Parenthood isn't easy for anyone; there's no question about that.
And all parents sometimes wish they could spend a bit more time alone.
But, it also seems that no matter how progressive our society becomes, gender norms play a role in the division of parenting labour.
Overall, moms seem to be doing more of the heavy lifting in heterosexual nuclear families, in other words.
A recent Mount Royal University (MRU) study by three researchers found that mothers desire more time alone than fathers.
The researchers used Statistics Canada's Time Use Survey data to analyze gender differences in desired alone time and how these differences are impacted by the gender gap in time spent parenting for Canadian moms and dads.
The parents in the study had at least one child under five years old.
Over half of mothers reported a desire for more alone time, while about one-third of fathers said the same.
For the moms, the researchers found that household chores, time with children, and market work were predictive of self-reporting desired alone time.
The researchers say in the study’s abstract that "the amount and higher level of responsibilities and stress faced by mothers parenting young children lead to personal isolation resulting in a desire to spend time alone. Fathers who play a less central role in domestic work have more time and energy to engage in their jobs and desire less alone time."
The more time moms spend parenting and working in the house, the more they want some alone time.
"Since the 1960s, with changes in childcare policies, more fathers started to take parental leave and contribute to the caring for children. Nevertheless, there is still a significant gap in childcare among Canadian parents," said professor of sociology at MRU, Tom Buchanan, who undertook this study with Anupam Das, an MRU economist, alongside Adian McFarlane, an associate professor of economics at King's University College, Western University.
The team's research into the gender gap has been going on for about a decade or more, and the inequality stubbornly continues, said Buchanan, who is himself a married father of three.
"We have basically been looking at this parenting gap in childcare for a long time, and it's very persistent," he said.
Buchanan also noted there are exceptions to the rule, and the study results don't suggest parents don't want to be with their children.
"We're not trying to say that these mothers or fathers in the study don't want to parent or want to be away from their kids. It's just that we see time alone as a resource—a great resource that makes parenting more fulfilling and better actually," he said.
So what?
It is a tale as old as time that moms take on more of the load and likely get less downtime than their partners, so what is the consequence of that?
"A deficiency of alone time among parents, particularly mothers, can impact their well-being, labour market productivity, and, by extension, economic prosperity in the long run," said Das, in an MRU news release about the study.
Mother's role?
Buchanan acknowledged that sometimes mothers can become "gatekeepers" when it comes to household chores or childcare, thus taking on more of the responsibility, even when the father is willing and able to contribute.
He used the anecdote of the dad loading the dishwasher, but the mom coming in to say it wasn't done the right way.
And there can be differences in priorities or standards, for example in how clean the house needs to be kept.
But even accounting for these factors, and for the increased involvement of mothers in infant care due to breastfeeding, the overall increased load on moms is still not accounted for.
"It doesn't fully explain the inequality," Buchanan said. "However, we probably do need to think about those things a little bit."
What about same-sex couples?
Buchanan said the researchers didn’t have a lot of data on same-sex relationships and how parental roles play out.
"We would like to do more of that," he said.
What could help?
Buchanan said talking about how their roles will play out once a child is born could help with some of the inequality couples face.
“[Couples] don't actually sit down and talk about this is what we're going to do here. This is what we are going to do there. It just kind of happens. And I think mothers in studies historically have been like, 'What the heck happened? I thought we were progressive,'" he said.
Intentionality is a key to changing the roles we play as parents.
"Lots of intentionality. Let's sit down," he said.
Conversations can help sort out the expectations and priorities of each parent.
Policy changes
Buchanan said that while new dads may have access to paternal leave, research by his colleagues has shown that many men don't use it; so, the researchers suggest a policy change that may make things more equitable would be to make parental leave mandatory in the workplace.
He said cultural stereotypes may be coming into play where men feel they are not seen as being committed to their jobs if they take the leave, thus they fear taking it will hurt their career trajectory. At the same time, women are seen as the ones who will take leave when a child is born and then take care of things at home while dad continues working.
Taking that choice out of the employees’ hands would mean more dads starting out spending time with their kids.
The result of more equity at work and at home would be a better society, Buchanan said.
"Equality is always better for society because everybody has equal access to resources," he said.
"If mothers and fathers were equally engaged in those roles of parenting and employment, then I think organizations would benefit because they would have the best employees in the best positions without having this bias factor impacting women employees."
What is next?
"We are always looking for ways to explain how inequities in families impact different aspects of life," Das said. "We would like to explore how different configurations of families and parenting arrangements may offer new insights in this area. More generally, one continual contribution of our research is to shed light on the persistent inequities mothers face."
Buchanan said that the researchers would dig into soon-to-be-dropped Statistics Canada data to look more fully at the mental load, or cognitive labour, carried by moms versus dads.
