Mothers 'more time-pressed than fathers'

A new report on the changing patterns in parental time use and their implications for parental well-being, published by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) and funded by the Economic Social Research Council, has found that a third of mothers (33 per cent) reported always feeling rushed, compared with just under a quarter of fathers (24 per cent). 

The research compared time diary data from the UK Time Use Survey in 2000-01 and 2014-15 to examine the extent to which UK parents experience time pressure, whether parental time pressure has changed over time and how time pressure varies among different types of families.

It examined:

• Parents’ own assessments of their time pressure based on their responses to the question, ‘In general, how rushed do you normally feel? Always, sometimes or never?’
• The extent to which parents multitasked, or carried out several activities at the same time.
• The extent to which parents’ time was fragmented, or how often they switched back and forth between activities.

The results found that the vast majority of parents felt rushed at least some of the time, with only 8 per cent of mothers and 12 per cent of fathers reporting never feeling rushed.

Mothers multitasked slightly more than fathers, for a total of 29 percent of their non-sleep, non-paid work time, according to the research. Fathers multitasked 27 per cent of their day.

This equated to three hours and 48 minutes per day for mothers, and two hours and 59 minutes for fathers.

Other findings included:

• Mothers’ time was more fragmented than fathers, with mothers switching from one activity to another every 38 minutes throughout the day, excluding time spent sleeping or in paid work, while fathers switched activities every 43 minutes.
• Single mothers spent less time multitasking and their time was less fragmented
  compared with mothers in dual full-time earner households, but they did not feel
  any less rushed.
• Multitasking and fragmentation were greater among parents with an undergraduate degree and higher compared to parents without a degree.

Researchers said that although a substantial proportion of parents continued to feel rushed in 2014-15, time pressure had actually declined slightly in the 21st century. Nonetheless, time pressure remained particularly high among mothers, parents in dual full-time earner households, parents with young children and university-educated parents.

Allison Dunatchik, who conducted the research, said, ‘Our study, the most in-depth of its kind, provides further evidence that addressing time pressure among parents has become an imperative. While the research shows a decline in parental time pressure over the past fifteen years, it reveals that substantial gender inequalities persist, with mothers significantly more likely to feel rushed, to multitask and to have more fragmented time compared with fathers.

'It’s clear that there are lessons in these findings which will help government implement further family policy initiatives that will aid with the reduction of parental time pressure for the most impacted groups.'