Fathers Day 2012: Are Dads Worth Less Than Moms? - East Idaho News
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Fathers Day 2012: Are Dads Worth Less Than Moms?

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GETTY B 061412 FatherFixingHouse?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1339666887702Maria Teijeiro/Lifesize/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — With Father’s Day around the corner, the last thing a father probably wants to hear is that he’s valued less at home than mom.

But according to Insure.com’s 2012 Father’s Day Index, a dad’s home front contributions were valued at just over $20,000 — nearly one-third of what mom would earn.

Insure.com’s index assesses the value of dad’s domestic duties based on the hourly compensation individuals receive for performing the same tasks, according to data from Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Turns out, dad’s work around the house would earn him a paycheck of $20,248 for the year, up a mere $103 from last year’s index.  The site assessed mom’s valuation for 2012 at $60,182.

Insure.com assigned more ‘fix-it’ jobs to dad, and more nurturing jobs to mom in the index.

The site lists dad’s jobs to include barbequing, helping with homework, moving furniture, coaching a team and performing maintenance around the house.  Meanwhile, mom’s jobs at home included shopping for her family, nursing wounds, giving haircuts and cleaning up. Specifically, One of mom’s jobs was finding out what the kids were up to.  For this task, she earned $869 annually, which was extrapolated from BLS earnings of private detectives and investigators.

Still, moms and dads performing the same jobs for the same amount of time would earn different wages. Based on the index, a father would earn $12.03 hourly for driving the kids, which Insure.com estimates he’d perform nine hours a week for 52 weeks out of the year.  However, a mom performing the same task for the same amount of time would earn $13.83 an hour, according to the website.

There were no projections for how much it would cost to hire a babysitter under “jobs” for dad, a task for which mom earned $19,196 annually, nearly all of dad’s salary.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

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