Stressed, Tired, Rushed: A Portrait of the Modern Family

[2curlydogs]

In today's "Well, duh" news... However, set in contrast to Idiot Ryan's comments earlier in the week, it's worth the read. 


www.nytimes.com/2015/11/05/upshot/stressed-tired-rushed-a-portrait-of-the-modern-family.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0


Children are much more likely than not to grow up in a household in which their parents work, and in nearly half of all two-parent families today, both parents work full time, a sharp increase from previous decades.


What hasn’t changed: the difficulty of balancing it all. Working parents say they feel stressed, tired, rushed and short on quality time with their children, friends, partners or hobbies, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.



The survey found something of a stress gap by race and education. College-educated parents and white parents were significantly more likely than other parents to say work-family balance is difficult.



The data are the latest to show that while family structure seems to have permanently changed, public policy, workplace structure and mores have not seemed to adjust to a norm in which both parents work.



Bret Taylor, former chief technology officer at Facebook and a founder of Quip, with his son Sam and daughter Jasmine. He leaves work at 5:30 p.m. so that his employees will not feel obligated to stay.

“This is not an individual problem, it is a social problem,” said Mary Blair-Loy, a sociologist and the founding director of the Center for Research on Gender in the Professions at the University of California, San Diego. “This is creating a stress for working parents that is affecting life at home and for children, and we need a societal-wide response.”

She said policies like paid family leave and after-school child care would significantly ease parents’ stress. Yet today, families mostly figure out the juggle on their own.



In most cases, that means women still do the majority of the child care and housework — particularly managing the mental checklists of children’s schedules and needs — even when both parents work full time, according to the Pew survey and other research. Just don’t tell fathers that. They are much more likely than mothers to say they share responsibilities equally.



Aimee Barnes, 33, and Jakub Zielkiewicz, 31, both work full time at the California Environmental Protection Agency and are the parents of Roman, 15 months. They said they knew they were lucky to have help, like flexible schedules and extended family nearby. Still, figuring out how to manage work and parenting has been hard.



“You basically just always feel like you’re doing a horrible job at everything,” Ms. Barnes said. “You’re not spending as much time with your baby as you want, you’re not doing the job you want to be doing at work, you’re not seeing your friends hardly ever.”



That tension is affecting American family life, Pew found. Fifty-six percent of all working parents say the balancing act is difficult, and those who do are more likely to say that parenting is tiring and stressful, and less likely to find it always enjoyable and rewarding. For example, half of those who said the work-family balance was not difficult said parenting was enjoyable all the time, compared with 36 percent of those who said balance was difficult.



In a 1989 book called “The Second Shift,” the sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild described the double burden employed mothers face because they are also responsible for housework and child care. Last year she said that despite some changes in society, the workplace had not changed enough to alleviate the problems. In a book last year, “All Joy and No Fun,” the journalist Jennifer Senior described how little had improved: Working parents face similar stresses, but they are now exacerbated by the expectations of modern parenthood and shared by fathers, too.

Of full-time working parents, 39 percent of mothers and 50 percent of fathers say they feel as if they spend too little time with their children. Fifty-nine percent of full-time working mothers say they don’t have enough leisure time, and more than half of working fathers say the same.



Of parents with college degrees, 65 percent said they found it difficult to balance job and family; 49 percent of nongraduates said the same. Pew did not investigate why, but one reason might be that professional workers are more likely than hourly workers to be expected to work even after they leave the office. However, they also tend to have more flexibility during the day.



The survey also found that white parents were more than 10 percentage points more likely to express stress than nonwhite parents. Historically, white and black mothers have been more likely to work outside the home than Asian and Latina mothers, and foreign-born mothers have been particularly likely to stay home, Pew has found.



In 46 percent of all two-parent households, both parents work full-time, according to Pew, up from 31 percent in 1970. The share of households with a mother who stays home has declined to 26 percent from 46 percent. Pew surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1,807 parents in every state on both landlines and cellphones.



Other data also show that working parents are the new norm. Sixty percent of children now live in households where all the parents at home work at least part time, up from 40 percent in 1965, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the White House Council of Economic Advisers.



The shift has economic implications. The median household income for a family in which both parents work full time is $102,400, according to Pew, compared with $84,000 when mothers work part time and $55,000 when they stay home.



The data highlight the complicated trade-offs that working families make.



Forty-one percent of working mothers said being a parent made it harder to advance in their careers, compared with 20 percent of fathers. Men’s careers took priority more often than women’s did, though the majority said they were equal. Fathers earned more than mothers in half of full-time working families, the same as mothers in about a quarter and less than mothers in a quarter.

The ways parents spend their time at home have changed markedly over the years. Government time-use data show that parents over all do less housework and spend more time with their children than they used to.

The time men spend on paid work has decreased to 38.5 hours a week from 42 hours in 1965, while the time they spend on housework has doubled to 8.8 hours and the time they spend on child care has tripled to over seven hours.



Still, women do much more, especially when it comes to the tasks of raising a child, like managing their schedules and taking care of them when they are sick, according to Pew. Fathers and mothers are much more likely to equally share in doing household chores, disciplining children and playing with them.

There is a gender divide in parents’ perceptions of how much responsibility they take on, Pew found. Fifty-six percent of fathers say they share equally, while only 46 percent of mothers agree.



“As they’re being squeezed harder at work, the pressures for egalitarian parenting are increasing at home,” Ms. Blair-Loy said. “They’re doing more than their fathers ever did and they have a belief in egalitarianism, so of course they want to interpret it as equal.”



Asked about the division of household chores, Sean O’Malley, 37, a biotech consultant and father of Fiona, 11 months, said: “I think we’re dividing pretty equally. And if it’s not equal, then we certainly want it to be.”



“I’d say I do more,” said his wife, Anne Mercogliano, 33, a marketing executive at Twitter.



They try to divide child care equally. He wakes up with Fiona and handles the morning routine, and steps in when his wife has a crisis at work. Ms. Mercogliano is what she calls “the advance team” — ordering baby supplies, cooking meals for the week on Sundays and booking pediatrician appointments and swim lessons.



“The Amazon Prime account is mine,” she said. “He was like, ‘When are we going to run out of these night diapers?’ and I was like, ‘We’ve already reordered those six times.’ ”



For the parents of Roman, it’s not clear that their current approach is sustainable. “Especially now because he’s still below school age, I feel very torn about having a full-time job and basically missing out on all of that time,” Ms. Barnes said. “Either it’s the undercurrent of how I feel every day for the next few years, or I figure out a way to work a little bit less.”

Both families said the one policy that would greatly help families like theirs would be paid family leave — particularly paternity leave.



Mr. O’Malley was able to take a month off, and Ms. Mercogliano said: “I honestly think that was the biggest gift I’ve ever had, just having him home. It’s great that people are focused on more family leave, but I absolutely believe it should be gender-neutral.”

[ttt]

Why do men think they do 50% of the household/childcare work when they really only do about 20% of it???

[ijack]

“You basically just always feel like you’re doing a horrible job at everything,” Ms. Barnes said. “You’re not spending as much time with your baby as you want, you’re not doing the job you want to be doing at work, you’re not seeing your friends hardly ever.”

A-freaking-men.
And I'm lucky in that when H isn't traveling he is pretty much an equal partner/parent, but it's still fucking hard. And when he's traveling I'm pretty much just trying to keep everyone alive.

[2curlydogs]

Nov 5, 2015 9:43:57 GMT -5 ttt said:

Why do men think they do 50% of the household/childcare work when they really only do about 20% of it???

I think because they're setting it in contrast to the amount of work their fathers put in.

ETA: It IS a substantial increase. I can see how perception may be skewed when viewing with a historical lense "the time they spend on housework has doubled to 8.8 hours and the time they spend on child care has tripled to over seven hours.
"


And they also don't think about all of the .. what did that one woman call it .. the "advance team" duties. Scheduling appointments, booking childcare, managing household supplies (diapers, wipes, etc.). 

I really push my H to pick up on some of that. Like he's responsible for finding a baby sitter when we go out. But it's not even on his radar unless I mention it.

[downtoearth]

Nov 5, 2015 9:46:53 GMT -5 2curlydogs said:

Nov 5, 2015 9:43:57 GMT -5 ttt said:

Why do men think they do 50% of the household/childcare work when they really only do about 20% of it???

I think because they're setting it in contrast to the amount of work their fathers put in.

ETA: It IS a substantial increase. I can see how perception may be skewed when viewing with a historical lense "the time they spend on housework has doubled to 8.8 hours and the time they spend on child care has tripled to over seven hours.
"


And they also don't think about all of the .. what did that one woman call it .. the "advance team" duties. Scheduling appointments, booking childcare, managing household supplies (diapers, wipes, etc.). 

I really push my H to pick up on some of that. Like he's responsible for finding a baby sitter when we go out. But it's not even on his radar unless I mention it.

This is my biggest complaint and issue with my DH.  I somehow know what needs to be done without having to research or look around.  DH doesn't even imagine what needs to be done until I mention it or the school/daycare sends home a note about us missing out or dropping the ball.  Babysitters are just the tip of the iceberg. What about emailing teachers about emotional outbursts preemptively, calling to get annual checkups and dentist appts, making food for friends who are mourning, dinner about 80% of the time, food shopping about 90% of the time, etc.  Reminding him what to do sometimes feels like just another chore I have to do instead of communication. 

DH doesn't do hardly anything compared to me, but I can't win a fight about that b/c he says things like, "changing the brakes on the VW van or installing tile on the bathroom floor is more work than shopping at Costco three times a month." 

It's not - I mean, if he weren't here I'd outsource that brake thing and we'd have to buy less $$ at Costco to cover the labor and I installed the tile with him - and he selectively doesn't remember that. 

Sorry... guess I needed to vent.  I feel like I need to volunteer to go on a work trip b/c that always levels the playing field for a few months.  I love leaving and walking away for a week with DH realizing how much work it is and then he notes that.  It sucks that he can't seem to see it when I'm right there asking for help.

[bernsteincat]

This country's obsession with killing ourselves and sacrificing basic life enjoyment for our jobs is ridiculous.

[Deleted]

One more "advance team" item that gets under my skin is when we are ill. If DH is sick, I am keeping track of medicines and supplies, making sure he doesn't run out of anything. If I'm ill, I have to do the same thing and usually run out to the store to get anything. If I ask DH to do that, I get the 'I don't know what I'm doing' reaction. Well, maybe if I didn't handle all the household supplies, you wouldn't feel so helpless; but then I'd be out of supplies at times and my type-A can't handle that.

Overall though he does acknowledge how much work I put into grocery and supply planning, and taking care of C's school support; and he is willing to step in when I ask for help or I'm having a lazy/tired day. Equal partnership is always an ongoing conversation. But I think the critical part of this piece is the lack of social support surrounding a family--daycare/aftercare, medical support, breastfeeding support, decent/consistent vacation and sick leave policies, expectations at the office/after hours. If those factors were in place, there might be less nitpicking about who leaves dishes in the sink.

[ringstrue]

I know women who wake up an hour earlier and go to sleep an hour later just to do it all. DSs daycare teacher wakes up everyday at 3am!! DH has friends whose wives cook every damn meal and they both work full-time. There are very few couples (that we know of) whom we can relate to in terms of roles and capacity.

I'm out of town right now and DH is managing house and kids all by his lonesome. It's hard work, and especially for the non-default parent/person, who has a learning curve. I don't want to be all "I told you so" about it, but I'm welcoming the role reversal from when he had plenty of weeknight activities that took him away from the fray.

[Deleted]

I work FT and MH stays at home with the kids. He does the grocery shopping, lots of cleaning, and some laundry. I honestly don't know what I would do if he didn't. I already can't keep up. I have a long commute so I can't do middle of the day school things unless I take the whole day off. I always feel like I am missing out.

[eponinepontmercy]

Nov 5, 2015 9:43:57 GMT -5 ttt said:

Why do men think they do 50% of the household/childcare work when they really only do about 20% of it???

Because women are told they are lucky when their husbands do slightly more than the bare minimum. 

[downtoearth]

Nov 5, 2015 10:34:11 GMT -5 calamity said:

I work FT and MH stays at home with the kids. He does the grocery shopping, lots of cleaning, and some laundry. I honestly don't know what I would do if he didn't. I already can't keep up. I have a long commute so I can't do middle of the day school things unless I take the whole day off. I always feel like I am missing out.

Hugs. You make it to the most important things and being the working member is so critical. I had this same set-up for about a year and it was hard for me to let go of control after being the default parent for the 3 previous years.  We're damned if we do and damned if we don't.  It's just hard to find your family's work-life-balance when kids are young.

[Deleted]

Yikes. The comments section is full of "well what did you expect when you had kids?? This is why I didn't have any!!!" snarky remarks. The thing that I think these people don't fully understand is, whether people should have had them or not, the kids *are* here and it's not like you can just send them back someplace. So what are you supposed to do to make life livable? What can we do as a society to make it more doable? That's what these articles are about. It's not about blaming people for their choices.

[sfy]

Nov 5, 2015 9:40:27 GMT -5 2curlydogs said:

The survey found something of a stress gap by race and education. College-educated parents and white parents were significantly more likely than other parents to say work-family balance is difficult.

The privilege is real. Most working class people simply have an expectation that life--and the necessary balance of life and work--will be difficult.

[eddy]

It is my life's mission to get H to the "advanced position". It isn't natural for him to be that intuitive to the needs of the family, but I am not giving up. Year by year it is getting better.

[downtoearth]

Nov 5, 2015 11:17:26 GMT -5 sfy said:

Nov 5, 2015 9:40:27 GMT -5 2curlydogs said:

The survey found something of a stress gap by race and education. College-educated parents and white parents were significantly more likely than other parents to say work-family balance is difficult.

The privilege is real. Most working class people simply have an expectation that life--and the necessary balance of life and work--will be difficult.

I agree that the study corroborates that privilege is real, but it also doesn't dismiss that we, as a society, have an issue with expectations and stress on moms.  Even the mothers without college degrees and who were non-white had over half that are still stressed by balancing work and family.  (52% of non-college educated and the same percentage of non-white moms). That's still over half the moms who are stressed. It seems like we are a high stress society.

Directly from referenced study from the NYT article: www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/11/04/raising-kids-and-running-a-household-how-working-parents-share-the-load/

There is a significant education gap in attitudes about balancing work and family, with college-educated mothers and fathers much more likely than those without a college degree to say it is difficult for them to balance the responsibilities of their job and their family. Among working mothers with a college or post-graduate degree, 70% say it is difficult for them to balance work and family life; 52% of mothers without a college degree say the same. Similarly, among working fathers, 61% of college graduates say this is difficult for them, compared with 47% of non-college graduates. These differences hold even when controlling for the fact that college-educated parents are more likely to work full time.

There is also a racial* gap in these attitudes. White parents are more likely than those who are non-white to say it is difficult for them to balance work and family.3 About six-in-ten (57%) white working fathers say this is the case, compared with 44% of non-white fathers. Among working moms, 65% of those who are white say it is difficult for them to balance the responsibilities of their job with the responsibilities of their family; about half (52%) of non-white working mothers say the same.

*Article notes that the racial gap was between those who identified as white with no Hispanic background and other non-white and Hispanic races together.

[katietornado]

A giant "fuck you" to the commenter on that article who insisted that buying a house on his income alone (allowing his wife to quit when babies came along) is the solution.

Maybe that works in a LCOL area. And it also works when a wife WANTS to stay home. But fuck me, we just bought literally the cheapest house in the safest neighborhood in a HCOL area, and it was over $400K. That's nearly impossible to afford comfortably without two salaries. And the house needed $80K of work. Right now the cheapest house listed in our neighborhood is $550K, and it's located on top of train tracks. Just fuck right off with the "living within your means" shit. Like it's really that basic.

[StrawberryBlondie]

All I want is for DH to remember that some of Baby H's clothes are hanging up in her closet. If he could help out with the cleaning put of the closet and dresser to get rid of clothes that don't fit anymore, that would be gravy.

He does a ton around the house. Probably more than I do. But my baby should not be in capri pants when its 50 degrees and she has perfectly clean pants in her closet.

[AAM2012]

Nov 5, 2015 10:54:05 GMT -5 CheeringCharm said:

Yikes. The comments section is full of "well what did you expect when you had kids?? This is why I didn't have any!!!" snarky remarks. The thing that I think these people don't fully understand is, whether people should have had them or not, the kids *are* here and it's not like you can just send them back someplace. So what are you supposed to do to make life livable? What can we do as a society to make it more doable? That's what these articles are about. It's not about blaming people for their choices.

Hell I can't give 100% to everyone and have a hard time managing it all and I don't even HAVE kids! I can't imagine throwing a child in the mix.