Stay-at-home parent salary

What It Means

A stay-at-home parentStay-at-home parentA parent who stays home to care for the children and run the household instead of working for pay outside the home. See more salary is an estimate that prices the unpaid work of a parent at home by asking what the same hours would cost if you paid people to do them. You list the hours spent on each task, such as child care, cooking, laundry and yard work, and multiply each by a wage for that kind of job. No government agency publishes an official figure, and the answer depends entirely on the hours and the wages you use.

How People Say It at Work

• "If we paid someone to do all this, we couldn't afford it."
• "My job at home has no salary, but it has hours."
• "We worked out what child care alone would cost us."

The Breakdown

Worked example. A parent at home counts an example week: 21 hours of child care, 7 of cooking, 3 of laundry and 1 of yard work. Each task is priced at a BLS median wage for May 2025:

Over 52 weeks that comes to about $30,354.

What the result means. It's what buying those hours from paid workers might cost at those wages, which can help a couple talk about how they split work and money. It isn't what the work is worth in any official sense. The BLS wages are what employed workers earn, and the BLS notes its wage survey doesn't collect pay from private households or the self-employed.

What moves the number. The hours you count matter most, so track a real week rather than guessing. Which tasks you include, and the wages you pick for them, change it next.

Good to Know

Buhata's stay-at-home parent page has the BLS figures on how many parents are employed, and it explains why no official dollar value exists. Hiring a person to do this work at home can make you a household employer, with tax rules from IRS Publication 926, so check those before replacing any of these hours with paid help. Check bls.gov for a newer year of wage figures before reusing these.

Related Terms and Categories

• Stay-at-home parent

  A parent who stays home to care for the children and run the household instead of working for pay outside the home.

• Mental load

  The unseen work of noticing, planning and remembering everything a household needs, even when someone else carries out the task.

• Dual income household

  A household where two adults, usually a couple, both earn income from work, so the budget runs on two paychecks.

• Nanny salary

  What a family pays a nanny, usually quoted by the hour or week. Care.com's 2026 report puts the US average at $21.75 an hour for one child.

• Opportunity cost

  The value of the next-best option you give up when you make a choice, whether the thing given up is money, time or something else.

Pay, rates and costs