Mums, it seems, just want to have fun. Fed up with bearing the lioness’s share of household tasks and parenting responsibilities, most women with dependent children say in a survey that what they really, really want for Mother’s Day is the chance to rebel.
Perhaps that is not so surprising. The study shows that women would far rather be rule-breakers than house-keepers and resent the fact that dads get to play the “fun” parent role far more than they do.
In a survey conducted by advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi for the parenting website Mumsnet, mothers were asked to define their roles and to detail how much time they spent in each.
Mumsnet users and panels involving 1,800 parents came up with eight defined categories to cover the jobs involved in parenting – carer, safehouse, partner in crime, friend, hero, coach, fan and rule-breaker.
The overwhelming result was that mothers say they do not get to spend as much time in the fun roles as the men and are unhappy about that, with 74% stating they want to carve out more time as a partner in crime, and 60% wanting to spend more time as a rule-breaker. Currently only 8% of mothers’ time is spent as partner in crime and only 1% breaking the rules. But with 58% of mums saying that they provide all eight of the emotional roles entirely on their own in their household, they just don’t have the time for the fun side.
The research also recorded that of all the mothers surveyed – those who work outside the home and those who stay at home with their children – 91% said they take the main responsibility for parenting in their household.
Among those working full-time, 89% of mothers also said they take the main responsibility for their children every day, while that rose to 98% of stay-at-home mothers .
But all of them said they wished they had more time to break the rules, hang the housework, and have spontaneous, anarchic fun with their kids.
At the moment, dads’ biggest involvement is in the emotional roles of rule-breaker – 58% of women said their children’s father currently played this role – and partner in crime (51%), while mothers were still mostly involved in providing the carer (97%), safehouse (93%) and hero (93%) roles.
Among the mums, 97% said they provided the carer role, but only 27% said that the children’s dad spent any time in this role at all. Rule-breaker is the emotional role that mothers occupy the least.
Previous studies have shown that mothers feel their choice over how much time they spend with children has been removed.
About 88% of mothers who work full-time would rather work less, either part-time or not at all, in order to see more of their children but that choice has more or less been eradicated.
The latest Mumsnet survey has been carried out ahead of Mumstock, a conference in London this week which has been designed to explain modern parental roles to businesses seeking to market to mothers.
Richard Huntington, the chief strategy officer of Saatchi & Saatchi, said: “Advertisers are still stuck in the rut of seeing mums in the role of cook, cleaner and nurse – while dad has fun playing outside and getting messy with his kids.”
He added: “While it’s true that most mothers still take on more parental responsibility than their partners, there is far more to their relationship with their children than most advertising recognises.
“We need to focus more on the fun and silliness of motherhood, and less on the drudgery, if we are to reflect the reality of modern mothers’ aspirations.”
Justine Roberts, the founder of Mumsnet, which is celebrating its 15th anniversary this month, said it was clear many mothers harbour a desire just to be able to kick back against the drudgery and be more fun.
“Nobody becomes a mother so that she can learn to produce the ultimate tuna pasta bake,” said Roberts. “For all the hard graft that it entails, parenthood is an emotional journey and mums and dads are playing all sorts of different roles in their children’s lives, from carer to playmate to role model.
“It’s clear, though, from our research, that mums would like the dads to do a bit more of the rule-making so mums can do more of the rule-breaking.”
