Reconciliation is that pending issue that with the arrival of the pandemic was even more accentuated, especially when highlighting the differences in parenting and childcare in households where both parents work.
Now, through the survey entitled ‘The cost of conciliation’, the association Yo no renuncio and the Club de las Malasmadres have once again put on the table the great inequalities that exist in the couple, regarding the distribution of responsibilities that They involve employment and family .
the survey
The Spanish association for conciliation has published the results on its website this Wednesday, March 23, just on the National Day for the Reconciliation of personal, family and work life . The survey, in which more than 76,000 women participated, shows the three costs of the lack of conciliation measures: labor, social and emotional/personal .
Of the total participations, 51,627 have been validated and quantified through a filtering process, in order to obtain accurate and reliable results. According to the authors of this research, the confidence level of the sample is 95.5%.
The results of the survey highlight the negative effect that the lack of support has on mothers to reconcile , and that it strongly affects not only their work career, but also their emotional, personal and family life.
The invisible work of mothers
On more than one occasion we have talked in Babies and more about mental workload and invisible work , that series of activities, responsibilities and day-to-day routines that we carry out without rest or remuneration, and that are often ignored or go unnoticed.
Despite the fact that fathers are currently more involved in childcare, the reality is that it continues to fall mainly on mothers, and the results of the survey are proof of this.
Take, for example, the organization and logistics of child care and activities. On days when they do not go to school, 72% of mothers declare that they are in charge of organizing it, while 24% share it equally with their partner.
If we go to a basic and necessary topic such as feeding children, we find that the difference is also very large, because according to the results in 69% of households, mothers are in charge of thinking and proposing what they will eat and dine their children.
In the emotional aspect, for example, we have that 65% of mothers are primarily responsible for managing their children’s emotions , while 70% of women assume responsibility for worrying about their children’s friendships.
In relation to the education of the children, the mothers continue to be the main responsible: 71% admit that they are aware of the homework , while 83% mention that they are the ones in charge of reviewing the WhatsApp groups of the school.
For families that have children with some special need, the gap is even wider, since 93% of mothers are the ones who take their children to therapies, medical appointments, check-ups and follow-ups.
Mothers in the workplace
Turning to the labor issue, the results of the survey show us that the mere fact of being a mother or becoming one also ends up affecting the professional career of women .
For example, although today both parents work, when it comes to having to make decisions about the care of the children (as happened during the pandemic with the closure of schools), the woman is the one who usually resigns or makes adjustments in her life . labor .
According to the survey, 64% of women with sons and daughters have assumed some labor cost , either by reducing their working hours, taking leave of absence, rejecting jobs due to their hours or abandoning the labor market. This has also been reflected in their economy: 57% of them have assumed this loss of income , in order to carry out family domestic work.
On the other hand, being a mother and working outside the home means that mothers have a double working day , which naturally influences their physical and emotional health: 64% of women declare that they arrive at work tired practically every day due to domestic responsibilities -relatives.
All these activities, responsibilities and tasks that motherhood and work outside the home imply mean that 65% of women state that they have less than one hour free a day and 20% simply state that they do not have time for it.
Another clear example of how motherhood affects women in their careers is the discrimination they often suffer when they have a baby and return to work. According to the survey, four out of ten women have felt less valued in their employment or in their family and friendship environment when they became a mother.
maternal mental health
Last but not least, we have the issue of the mental health of mothers, something that we have also talked about frequently in Babies and more .
As we mentioned in the section on invisible work, the mental burden of mothers is something that cannot be seen but ends up affecting us. In the survey, 73% of women say they feel exhausted almost daily due to this mental load .
Speaking specifically of their mental and emotional health, we found that 66% of women acknowledge that they have not asked for psychological help, despite feeling overwhelmed and sad. The main reasons why they have not done so are because of embarrassment, not being able to pay for it or lack of time.
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