Check, Please!

Last year salary.com released a report that pegged a stay-at-home mom's hypothetical salary at $131,471. Now they've updated their site to include calculations for both moms and dads.

Nice!

Well, hold on... Rebel Dad has noticed that moms and dads are not exactly created equal at salary.com, at least as far as their hypothetical compensation calculations are concerned.

I checked it out myself. Nationally, I would earn a median income of $125,340 as a stay-at-home dad. If I were a mom in the same situation, I would earn $134,121. Rebel Dad noted that the figures can also swing the other way if you play with the "personalization" options (dads would earn more in his particular geographic area).

So, why the difference between genders? The calculations are based on the number of hours spent each week performing typical tasks and it looks like salary.com allocates those hours differently for men and women. Rebel Dad points out, for example, that the algorithm shows at-home dads spend 40% less time on laundry than at-home moms.

This leads him to wonder if stay-at-home dads are "really doing less around the house than their at-home mom counterparts?"

Everyone's situation is different of course, but I imagine things even out in most cases. As for me, I do spend less time on laundry than my wife (something about my not separating colors led my wife to retain control of the washing machine), but I spend more time on general cleaning and other household chores than she probably would (I'm more of a detail-oriented perfectionist with regard to some things... just not laundry). Overall, I have to concur with Rebel Dad that "the variations between individuals pretty much swamps the variation between the sexes."

But I do have one more question about the whole thing.... Salary.com suggests the average at-home dad spends 12.6 hours performing the tasks of a "Computer Operator I." Does that include blogging?