8 Reasons Being A Working Mom Is Still Harder Than Being A Working Dad

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, moms are doing a disproportionate amount of household chores. In 2016, on an average day, 85 percent of women did household activities such as "housework, cooking, lawn care, or financial and other household management," compared to 69 percent of men. Furthermore, 49 percent of women did laundry and cleaning versus 19 percent of men, and 42 percent of men did food preparation or cleanup, compared with 68 percent of women. These statistics don't lie, people; women are still doing the bulk of household chores while also working full-time outside the house.

Every month I receive an email from my daughter's school asking for volunteers. When I was home on maternity leave with my son I was able to come read to the class or help plan a Halloween bash, but now that I work full-time, volunteering at my daughter's school is simply out of the questions. Nevertheless, moms all over the country are being bombarded with volunteer requests from their kids' schools and moms are usually the main attendees. Furthermore, parent-teacher conferences are usually attended mainly by mothers and a quick Google search will result in hundreds of thousands of articles with titles similar to "A Busy Mom's Guide To Volunteering At School."

Overall, moms are still primarily responsible for maintaining their kids' health and wellness. In fact, a study from The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation found that "women are 10 times more likely than men to take time off to stay home with their sick children." The study also found that mothers are five times more likely to take their sick kids to doctors appointments.

So yes, us moms are still keeping track of appointments, scheduling sick visits, and making sure our kids see the dentist every six months, all while simultaneously dialing into conference calls, heading company-wide meetings, and planning brainstorming sessions.

According to The Economist, pregnant women are perceived as “less authoritative and more irrational, regardless of their actual performance" and mothers are seen as "less committed to work than non-mothers." Mothers are often penalized for the same family commitments fathers are praised for. This double-standard is often referred to as a “motherhood penalty” and “fatherhood bonus."

Furthermore, since women still make less than men, a lot of the inequality is based on financially-based decisions. A 2015 study by Catalyst found that in "dual-earner couples, 71.8 percent of husbands outearned their wives." If the husband makes more than his wife, she is usually the one left taking more time off in order to take care of their kids and not risk the higher household income. Yet, one of the reasons women make less than men is because they take off more often, so it really is a never-ending cycle of gender-based inequality.

While I spend the weekends doing laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping, and catching up on every other errand I don't time time to do during the week, you can usually find my husband taking the kids out to a park, riding bikes with them, and doing whatever other fun activity that keeps them occupied. So while I have to do all of the chores, he gets to actually enjoy time with our kids.

According to the Bureau Labor of Statistics, on an average day women spent 1.1 hours providing physical care to their children children while men spent only 26 minutes. A recent study by a team of researchers from Cornell University, The University of Minnesota, and Minnesota Population Center concluded that "mothers still do more of the 'work' and less of the 'fun' parenting tasks."

I am teacher and taking days off from work is nearly impossible, so when the kids are sick it's up to my husband to figure out how to work from home. When I was working in the corporate world, however, I was responsible for taking care of our sick children. My husband's career seemed more demanding at the time, so I'd use my personal days to stay home with the kids.

Mothers are mainly in charge of everyone's schedule. They handle the family calendar and all of the children's activities. In other words, mothers do the “worry work” of parenting, according to The New York Times. In fact, sociological studies confirm that "mothers draft the to-do lists while fathers pick and choose among the items." While dads may do the drop-off at an activity, it's usually the moms who make sure everyone's schedules coordinate. While a dad may coach a little league team, the moms usually do all of the background work to make sure the existence of team is even possible. Moms worry, moms multitask, and moms make sure everything runs smoothly.

Let's be honest here, today's mothers are under an increased amount of pressure to be perfect. Our child-centered society dictates that in order to raise successful children, parenting should be "guided by expert advice and costly in terms of time, money and emotional investment." Therefore, much of the pressure is placed on the mothers since they are still in charge of much of parenting. While childless couples are generally no longer succumbing to traditional gender roles at home, a baby pushes couples further into a gender divide. According to Pew Research, a baby increases a mother’s total workload by 21 hours per week, while the father's workload is increased by only 12.5 hours per week. That is a staggering 70 percent increase in workload for women compared to men.

Plus, has anyone ever heard of dads being judged about anything child-related except for maybe how much work they don't put into parenting? And even that often gets excused by other factors. Moms, on the other hand, are pitted against one another and are judged for every single thing they do and don't do.