More Annual Corporate Silliness: Salary.com
Posted on 14. May, 2008 by Brian Reid in General
Every year, I write a blog post on Salary.com’s well-meaning effort to track the market value of what an at-home mom or dad does. Every year, I plunge into the assumptions behind the calculator and wonder why the heck a) they assume that at-home dads do less around the house (a lot less … like 15 hours a week), b) they assume a dramatically different mix of work and c) they have dads actually “worth” $12K more.
This year, for kick, I tried to figure out the laundry thing. Salary.com says at-home moms spend a staggering 8 hours a week on laundry. At-home dads clock 3.9 hours in the laundry room. The reason: go-to-work moms make up the difference (putting 5.1 hours into washing, drying and folding).
So in addition to the off-the-rocker suggestion that most two-kid households generate 9 hours of laundry a week, salary.com believes that at-home dads do less than half of all laundry. Even accepting that — perhaps — dad standards for household things are slightly lower, that laundry estimate feels like a kick in the shins.
Backpacking Dad
14. May, 2008
Well, they aren’t too far off about laundry in my house. My wife doesn’t do it, but I’d rather drop it at the fluff n’ fold than spend the time to do it myself. So that’s what happens about half the time.
I don’t like doing laundry.
Always Home and Uncool
14. May, 2008
9 hours! Do they wash a load and wait for it to dry before starting more wash? Do they dry partial loads (whites you bleach and whites/light colors you can’t bleach) separately instead on combining them? Are they hanging them on clotheslines while we use dryers?
Maybe we should look at it this way: At-home dads spend less time on housework because we are just MORE EFFICIENT at doing it. So there!
Nate
14. May, 2008
My wife wont even put her dirty clothes in the hamper, nontheless wash, dry, fold, or put away anything.
I am very efficient when it comes to laundry, this is true. But the assumption is that even when taking care of the house is their job, dads shirk and don’t (or CANT) carry their weight. It offends me to my core.
Kelly M. Bray
15. May, 2008
The washing machine does the laundry. I just load it and unload it, and do a little folding. Do they think we just sit and stare at the washer dryer in fascination and do nothing else in the meantime?
TeletubbiesDriveDadLoco
15. May, 2008
I’d be interested in seeing the formula that comes up with that many hours for laundry duty. Usually I have 1 main laundry day a week but, as stated in previous comments that’s not the only chores being accomplished during these cycles. My best guess estimate is that I spend 2 hours or so a week sorting, loading, unloading, folding, and putting away the laundry. I do 99% of the laundry duties.
mk
16. May, 2008
hmm, what about applying stain remover, fastening velcro bibs, monitoring the dryer to get clothes out slightly damp to hang dry wo wrinkles, carrying baskets to rooms, putting socks in drawers, in addition to folding & sorting.
2 hour doer - your family must be much neater or more naked than mine.
Ethel
16. May, 2008
I wish my husband spent half as much time on laundry as I did when I stayed home. That would be awesome. I can totally believe that men spend less time on housework, even given that our household is probably more skewed in the “Dad doesn’t do much housework” direction than most SAHD families.
The thing that really annoys me is that men are being paid more for what appears to be identical work.
Ex: CEO, mother: $70.35; CEO, father: $181.26
I haven’t done a comparison yet where the woman is paid more for the same work than a man. However, IME, women generally are more efficient at homemaking (due mostly to more training and experience growing up, I believe) and aim for higher-quality results. Is this discrepancy just a carry-over of the fact that in the “real world” men are paid more? If so, it doesn’t belong there. They really need to justify these numbers.
Steve
22. May, 2008
I am not sure who is doing the calculations here! I do 90% of all the laundry for this household of three. The wife does 10% to feel like she is contributing…and she is. However, if you count the things I do while the laundry is being tended to by the ‘machines’ I do well over 8-9 hours a day. For example, the one acre yard work and home repairs and all the other odd and ends that the wife and perhaps women in general do not do are done by somebody. And that person ought to get the credit. These other ‘expected’ jobs around the house that At Home Dads do are rarely in the calculations. So…if we do not pamper the laundry the same as the wife…so what.
Jeff
30. May, 2008
I’m thankful to have only one child to take care of. I do everything but laundry. I know how to do it, my wife just prefers doing that task herself.
No complaints here.
Father Mann
01. Jun, 2008
Though not at 9 hours currently, I can see us growing to that point.
We do more laundry than we should for a family of 3 and spend about 5 hours a week on laundry, but we hang a lot of our clothing on drying racks in the winter and on the clothes line in the summer. But that 5 hours includes everything from collecting from the hampers, sorting, folding, and putting it all away.
Add another 30 minutes a week for the time it takes us to make our laundry detergent.
Once Baby is born, I to add another 3-4 hours a week to the laundry time as part of handling the cloth diapers.
Amy
02. Jun, 2008
The anecdotes of men who do their fair share may pour in and warm our hearts, but studies consistently show that regardless of their out-of-the-home work schedules, men do less housework than women. So I’m not clear on what you object to in the article.