Moms have it harder than dads? "Multitasking" study says yes
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(CBS) Do moms have it harder than dads?
Working moms spend more time multitasking than working dads - and the experience of keeping multiple balls in the air at once is more stressful for the moms than for their male counterparts.
At least those are the findings of a provocative new study of American families. It showed that working mothers spend almost 10 more hours a week multitasking than do working fathers - 48 hours a week for moms compared to 39 for dads.
"This suggests that working mothers are doing two activities at once more than two-fifths of the time they are awake, while working fathers are multitasking more than a third of their waking hours," study author Dr. Barbara Schneider, a sociology professor at Michigan State University, said in a written statement.
The study also showed that working moms find multitasking a lot more unpleasant than working dads do. Maybe that's because of the sorts of tasks working moms take on.
Women tend to juggle labor-intensive tasks involving housework or childcare, the study found. Men? For them, multitasking tends to involve less burdensome tasks like carrying on a three-way conversation or engaging in self-care, according to study author Dr. Shira Offer, associate professor of sociology and anthropology at Israel's Bar-Ilan University.
Another reason working moms dislike multitasking is that they fear being judged by others. Though men are expected to be involved in their children's lives and do household chores, they face less scrutiny than women do, the authors concluded.
The study relied on data from a sample of 369 mothers and 241 fathers in dual-earner families across the U.S. It was published in the December issue of the American Sociological Review.
The authors didn't just report their findings. They offered a blunt recommendation for bridging the multitasking gap, saying that "fathers' share of housework and childcare has to further increase."
What do you say? Should dads contribute more to housework and childcare? Or should moms stop worrying what others think?
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The point here is that people who think starting two things instead of finishing one with focus is "better" have given rise to the term "multitasking." Who defines what this is? If one is reading the paper and drinking coffee, is that multitasking? If one is cooking dinner while the kids watch TV, is that multitasking?
If both the father and mother are home and the father is doing yardwork while the mother is cleaning the house, are they both multitasking if the kids are in the house? What if they are both watching TV and the kids are in the bedroom? Would one give a different response than the other?
The article is pointed. It has an angle. Great, so do most...but could you use please use better research to try to prove the hypothesis that is drawn? And stop with the multitasking buzzword that was created for those with lack of focus. YOU can't multitask. You MUST change focus to complete tasks. You do not have multiple processors.
I'd rather have an employee that focused and finished one project at a time correctly than an employee that continuously started new ones, having so many balls in the air that they stress themselves out...AND everyone around them. Perhaps the research really points to the stress that is caused by lack of ability to NOT start something else before completing what is at hand. Taking on what you can handle, and managing your workload IS time management. If you don't have it, you will be stressed.
I based my insights off of this post: www.pavonefood.com/consumer-multitasking-marketers/
Another area men are having problems with is education. Women outnumber men in universities 2:1. Boys are falling fast in primary education as well.
It's politically expedient for women to get more programs for jobs, health care, and education. However, as women have eclipsed men in these areas there is no outcry to help men. The sad truth is we are a proactive society but rather a reactive one. Men will have to hit bottom before women start to care about the long term well being of their sons, fathers, brothers, or husbands.
In the meantime men are going to take a break. We've been fighting the wars, conquering the elements, building the infrastructure, and creating the foundations for our society. It's not to say women weren't there to help but for the past few hundred years women were responsible for the home and men did everything else.
Now that men get to sit back and watch their ladies bring home the bacon it's time they spent a few of their hard earned dollars on us for a change. Ladies, until things change you're just going to have to do it all and multitask a bit more. Men are failing and you're going to have to pick up the slack until men can find their voice and demand equal rights.
Have you ever watched a guy hold up his end of a droning conversation while trying to watch TV and change channels at the same time?
Hahahahahaha!!! That's too funny.
What it did tell us is that the rest of us are losing out on the opportunity to scam our government for piles of money they evidently have lying around.