Just because women work at a job outside of the home doesn’t mean they don’t work inside the home. Hello!

Recently I had a public relations person send me a new survey on stay-at-home moms and the estimated salary they would make if the tasks they do everyday were translated into a real paycheck.

They drive kids around, cook meals, and counsel their children. So the people that came up with the survey figured they could equate a stay-at-home mom’s worth to similar jobs, like chauffeur, chef and shrink.

“For the past few years Salary.com has conducted a survey based on the time mother’s spend performing the most popular ‘mom job’ functions such as housekeeper, cook, driver, psychologist, etc. Salary.com calculated an annual salary that a mom would make (if she got a paycheck) based on these duties and hours spent, which is usually a full time job for stay-at-home moms,” explains Emily Kaswell, a spokeswoman for Salary.com.

Now, I’ve used Salary.com’s statistics and experts before. I find them a valuable source for my research. But boy, this survey got under my skin.

Here’s the calculation they come up with when they compared stay-at-home mom’s pretend annual salaries and the average pay for working moms:

Stay-at-home moms, $138,094, and $85,938 for working moms.

I don’t know about you guys but something is missing in this equation.

Working moms, just because they are working moms, do not give up the driving around, cooking or counseling duties.

If you go by Salary.com’s calculations that would mean working mothers should make a pretend salary of $224,032.

I’m not trying to belittle the importance of what stay-at-home moms do, but come on folks, women who work do it all whether they like it or not. There is very little down time with the responsibilities of a job and the home.

So why are we spending so much time trying to build up stay-at-home moms, even though two-third of moms work at a job outside the home? Salary.com even provides a calculator so you can figure out how much pretend money you are entitled to.

The reason we spend so much time trying to make mom’s who don’t work feel better is our society does not value the things required to run a household. That’s just the way it is. I doubt this will ever change.

It sucks folks, I know. But we need to stop feeling sorry for ourselves and be proud of whatever choices we make in our lives. The problem is not that people don’t realize how much money what we do would fetch in the marketplace. By doing calculations like this we fall prey to the very thing we are trying to fight against.

No value can be put on raising a family. We all know that.

Our efforts should be focused on making sure dads pick up more of the slack. Based on Salary.com’s premise, working dads average salaries are actually worth half of what they make if they don’t help out at home.

We should also be pushing the business world and the government to adopt more family friendly work policies like paid family leave and paid sick days. What about good child care?

Now that would make everyone’s life better, and it may encourage some moms who have been unable to figure out how to balance work and family to possibly go for a real paycheck.