Parents do £70k of unpaid work in the home

[1Wanda1]

From an article in The Times today (have pasted a few bits as most people won't be able to read the article if I link it. This might be of interest to the many MNers whose partners seem to think they sit around doing nothing all day!

A separate study found British parents undertake £70,768 of unpaid work a year around the house and running around for the children.

It found that the average parent spends more than 100 hours a week juggling household tasks, from cooking and cleaning to ferrying children around and helping with their homework.

Parents were spending 29 hours a week cooking, preparing and serving food and drinks, ten hours playing with the children, the same amount of time driving on the school run, to activities, clubs and playdates, and nine hours giving advice.

Why have you concluded that the parents doing all the unpaid work aren't also working?

Why do you think that's my conclusion? I didn't say SAHPs. I work myself in a demanding job (senior lawyer) and also easily do 100 hours of cooking, washing, ferrying children around, etc. per week.

Yes. We both work full time so our child is ignored, never goes to clubs or activities, isn't fed and lives in filth.

Isn’t it just living rather than ‘unpaid work’

Why is looking after your children classed as work ? Surely its part of parenting 🤷‍♀️

I think the premise of the article is that if you had to outsource those tasks to nannies, housekeepers, gardeners, taxi drivers etc, that would be the cost.

Just an interesting conversation point given many of the threads I read on Mumsnet, I thought. Apologies. I'll get my coat!

I assumed it because you wrote this: This might be of interest to the many MNers whose partners seem to think they sit around doing nothing all day!

If you weren't talking about SAHPs, what does that line mean?

Obviously as you yourself are a senior lawyer in a demanding job, no one is going to be thinking you're sitting around doing nothing all day.

Thanks OP, this is interesting, I always thought as much although hard to put a dollar figure on it (although I guess you could if you extrapolate to nanny, housekeeper, cook, driver etc).

9 hours of advice a week? Do they mean talking to your kids? Surely if you have kids you know you’re going to have to do all this stuff. It’s just part of life with kids and you choose that life when you have them. Even people without kids do hours of admin and cooking etc a week. That’s just life in general.

Unfortunately it's not called work when it's your own house/ kids

It's called life

Luckily mine can empty the dishwasher these days

Back to the Wages for Housework movement , anyone?

Anyway here's the article. www.thetimes.co.uk/article/addcaa12-c9a5-11ed-abc4-cc01ae8816d9?shareToken=96e3215392dd8953877221880a30b63a

It's kind of odd as it references two different surveys about two different things. You can fall out with family members you don't live with. I'd say from mn that most family arguments are with wider family members - parents and siblings and ILs rather than the ones you live with.

It’s a little bit misleading though. Everybody spends time cooking and cleaning regardless of whether they have kids or not, and for people without kids I doubt many would be trying to quantify it as unpaid work. It’s just part of life.
But it does help us to consider people who end up in any sort of caring role, often without any choice.

Isn’t the premise on which being paid rests that you are providing a service or producing something that someone else wants? Looking after your own children, making your own bed and cooking your own dinner doesn’t come under that category at all, does it?

Those figures are a nonsense. 14 hours a day doing household tasks! When do people work and sleep? Anyone who spends that much time householding is doing it wrong!

@Clymene I work 4 days a week. On the mornings of my "day off", DW usually says "enjoy your day off". I spend the "day off" on the go all day shopping, cooking and doing laundry for the family, and taking DD to her activities. There is no part of the day when I sit down and read, or exercise, or do anything at all for myself.

I think that's most parents lives juggling work and small children. It's a choice to have kids though isn't it?

It gets easier as they get older.

Thanks for this OP.
I think is really good for everyone to see the value of our work in the home.
It's not "just life". It's bloody hard work. And we do it. And we're brilliant.

That sounds a bit crap. Did you plan that working four days means you do the bulk of the wifework? Do you get equal amounts of free time?

So if you didn’t have children, you wouldn’t spend any time doing household work?

I feel lucky to be able to work 4 days and have that day to get stuff done, because otherwise the weekends would be so stressful. But it does grate a bit dealing with the presumption that because I'm not "working" (though I do also often end up having to do bits of work on that day too), I'm having a day of leisure.

Everyone spends time cooking, cleaning and running errands to keep things afloat in the rest of their life outside of work, regardless of whether they have kids.

Quantifying it with a cost for working hours is a weird thing to do. It's just part of life.

I remember when the kids were small posting to a feminist page on facebook:
"My day starts at 6 when I put the toddler on the potty and ends at 9 when I sweep the kitchen floor. Is this normal?"
And everyone just going: "Oh yeah, that's a light day. My days are much longer"
There was part of me that was just incredulous we have to work so hard.
My kids are older now so it's eased off a bit, thank god.

I don’t why this is getting to so many dismissive comments, unpaid work in the home is so important to recognise and it still plays such a massive part in our unequal society. For example this week I have done presents for birthdays, parents evening, cleaning, gardening, washing and ironing and cook 3/5 days, my partner has cooked 2/5 days. I’ve doubled up on my life insurance in recognition of how much help he would need if he died whereas he left me a few years ago and i barely noticed. At the least he would need a cleaner, gardeners and probably would live off takeaway.

100 / 7 = 14.2 hours per day.

You work 4x days a week. So let’s say 30 hours.

Another 4.3 hours per day across 7.

So 18.5 hours per day every day of the week?

So you get up at 4:30am every day, and go to bed at 11pm. SEVEN DAYS A WEEK?