Mothers ‘take on more chores and childcare than men’ during Covid lockdown

Mothers have taken on more childcare and housework responsibilities than fathers who have the same work arrangements during the Covid-19 lockdown, a study suggests.

Josh Williamson, 5, is home schooled by his mother Kerrie Williamson in Elderslie, as the schools remain closed during the coronavirus pandemic.

In families where both the parents have paid work, mothers are spending more of their working hours simultaneously trying to care for children compared with their partners, an analysis has found.

Mothers are also more likely to have quit or lost their job, or to have been furloughed, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) report.

A sharp reduction in the time that mothers are spending dedicated to work amid the crisis could harm their careers and further increase the gender wage gap when lockdown is lifted, researchers warn.

The study, of more than 3,500 two-parent opposite-gender families, found that mothers are also far more likely to be interrupted during paid working hours with household responsibilities than fathers.

Mothers are doing paid work during two fewer hours of the day than fathers, but they do childcare and housework during two more hours each, the analysis from the IFS and the UCL Institute of Education has found.

Mothers combine paid work with other activities, such as childcare, in 47 per cent of work hours, compared with 30 per cent of fathers’ work hours, according to the report.

Schools and nurseries across the UK closed nine weeks ago, remaining open only for vulnerable pupils and the children of key workers.

The average mother – including those who did not work for pay – was doing nearly 60 per cent of the number of uninterrupted work hours that the average father did in 2014-15, but now she is doing only 35 per cent.

Lucy Kraftman, a research economist at the IFS, said: “Mothers are doing, on average, more childcare and more housework than fathers who have the same work arrangements, be that not working, working from home or working outside the home.”

She added: “The vast increase in the amount of childcare that mothers are doing under lockdown, which many are juggling alongside paid work, is likely to put a strain on their well-being.”

Of parents who were in paid work prior to the lockdown, mothers are one-and-a-half times more likely than fathers to have either lost their job or quit since the lockdown began. Mothers who were in paid work in February are 9 percentage points less likely to be currently working for pay than fathers.