Mums Working From Home Carried Heavier Share

Photo by Jimmy Dean on Unsplash

In an article for CTV News, Megan DeLaire reports on recently released U.S.A study results indicating that mothers working from home spent an average of 2 hours more each day than fathers did supervising their children while they worked during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The peer-reviewed study by researchers at Cornell University, Yale University and Copenhagen Business School looked at how parenting and work arrangements shaped parents' time use from May to December 2020.

It used national data from the 2017 to 2020 American Time Use Survey, which recorded the nature and context of daily activities for a representative sample of Americans, to compare time use patterns before and during the pandemic for parents working from home and working on-site.

It also took into account data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that, during the first year of the pandemic, as many as half of employed American women and 42 per cent of all employed adults were working from home.

The study, by Dr. Kelly Musick, professor of public policy and sociology at Cornell University, and senior associate dean of research at the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, and her team, showed that, during the first year of the pandemic, “everybody was doing more remote work that allowed flexibility for parents to multitask”, adding that “the differential between mothers and fathers in supervisory care suggests that, at the end of the day, mothers did shoulder more of the responsibility”.

The study looked at four measures of child care:

·      Direct care, in which a task such as feeding, bathing or dressing a child is the parent’s primary activity

·      Parents and children being in the same room while parents multitasked

·      Parents and children being in the same room while parent worked

·      Parents supervising children while they worked, whether or not they were in the same room together

The results showed mothers spent an additional 88 minutes per day and fathers an additional 72 minutes in the same room as their children as compared to before the pandemic. Of that time, just under an hour was spent whilst the parents were working.

The study also found that mothers increased their time playing with their children during the pandemic, whereas dads increased their involvement with household chores.

The most significant increase for parents working remotely was in the amount of time spent in charge of children in the house, whether or not they were in the same room.

The research found mothers working remotely spent four-and-a-half hours per day indirectly supervising children, while fathers spent two-and-a-half hours in charge of kids. As a result, Musick said, mothers were more likely to change their work schedules and use the flexibility afforded by working from home to accommodate child care. They also spent more time multitasking, which Musick said previous studies have shown can raise stress levels and negatively impact mental and emotional well-being.

Dr. Musick noted the increased stress in combining work and child-care responsibilities, indicating her understanding that working women prioritizing their families’ needs during the pandemic were more likely to experience lost or lower wages and less upward career mobility.

The article references a 2021 report by Oxfam International with findings that, during the first year of the pandemic, women globally lost 64 million jobs and at least $800 billion in income due to COVID-19.

With remote work becoming a more permanent, or at least common, arrangement for the workforce, Dr. Musick expressed the hope that her team's findings will help shape equitable employment policies that account for the domestic pressures women continue to face.