My daughter has been talking recently about how unfair it is (a favorite word of children, is it not?) that Mom doesn't get paid for all she does. From an ungodly worldview, she may be right. Mom puts out a lot of effort for no income. Without the salary, it would seem this effort is wasted. However, from a Biblical point of view, salary is not a valid measurement of worth. Given the magnitude of the Lord's sacrifice on our behalf--His only begotten Son--I'd say our worth is immeasurably high.
In a Biblical marriage, there aren't just two individuals pooling their collective resources, sharing duties, and living together. A Godly husband and Godly wife act as one. Whenever one of them benefits, so does the other. When one hurts, so does the other. To be sure, this "one flesh" is a far cry from the perfect union we'll have with our Lord in the hereafter, but it is a foreshadowing of it. While the Godly husband provides the worldly means of meeting the family's physical needs, the Godly wife and mother tends to the less mundane needs of her husband and their children. (Of course, the husband is also responsible for meeting the less mundane needs of his wife and children, else he's nothing but a paycheck.)
Women are naturally, by God's design, more nurturing and tender. They are more focused on and aware of relationships and the countless nuances therein. They can appear to be less rational at times (from a coldly logical perspective) but that's because they are intent on improving the relationships that are important to them. As humans are largely irrational, a focus on humanity will appear so, too. When a child falls and hurts himself, Mom is far more likely to express empathy and meet the child's emotional needs than Dad. Now that we know the enormous importance of sound emotional development during childhood, it makes sense that Mom, gifted in this area, be ever present to nurture the children.
Men, by their God-given nature, tend to be colder, even emotionally stunted by comparison. This makes them better gifted at those tasks requiring emotional distance, or even a complete lack of emotion or empathy. Doing what must be done, however unpleasant and revolting, is a common matra for a reason: "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do." Sometimes, this is necessary to earn that useful income to provide for the family. After all, it's not called work for no reason; and how many men would continue doing their jobs as they do if they weren't bribed (paid) to do so? A job is not always a pleasant thing, yet it's known to be necessary in some form or other to provide the means of meeting physical needs. This gift for emotional detachment, unfortunately, also makes fatherhood and marriage more challenging for them than for women and more so than men's outside-the-home duties.
Men and women are different. Anyone denying this fundamental truth is a stupid fool. God designed us differently on purpose. We complement each other. Our natural talents fit together to complete us as we are meant to be. Our called roles are different; one is not superior to the other. One is better suited at bringing home the bacon while the other is better at frying it up (if you'll pardon the not-so-kosher metaphor). In no way is the worth of a wife and mother diminished because she is not directly paid for her efforts. Likewise, a man's worth is not superior because he is paid. (Note, too, that he is only paid for a very small amount of his effort, his job. All the effort he makes in society and the community--excepting the dishonorable job of State employee--and especially within his family, is similarly unpaid in money.) For the ungodly, who measure worth with funds, a wife and mother should indeed be paid for her efforts. For the Godly, though, money is no measurement of worth at all, but merely a necessary means of fulfilling but one of a man's Godly duties.
A woman need not be paid for her work as a Godly wife and mother any more than a man is paid for his work as a Godly husband and father. All that is his is hers, including his income, and vice versa. Just as Ruth inherited all the promises and blessings of the Jews by her choice to forever join God's people, so a woman inherits all that is the man's when she joins her life to his. I should close with this especially Good News: when we choose to forever join our lives to the Lord's through His atoning Son, we will also inherit the glory that is His.
Submission
I won't dwell on the concept of submission, but I will mention it here. Just as a man must submit to the authority of his boss, even though the boss is by no means a superior man, so a wife is called by the Lord to submit to her husband. These roles are not about superiority or inferiority. If you experience them as such, you're doing them wrongly. The buck must stop somewhere, and God ordained that to be the husband in a family. Of course, the husband is not free to lead as he wishes; he must lead as Christ leads the church, self-sacrificially and obediently. As the wife submits to the husband, so the husband submits to the Lord (a greater difficulty if done properly).