Stay-at-home moms work on average 98 hours a week with only an hour's break during the day. (2024)

Many women take pride in being a stay-at-home mom, as they should. A recent study shows that they work the equivalent of 2.5 full-time jobs caring for their child.

A survey sponsored by Welch’s noted that mothers work an average of 14 hours a day, or a 98-hour workweek. The survey included 2,000 moms with children in elementary school.

The average mom started at 6:23 a.m. and ended the day at 8:31 p.m., with only 1.7 hours of free time in between.

Women are no stranger to hard work, and this has been proven just by looking at the academic qualifications of women since the ’80s.

Women have earned more bachelor’s degrees than men since 1982, more master’s degrees than men since 1987, and more doctorate degrees than men since 2006. However, in S&P 500 companies, women are less represented the higher up they go and women still make on average $0.79 for every dollar men made in 2019.

“The role of the father still is to ‘bring in the bacon,’ and make money,” said Ariane Hegewisch, one of the authors of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research report. “The role of the mother is to work for pay but to [also] have the main care responsibilities.”

After analyzing the U.S. Current Population Survey, for workers ages 25 to 64, IWPR found that for the average worker: Fathers work more hours than other men, and mothers work fewer hours than other women.

According to a survey by Salary.com, moms should be charging $115,000 per year for their work.

“We see [Mom] as the compilation of 10 jobs in one person,” said Evilee Ebb, general manager of Salary.com in an interview with Forbes. "The breadth of Mom’s responsibilities is beyond what most workers could ever experience day-to-day. Imagine if you had to attract and retain a candidate to fill this role?”