Even in lockdown, mothers bear the brunt of child care

FOR ALL the talk about responsible fathering and child care, it is still mothers who spend much more of their time looking after children—even during the pandemic, even when both parents are furloughed and even when both are working from home. That is one of several findings from a study published this week by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), a British think-tank, seeking to answer the question: “How are mothers and fathers balancing work and family under lockdown?”

Not very well, appears to be one of the main conclusions. For their study the IFS researchers surveyed more than 3,500 two-parent heterosexual couples in England about how they are using their time during lockdown. Comparing the activities of mothers and fathers throughout the day, the researchers found that, although they spend almost exactly the same time grooming, sleeping and watching Netflix, the differences in paid work and unpaid work at home are stark (see chart).

With schools and child-care facilities closed, parents have been forced to juggle work with home-schooling and child-minding. On a typical weekday, caring for children takes up nine hours a day on average, against five and a half before the lockdown; hours devoted to paid work have fallen from six and a half to just three, in part because of lost jobs. Traditional patterns have been endured, with women taking on most work at home and men most paid work. When dads do look after children they are more likely than mums to take on “passive” tasks (watching the kids while they watch telly) rather than “active” ones (helping with homework or building a Lego tower.)

In dads’ defence, they are considerably more involved at home than usual. Fathers now spend eight hours of the day on some form of child care, on average, roughly twice as much as in 2014-15. But fathers’ child-care hours depend far more than mothers’ on whether or not they have a paid job, according to a separate study by the Centre for Economic Policy Research, another think-tank.

Alison Andrew, an economist at the IFS and one of the authors of the study, worries that prolonged lockdowns will hurt women’s career prospects and could increase the gender wage-gap. One sign of this comes from the behaviour of two-income households. Ms Andrew found that where mothers have stopped paid work during lockdown, they have taken on twice as much child care and housework as their partners, on average. But where the roles were reversed, with the father stopping work and the mother continuing, housework and child care were shared 50-50.