None of us put our hands on our heads if someone claims that parents are under stress. We also experience in ourselves how teleworking, distance education for our children and living together 24 hours a day has increased this stress.
What perhaps not all of us know is that who else is being affected by this confinement is the mothers. This is demonstrated by a new research from the University of Valencia that reveals interesting data on family reconciliation during the state of alarm: the school monitoring of children is done mainly by mothers and in some cases women are having to facilitate teleworking to Your partners.
How to combine family and work, from home
I have been self-employed for most of my life, so I know what it means to work at home while taking care of your children. And more when, as in my case, that burden has not been distributed because for years I have been the only adult at home.
What I don’t want to imagine is what that conciliation would have been like if I had had the children at home 24 hours a day and also had to help them with their studies online on a daily basis. That is why, for me, parents who are going through solitary confinement with young children seem like real heroes.
So I have found very interesting the initiative of Teresa Empar Aguado and Cristina Benlloch, professors of the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology of the University of Valencia, and the political scientist-jurist Anna Aguado to reveal the alterations that confinement is producing in life daily life of the population.
The provisional conclusions, published on the scientific dissemination platform ‘The Conversation’ reveal the greater burden of stress that women with children are suffering in recent months.
In particular, they analyze time management at home and the difficulties faced by mothers who have to combine family responsibilities with their workday through teleworking. Something necessary as Empar Aguado points out:
“Many are working while they are caring, and some feel like they are working all day . Often, having flexible schedules becomes a continuous demonstration and an exercise of responsibility with their superiors ”.
With in-depth telephone interviews and an online survey of voluntary participation, the results show that:
- School monitoring of children is mostly the task of mothers. This has become an element of anxiety and stress added to teleworking, because as Cristina Benlloch explains:
“It is common for mothers to telework during the early morning, either delaying the time to go to bed or getting up before the rest of the family members.”
Subtracting hours of sleep allows mothers to attend to their work with sufficient dedication, attend to the day to day of the house and organize and manage the educational day of confined children of school age.
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Respondents have also recognized that in addition to teleworking and taking care of the minors most of the time, “in some cases they should try to make it easier for their partners to work or telework” , if the couple’s working hours are rigid.
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But confinement has affected us all, in view of the provisional results: in some couples there is a greater willingness on the part of men to do household tasks that they did not usually do before , such as putting washing machines, cooking, going shopping or share hours of play with the children.
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Digital screens in the hands of young children are becoming a resource that facilitates the working day.
The purpose of this study is, according to Anna Aguado Roselló:
“Observe how the ‘re-conciliation’ is being addressed from the family units at a time when the home condenses all the social spaces of production and reproduction, understand the effects that this crisis may have on the conciliation between women who are they find teleworking “.
Knowing the situation can lead to improvement in the event that we once again have to live confined and teleworking, something that we hope will not happen. But if so, we can have the tools to avoid situations as stressful as those now detailed by the respondents. But this is my humble opinion.
If you are interested in the initiative, you still have time to participate in the study, answering the survey here. It is anonymous and takes no more than five minutes.
Photos | iStock
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