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This morning I discovered some wonderful information on Google, the computer driven search engine. It's like an encyclopedia on paper, only better.

If you've ever wondered what mom should be paid for her work as mom here's what I found at www.salary.com:

"Salary.com has now valuated the mom job of both the Working and Stay at Home Mom! We consulted Stay at Home and Working Moms to determine the top 10 jobs that make up a mom's job description.

"If paid, Stay at home Moms would earn $134,121 annually (up from 2005's salary of $131,471). Working moms would earn $85,876 annually for the mom job portion of their work, in addition to their actual work job salary."

Working moms manage to get 6.4 hours of daily sleep. This could be the reason working moms feel so stressed. Stay at home moms get a bit more sleep. She gets 6.7 hours of sleep — .03 hours more than her working mom counterpart.

Now I understand why I barely remember the years I was raising my three children as a stay-at-home mom. I was probably half-conscious most of the time.

I never got paid one penny for my work at home. I don't think it ever occurred to me, or any of my stay-at-home mom friends, to think that what we were doing had a dollar value. We got a "salary" from our husbands for what we needed to "keep house."

The women's movement didn't concentrate on mothers as a valued commodity. It was too focused on pushing women up the ladder in the workplace. Home-bound moms have no dollar value because they don't add anything to the gross national product.

An average mom — working or not — plays many roles during her day: housekeeper, day-care center teacher, cook, CEO, laundry-machine operator, facilities manager, psychologist, janitor, van driver and computer operator. Whew! If women understood the reality of the job of mothering before getting pregnant, there would be an implosion rather than an explosion of population in the world.

Mothers who want to play fair with their daughters should explain the real facts of life, not just the sexual side. Knowledgeable girls might just be smart enough to use their brains to protect themselves from the testosterone pressures they will encounter.

Love is grand, but working like a slave for nothing can defeat even the greatest romance.

Women who choose to stay at home do so because they want to and most likely have husbands who are able to support the family.

My daughter, who worked during her first baby's first three years, quit a lucrative job to stay home with her second baby. Her family took a large cut in their finances when her salary stopped coming. But by simplifying their wants, not their needs, they managed on one salary instead of two.

The second child had his mom around from Day One. Even as an infant and then a toddler, he was relaxed and secure in his manner. I have to wonder whether this inner strength is genetic or a result from having a stay-at-home mom?

Once my daughter's younger son reached 3, she put him in morning pre-school. He hated it. But by 4 he was ready for full day pre-school. So when we think about stay-at-home moms, we are really talking about a temporary stage.

So even if you have three or four children, eventually they'll all be gone. That means stay-at-home moms can start earning money as working moms.

As for ever getting paid for being a mom, forget it. The only and best payment we'll ever get is having our kids say, "I love you, mom." That payment is worth millions.