Every morning starts the same way: A 6 a.m. alarm and an hour to prepare for the day before her kids get up. By 7 a.m., it’s time to get the kids ready for school and her turn to carpool to school. Then, a full day at the office.
By 5 p.m., it’s time to pick up the kids from after-school childcare and to soccer practice and make time to run to the grocery store before it’s time to pick them up again. When they all finally get back home, it’s time for dinner, homework, and answering emails, before bath time. If she’s lucky, the kids will be down by 9 p.m.—just enough time for a little more work before knocking out at 10 p.m. And that’s only Monday.
Women with children under 6 spend an average of 8.15 hours on weekdays and 10.5 hours on weekends caring for their child, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The work women do to support their families is almost always unpaid, despite being worth billions of dollars.
If American women were paid for all their caregiving labor, it would be worth $683 billion, according to an analysis from the National Partnership for Women & Families (NPWF). Nearly two-thirds of caregiving is done by women, and they average nearly 300 hours of unpaid care work worth $4,900 each year. If both men and women were paid for caregiving, they would earn $1.1 trillion.
