Here you go, copied and pasted from an old thread
Xenia, I disagree with: "By Xenia on Fri 29-Dec-06 23:41:00 Is it not just that childcare and house work is worth one rate per hour but if the worker earns say £150k a year that's more than the economic value of the childcare and cleaning and perhaps even sexual services you are providing at home therefore the partner doesn't feel like a 50% of his income reflects your contribution?"
Well, I've been talking about doing this for ages, but if you add up the cost of a ft housekeeper a ft nanny and night nanny a ft cleaner a ft prostitute (hmm) You'd be very close to 50% of £150k
Actually, I've just done a quick calculation, based on a ft nanny @ £400/week, a night nanny 7 nights a week, a ft housekeeper and a cleaner for just 5 hours a week. Figures from various googled agencies and er, even without prostitution it works out at £71k. And that's the rate you'd have to PAY (i.e. earn net) so you'd have to earn considerably more than this gross. Ooh, more than £150k atually.
And that £71k would get you:
f/t childcare at nanny rates, which would be 37.5 hours/week
f/t housekeeping, ditto, 37.5hrs
f/t night nanny at £80/night for 7 nights(Ok, so you might not need to get up every night if you're a sahp but actually, often every night for the first year or so)
a cleaner for just 5 hours/week at a tenner an hour.
Take out the housekeeper and it's STILL £52k, without any prostitution involved at all. So actually, if you measure a SAHP's contribution to a household in pure monetary terms it IS worth half of £150k a year.