work. “Parenting obviously isn’t just babysitting. Parents, particularly those who stay home full-time, are also cooks, housekeepers, tutors, and personal drivers,” Meghan Moravcik Walbert, who tested out the tool, explains. So, how does it work exactly?

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Well, the blog culled eight different tasks that parents (mostly moms though) spend their time doing for their kids and found the closest professional equivalent. They then gathered wage and salary data for these tasks for all 50 states in America, including over 2,000 individual towns and cities across the country. 

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First, parents enter their city and check off how many hours per week they do the following for their children: Cooking, cleaning, driving, teaching, personal assistant, laundry, nurse, and psychologists. Lastly, you’d click “Find my #ParentSalary.” Voila! Your annual salary will be calculated on the spot. 

As much as this calculator is a step in the right direction for household labor equality, you can’t put a price on emotional labor like phone calls, scheduling, reminders, and other unwaged work. The solution, IMHO, is to split emotional tasks equally (I mean duh). But until then, it might be a good idea to start the conversation by showing this device to your partner.