A recent study about parents’ effects on childhood ill health found that unemployed mothers spend about seven hours a day doing chores related to their children’s diet and exercise (such as grocery shopping, cooking, and playing with children), while employed mothers spend about five. On the other hand, both employed and unemployed fathers spend less than an hour on these tasks.
Let’s play a fun game of Guess The Headline:
A) Fathers put less effort than mothers into their kids’ diet, exercise.
B) Fathers perform fewer routine child care duties than mothers.
C) How can we get fathers more involved in their children’s health?
D) Working mothers spend less time daily on their kids’ diet, exercise.
If you picked D, congratulations, you understand how the sexist mind works.
Are men incapable of cooking? Grocery-shopping? Playing with children? Surely not. And at least two of those can be deeply gratifying. (Well, grocery shopping on a budget can be fun too– it’s like a game!– but very few people cite that as important.) Instead of blaming employed mothers for not being able to make their children’s health basically a full-time job the way that unemployed mothers do, we should be asking why moms with jobs put in more than four times as much effort into their children’s health as dads without jobs.
Some of the reasons may be fairly benign, such as fathers tending to do other household duties, or employed men being likely to work more than employed women. Some are not, such as the incredibly awful idea that if men try to take care of children there will be poop on the ceiling and the six-year-old will still be awake at 2 am. (Or men who have internalized sexism to the degree that they believe it is perfectly normal and acceptable for a father to be completely incompetent at childrearing.) Nevertheless, nearly all of them are probably rooted in sexism, and it is something that should be eradicated. Not erased by blaming mothers.
Photo– Jeda Villa Bali/Flickr. A father holds his daughter.
1) I misquoted the abstract when I said it stated single-child households. 2) The abstract also states that it (the paper) takes socioeconomic factors into consideration. 3) The abstract strongly suggest that the paper focuses on American households. The abstract also states the data was amassed from multiple sources, from ’04 to ’09, I believe. It does not clearly state the number of children, the offsets used, whether the paper itself is restricted to American households, etc. So, to maintain intellectual honesty in & integrity, those of us without the paper itself must approach the articles & abstract with reasonable… Read more »
But they’re comparing 2 different activities of the mother n father…women’s is listed as all time spent with kid, men’s is listed as health n exercise only?
Theoretically, there are other possibilities that would have to be taken into account, however unlikely people may think they are: Maybe men are a little more efficient or realistic about childrearing. They are less likely to be helicopter parents or smothering or obsessive about spending time with their children. (Okay, they can’t be 400% more efficient, but maybe a little bit!?) Perhaps past a certain point there are diminishing returns, and more time does not always translate into a better job of parenting. Perhaps unemployed women simply have more time to spend with their children, but the extra time makes… Read more »
How dare you suggest women may be more likely to be helicopter parents or spend unnecessary amounts of time with the kids:P. But I think you may have a point, men could be doing things more efficiently or allow their children more time without strict supervision. “Men and women may report their hours differently. A stay-at-home mother might double-bill her hours, while a stay-at-home father might not. He watches TV and doesn’t count it as babysitting, but she watches TV and does count it.” I think that could very well be true, if I am watching tv with the kid… Read more »
Also, Ozy, I have access to the full paper if you’d like me to send it to you.
For those who are wondering, this is based off an time-use survey of Americans with at least one child, not just one child (contrary to what Bryono Carter is saying above).
Does it differentiate parents who don’t live with their kid?
This is honestly one of the reasons I don’t want to have children. I’ve noticed (anecdotally) that the men in my peer group are, on average, much more enthusiastic about the idea of having kids compared to the women. I think they tend to picture the fun, easy parts of parenthood, while women tend to be much more aware of the incredibly hard work they’ll be expected to do while their male partners get applauded for “babysitting” the kids every once in a while.
This is a joint study between Cornell & Shanghai Universities, which explains why the sample is limited to households with “one child under the age of 18.” It may also bias the study as a result of the vastly different cultures of China and America. While I appreciate any work aimed at the pursuit of knowledge, w/o seeing the actual study and w/o providing sufficient data from the study in the abstract, this does more to harm and bias that pursuit. I hope this criticism is taken in the spirit of helping one another improve our understanding of these subjects,… Read more »
So is it only chinese familes, or both countries?
I spose that also highlights another form of sexism. Showing misogynist attitudes in one country and trying to compare it to others.
It’s not a matter of which Nation. It’s the additional qualifiers brought to bare when looking into cross-cultural analysis, the data of which is missing from the best abstract I was able to find without paying $40+ . Add to that the same lack of data on either Nation/culture in the same abstract. For example, in the original study, were income levels accounted for? Or education level? Perhaps, but neither the abstract nor the article(s) gave clear reference. I’m certainly not denying sexism in America (be it at home or the workplace.) I simply think drawing broad conclusions from a… Read more »
Yeah that’s the problem. So many studies get reported on wrongly or with bias.
“Overall, according to the full paper, they found that “The average number of total minutes per day spent with children is 410 min for non-working mothers and 277 min for working mothers.” As the second paragraph explains, “Employed fathers devote just 13 minutes daily to [chores related to children’s diet and exercise] and non-working fathers contribute 41 minutes.”” Not sure if anyone pointed it out but the 13 and 41 minutes can’t be compared to 410 and 277 minutes, one describes time alone with kid, the other describes time on the healthcare. I can’t see where you are getting the… Read more »
Probably from the hour numbers. 1 hour is less than one-fourth of 5.
But…wow, now that I see the minute numbers, it’s really more like one-tenth!
I think I agree with Archy that one cannot compare those two numbers. One-tenth doesn’t seem to jive with the numbers from the US Time Use Survey 2011: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t09.htm The linked table states that men spend 0.88 hours per day caring for children as a primary activity while women spend 1.71 hours per day (both numbers for persons in a household with children under 18). This ( http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t10.htm ) table for childcare as a secondary activity (done while also doing something else like cooking etc) shows that men spend 4.19 hours per day while women spend 6.1 hours per day… Read more »
Does it only count fathers and mothers that are still together? Could be that unemployed men are more likely to be away from the family home, divorced, split up, etc?
Another potential is handling of depression, fathers may be more likely to seek solace than mothers. Could also be that they are busy doing fix it up jobs around the house which could be dangerous for kids to be around but that wouldn’t explain all of it.
Did the researchers ask the fathers about it?
Don’t confuse the headline with the study. The headline may be sexist, but the study, as presented here only demonstrates a difference in time. Dads should spend more time with their kids, but to suggest they don’t because of a culture of sexism alone is fallacy. It ignores other social pressures, demographics, neurology, and so much more.
True, but the headline is remarkably sexist. Both groups of women spend WAY more time with their kids than either group of men. Yet the headline completely ignores that difference and focuses solely on the difference between employed and unemployed women, as if all those daddies didn’t exist. I find that deeply offensive, and I’m not even one of the men being erased (I’m not a parent at all, but would like to be one someday). In fact, when you juxtapose the working mom’s child-rearing hours (5/day) with the unemployed dad’s (<1/day), it becomes even more clear that Something Is… Read more »
It doesn’t say that though, it says men spend less time with the kids FOR health and exercise, whilst comparing it to women who are just with the kids? “Why is a woman who already has a job expected to do that much extra work on top of that, while a man who has no job, and doesn’t need to spend more than a couple hours a day looking for one, isn’t really expected to be involved with his kids’ lives at all? It’s like all the problems from “Cat’s In the Cradle” turned up to 11.” From what I… Read more »