Stay-at-home parents would receive an annual wage of almost €44,000 if they were paid for their services in the home including cooking, cleaning and childminding, new figures show.

With eight in 10 people here underestimating the value of a stay-at-home parent, research has found it would cost €43,934 to employ someone to carry out all of their household duties.

Each week, stay-at-home parents are estimated to carry out 30 hours of childminding, 15 hours of cooking, eight hours of cleaning, five hours of teaching, four hours of handiwork, an hour of gardening and 10 taxi trips.

This means they would take home a weekly wage of €844.89 when compared to real-world wage data, according to research carried out by Royal London.

However, when asked how much it would cost to employ someone to perform the duties of a stay-at-home parent, 61% of those surveyed believe stay-at-home parents' wages range from €10,000 to €30,000.

A further 6% believed they would be paid less than €10,000, 17% believed their wage would be between €31,000 and €40,000 and 7% believed it would be more than €50,000.

The survey, which saw 1,000 people throughout the country take part, also looked at the number of stay-at-home fathers in Ireland.

It found that 72% of those surveyed did not know any stay-at-home dads, and just 5% classified themselves as a stay-at-home dad.

In Munster, the figure was even higher with 75% of those surveyed not knowing any stay-at-home fathers, and 4% classifying themselves as a stay-at-home dad.

This compares to the latest Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures which found the vast majority of stay-at-home parents are women, although the number of men in this role nearly doubled in the 10 years up to 2016.

There is a contrast between perception and reality when it comes to remuneration for the myriad of jobs carried out by a stay-at-home parent, according to Sara Murphy of Royal London.

“The role of a stay-at-home parent could be described as priceless, but we thought it might be a good exercise for people to consider how much it would cost to replace them in a financial sense and to contrast this with some real-world wage data."

“The average expected salary of €27,500 is significantly lower than the €43,934 we estimate as the economic cost of a stay-at-home parent, and lower again than the €47,596 reported by the CSO as the average earnings of a person in full-time employment during 2018.”