How much is a mum worth?

IT is Mother's Day today. For the past few weeks, the interest has been building up, especially in cyberspace, with all sorts of promotions and articles published about mothers. It was during a casual browsing session that Sunday Star came upon an article in www.salary.com that asked this provocative question: “What's a mother's salary worth?”  According to salary.com senior vice-president Bill Coleman, who was interviewed on NBC's Today show, the company premised their research on the fact that stay-at-home mothers wear many hats.  They're the family CEO, the day care provider, accountant, chauffeur, counsellor, chef, nurse, laundress, entertainer, personal stylist, and educator. So based on a 100-hour work week, salary.com has estimated that a fair wage for the typical stay-at-home mother would be US$131,471 (close to RM500,000) a year for executing all of her daily tasks.  We know it is unlikely that anyone in Malaysia will agree to this figure so we conducted our own research by talking to stay-at-home mothers, job recruiters and scanning the classified ads, to find out how much a stay-at-home mother should be paid. K. S. USHA DEVI and SHANTINI SUNTHARAJAH have the report.

IT is Mother's Day today. For the past few weeks, the interest has been building up, especially in cyberspace, with all sorts of promotions and articles published about mothers. It was during a casual browsing session that Sunday Star came upon an article in www.salary.com that asked this provocative question: “What's a mother's salary worth?”