I sat down to write this story at 10 in the morning.
10:05: The youngest daughter asks for a snack.
10:10 am: She is logged out of her online learning program and needs help logging in again.
10:12: The eldest daughter asks why her sister has a snack and she doesn’t.
10:15: The youngest daughter asks for another snack. Request denied.
10:47 am: “Mom, I’m bored.”
And keep it up. Most of these requests are addressed to me even though my husband also works from home and we alternated “interference” in the two-hour slots while the kids don’t go to school.
Being parents in the past few months has been immensely difficult for both mothers and fathers, with the pandemic that has demanded unprecedented requests from families around the world. But as we score United Nations World Parents Day on June 1st, it is clear that mothers are doing most of the weight lifting and can end up paying the biggest price.
Mothers are only able to do one hour of uninterrupted work every three hours done by dads, according to new research from the UK who also found mothers who took care of multiple household chores and who spent more time with children in homes where there is a mother and father working.
Before the blockade in the UK, mothers completed on average about 60% of the uninterrupted hours of work that fathers did. It is now reduced to a third.
In addition, mothers are more likely than fathers to have left a paid job and to have seen a greater reduction in their hours. Among those who do paid work at home, mothers are more likely than fathers to spend their working hours simultaneously in an attempt to take care of children.
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