In findings released yesterday an Australian University has confirmed that Australian working mothers are doing more than their fair share of the work in and outside of the home. Women's movement during their pregnancy was monitored. Adam Bennett writes, 'at three months, women were spending 71 hours a week on paid and unpaid work, predominately looking after the new child and housework, the survey found. And by the time the child reached nine months, the average had risen to 75 hours a week of paid and unpaid work, with 64 of those devoted to childcare and housework,' in his article Working Mums Doing the Bulk of Child Rearing.
So why are women taking on this extra work? These women are conducting work outside of the home as well, so one would presume that these women are operating in a dual income/parent family - as opposed to being a 'stay at home mom' (this is not saying that stay at mom's should do all of the household work anyway'. Gender equality has gone out of this 'issues' window. Women are bearing more of the brunt of household and economic duties. Where are all the men in all of this? Are they working longer hours? Working mothers need to take a stand with this issue, they should not be doing all of the work in a dual parent household. Otherwise this sadly may become an issue of duel rather than dual parenting.
