I think my mothering duties are worth $0

I have, in years past, had mixed feelings about the annual estimations of a mother's worth, portioned out into little bits of hourly wages for laundry, cooking, and "managing" her household, and usually coming out just over the maximum salary I ever earned in my life (with an Ivy League MBA, that is) (of course, I was a mom for most of my career).

This year I finally figured out what, exactly, was my problem with these "statistics": I think my time as a mom is worth zero, monetarily speaking.

I have tried every sub-genre of the working mom life: freelancing work that allows me lots of time to spend with my three little boys and around the house; working from home in a demanding corporate job that required lots of travel; traditional office work (when I had only one baby); and coming soon, as an Army wife with deployed husband.

So I feel I have a pretty good idea of the many different ways mothers can occupy their time. And reading this economist's take on a mother's value (which was generous in spirit, but argued moms weren't really worth nearly as much, due to the inflated hours reported in the survey on which the PR figure is based) gave me more perspective.

Here's the thing: being a mother is unquantifiable and shouldn't be expressed in dollar figures.