The Father's Day Index: By the numbers
You can't put a price on a good dad — or can you?

Can you put a value on a good dad? The consumer insurance site Insure.com thinks it can, creating a Father's Day Index to translate all those "dad" tasks, from grilling to car maintenance, into dollars and cents. And it turns out that dad's value has appreciated quite a bit over the past year, climbing about 15 percent. Way to go, pops!
Here, Father's Day by the cold, hard numbers:
$23,344
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The 2013 monetary value of all of dad's household tasks.
$20,248
Last year's dad value. According to Barbara Marquand at Insure.com, the 2013 rise is mostly due to increased hourly wages for "drivers teachers, coaches, and plumbers."
27
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Percent of moms who place dads' contributions at under $10,000. Ouch.
$6,692
The annual value of dad's driving. The hourly wage was not increased for dropping kids off a block away from the mall and agreeing not to get out of the car.
$1,175.20
The annual value of dad's landscaping skills, i.e. mowing the lawn and not hurting himself with gardening shears.
$1,018
Annual value of dad's coaching of little league and various other sports teams that involve getting small children to take their fingers out of their mouths and focus.
$57
Annual value of dad's pest removal. Killing spiders and disposing of cockroaches apparently does not add up.
7.3
Hours per week fathers spend with their children, nearly triple the time dads spent in 1965, according to Pew Research Center.
189,000
The number of stay-at-home dads currently in the United States, an increase of 78 percent from a decade ago.
$119.84
The average amount spent on dads for Father's Day.
$168.94
The average amount spent on moms for Mother's Day.
$59,862.30
Mom's 2013 monetary value. 'Nuff said.
Emily Shire is chief researcher for The Week magazine. She has written about pop culture, religion, and women and gender issues at publications including Slate, The Forward, and Jewcy.
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