Dad's $61k 'salary' shows just how undervalued parenting still is
This symbolic 'salary' includes common caregiving contributions: lawn care, homework help, cooking, tech support, and more. Each task is matched to a corresponding paid job title—like landscaper, cook, or IT manager—and calculated based on estimated hours worked per week.
The index is designed to highlight the economic value of caregiving, often performed invisibly and without pay. In 2025, the value of that unpaid work rose by 5.2%—growing even faster than the average U.S. wage growth of 3.9% as reported in the June 2025 BLS jobs report.
While $61,000 may sound significant, Insure.com's comparable Mother's Day Index valued moms' unpaid labor at more than $145,000 this year. Same methodology. Same data source. More than double the value.
That stark gap tells a broader story: domestic labor in the U.S. remains deeply gendered. Even in households where dads contribute significantly, studies consistently show that moms still carry the bulk of the mental load, emotional labor, and day-to-day caregiving. And while dads often get praise for showing up, moms are expected to do it all—without recognition, let alone compensation.
Related: How much is a mother's work worth? $140,315, study shows
Though no one's cutting a paycheck for parenting, the Father's Day Index makes a critical point: if a caregiving parent were to suddenly be absent, replacing the full scope of their labor would be both emotionally and financially overwhelming.
That's why life insurance matters. According to the Insurance Barometer Study, 63% of dads report having life insurance, but 40% say it's not enough. Cost is often cited as a barrier. Yet LIMRA data shows that most Americans overestimate the price of term life insurance—believing it costs 3x more than it actually does.
For example, a $500,000 policy for a healthy 35-year-old might run less than $45/month, based on LIMRA's 2024 averages. That's a small price to pay for a safety net that reflects the true value of parenting labor.
While many dads are underinsured, even fewer moms—especially stay-at-home mothers—have life insurance. That gap has real consequences. If something were to happen, the emotional toll would be immeasurable—and so would the financial one. Replacing the full range of caregiving, household management, and emotional support a mother provides would come at a steep cost.
We need dads to keep stepping up. But we also need systems that catch up to the realities of modern caregiving. That means recognizing parenting as essential work and supporting it with real protections.Parenting is work. It's time our systems caught up.
The Father's Day Index helps shine a light on a bigger truth: most caregiving is still unpaid, unsupported, and under-recognized.
Real recognition for caregiving would look like:
Paid parental leave
Affordable childcare
Flexible work environments
Financial and social recognition for all caregivers, regardless of gender
Until then, we'll keep naming the value of this work—because visibility is the first step toward change. Parenting is essential labor, and it's time our systems treated it that way.
Related: Managing caregiving and work isn't a woman's issue—it's a human issue
Sources:
Employment Situation Summary. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employment Situation Summary.
Mother's Day Index 2025. Insure.com. Mother's Day Index 2025: Mom's annual salary climbs 4%, now more than $145,000.
Father's Day Index 2025. Insure.com. Father's Day Index 2025: Dad's salary jumps more than 5% to nearly $61,000.
Consumers Overestimate Cost of Life Insurance. LIMRA. Consumers Overestimate Cost of Life Insurance By Nearly Three Times.
U.S. Life Insurance Need Gap Grows in 2024. LIMRA. U.S. Life Insurance Need Gap Grows in 2024.
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In May, Woodruff published a study that found that waterbodies in Yosemite National Park that were full of bullfrogs had lower densities of northwestern pond turtles than those without invasive frogs. She also found that where bullfrogs were present, only large turtles could survive. 'Our study adds mounting evidence that hatchling and juvenile pond turtle losses to bullfrogs pose a serious threat to pond turtle population persistence,' Woodruff and her co-authors wrote. And where bullfrogs live in communities with other invasive species, native animals often face even greater challenges, said JJ Apodaca, executive director of the Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy, a nonprofit environmental group. Non-native crayfish, for example, are voracious consumers of plants and other habitat features that native animals hide in. So, where you have invasive crayfish, the local fauna will be that much easier for bullfrogs to eat. Invasive bullfrogs may also be spreading diseases. A study published in 2018 linked the arrival of bullfrogs in the West with the spread of a pathogen called chytrid fungus. While the pathogen typically doesn't sicken bullfrogs, it has helped drive the decline and extinction of more than 200 amphibian species globally, including those in the West. Okay, so let's kill all the bullfrogs? No, a bullfrog-killing spree won't fix ecosystems in the West. They're already everywhere, so even if scientists manage to eliminate them from a pond or 10 ponds — which often requires fully drying out the water body and hours and hours of effort — they'll likely come back. 'It's futile,' Garcia said. 'We're not getting rid of bullfrogs. Not really.' Even if we could remove bullfrogs from large areas in the West, ecosystems wouldn't suddenly revert back to some sort of natural state. Bullfrogs are both a problem themselves and a symptom of change — of the large-scale transformation of land in the West. 'There's kind of an irony,' said Brendon Larson, a researcher and invasive species expert at the University of Waterloo. 'We're nurturing these agricultural systems — which are monocultures and non-native species — and then we're turning around and saying we're surprised when a non-native species does well in response to that.' Doing nothing isn't a great option either. Left alone, bullfrogs will continue to replace native species that comprise the ecosystems we depend on, including insects that pollinate our crops and salamanders that can help limit the amount of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere and accelerating climate change. The best approach, researchers told me, is to prioritize bullfrog control — to get rid of frogs in areas with endangered species or where conservation scientists are reintroducing native species that disappeared. This works. For her study on pond turtles earlier this year, Woodruff and her colleagues caught more than 16,000 bullfrogs across two waterbodies in Yosemite — using nets, spears, air rifles, and other methods — which they then euthanized. It was only after her team shrank the invasive frog population that they detected small, baby pond turtles in those areas. That suggests that, absent bullfrogs, the turtles were finally able to breed and survive, 'providing some hope for turtle population recovery once bullfrog predation pressures are alleviated,' the researchers wrote. Woodruff says she noticed all kinds of other native animals return after clearing out the invasive bullfrogs, including native frogs, salamanders, and snakes. 'The coolest thing to me was that the soundscape changed,' she told me. 'Over time, you actually started to hear our native chorus frogs again.' Managing bullfrogs is complicated, Woodruff says, and especially for her. She grew up in Alabama and Georgia, where the animals are native. She liked hearing them. But now she lives in California, where she's studying how they harm the environment, and so hearing them makes her tense up. 'It sucks because I love these frogs,' Woodruff said. 'It is not the animals' fault. They are doing what they instinctively want to do — survive and procreate.' She tries to stay focused on the point, she said: 'We're doing this for the native species.'
