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It’s been a tough 11 months for mothers. For about a millisecond after the onset of the pandemic, I hoped that remote work would cause fathers to finally see all of the myriad household tasks mothers do every day and begin doing their fair share. It didn’t happen. Instead of curing the fairness gap, we got the Great COVID Cop-out.
Nearly 80% of mothers have been primarily responsible for doing the housework since March, while 66% are chiefly responsible for the child care among partnered parents. When you look at home schooling, parents’ contributions are even more skewed. Three-quarters of mothers reported spending more time on it; only one-third of dads do. (All numbers are from a new study by sociologists Allison Dunatchik, Kathleen Gerson, Jennifer Glass, Jerry A. Jacobs and Haley Stritzel in Gender & Society,