THE FACT OF THE MATTER
BY PAUL HOPKINS
My mother was of that era when a woman in Ireland wed and had children she had to give up her job in any State or semi-State body. Her generation were defined by having babies and looking after “domestic chores”. She was my stay-at-home parent and did a wonderful job in rearing my siblings and me. My father, clean-shaven and on his bike, went out to work and brought home the bacon.
Back then, a woman who either did not marry or did not have a child was looked upon with a certain pity and talked about in hushed tones. Thankfully, women today are no longer defined by motherhood. Glass ceilings aside, women have come in to their own and are defined by many things other than being mothers; by confidence, by individuality, by career, by social standing, by just being.
Women now have choice. They can have motherhood and they can have a career. Or choose one or the other. That said, there’s a whole other day’s debate on the issues of childcare in Ireland for women who choose both motherhood and career. Trying to juggle everything daily means women, and indeed men, cannot have it all.
I mention all this by way of a report on the value of, in terms of what we would pay, stay-at home parents if they had a salary, for the job they do.
According to Census 2022, there are 272,318 stay-at-home parents in Ireland, of which 90 per cent are women. A survey carried out by iReach for Royal London Ireland has found that more than eight in 10 people surveyed underestimate the monetary value of a stay-at-home mother or father.
Analysts calculated that it would cost around €60,100 a year to “employ” someone to do the myriad jobs carried out by such a parent. The survey shows that less than one in five of the 1,000 adults polled believe the cost of carrying out the responsibilities of a stay-at-home parent to be more than €50,000. The average estimate given was around €34,500.
Karen O’Flaherty, senior propositions executive of Royal London Ireland, said stay-at-home parents deserved both support and consideration in financial planning. This need is obviously shown up by the value given by the public compared with research on the cost of hiring someone to carry out the full range of parenting duties.
Several countries in Europe provide financial support or paid leave that functions as a wage for stay-at-home parents – in some cases for up to three years – with Nordic countries leading in generosity, with Estonia and Hungary next in line. And, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF, Estonia is 20 countries behind Ireland in terms of GDP, and Hungary 10.
Back home, the role’s estimated annual equivalent has increased by 5.2 per cent to €60,112. This is up from €57,140 in 2024. It represents an overall rise of about 48 per cent from €40,560 when the study was first conducted in 2015.
According to the Central Statistics Office (CSO) ‘Vital Statistics Annual Report’, 54,526 babies were born in 2023, with 16 per cent of mothers identifying their occupation as a homemaker.
I think it fair comment to say that research has consistently shown that the responsibilities carried out by stay-at-home parents form a vital part of how families function. If you are a parent, stay-at-h0me or not, you don’t need me telling you what the workload entails. Running noses and bruised knees.
When my wife and I had our three children in the recession-ride Eighties, we were financially lucky enough to allow her be a stay-at-home parent. Something we both wanted. My eldest son, now 40, still talks about the warm smell of fairy-cakes in the oven upon his return from school. He is now a on Wall Street so perhaps the hand that rocks the cradle does rule the world in some guise or other. His mother did a great and wonderful job in her parenting at home, not a job I could have taken on, even given all the tea in China.
Back in the Seventies when women were seeking emancipation from a male-dominated Ireland, then Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald proposed giving stay-at-home mothers a weekly ‘salary’ of nine pounds 50 pennies in old money. By today’s standard that equates to €103.44 a week or €5,378.88 a year.
And Dr FitzGerald’s doctorate was in economics …
