Expectant Parents’ Anticipated Changes in Workload After the Birth of Their First Child

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Original Research

Expectant Parents’ Anticipated Changes in Workload After the Birth of Their First Child

J Fam Pract. 2000 November;49(11):993-997

References

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Discussion

The results indicate that while men shouldered heavier workloads prenatally, women anticipated working longer hours than men at 6 months postpartum by 9 hours per week. This amounts to an 85% (48.7 hours/week) increase in workload for women, compared with a 53% (33.3 hours/week) increase for men. Although both are astounding increases, women clearly anticipated a larger expansion of work than men. Such dramatic changes in work responsibilities realized by new mothers might be at least partially responsible for the mental and physical problems that often plague women after childbirth.^8,12

The projected postpartum difference in workload between men and women was not unexpected, given the findings of Kahn¹ that on average, adult women of all ages in the United States bear heavier total workloads than men. It is noteworthy, however, that this gender difference in workloads was anticipated even by a group of couples who had had an opportunity to systematically study and preplan their postpartum work distribution.

It appears that to some degree these planned gender discrepancies in postpartum work responsibilities might be explained on the basis of traditional sex role assumptions. Women planned to take on more of the child care and household responsibilities after childbirth than men: 79 versus 52 hours per week. To help compensate for this considerable expansion of unpaid work, expectant mothers also planned to trim an average of 11.7 hours per week from their paid jobs compared with expectant fathers’ anticipated drop of 2.2 hours per week. For many women this change would likely result in part-time work. Previous studies have documented that both men and women tend to work part-time more in the childbearing years than at any other time in their adult lives, and women’s use of part-time work hours during this period of life tends to be much greater than men’s, often 2 to 3 times more.¹³ These data reinforce the need for couples to consider many complex issues in their postpartum workload planning, such as whether their dissimilar reductions in paid work will have a differential impact on their career satisfaction and opportunities and whether their joint plans for curtailing employment hours could ultimately benefit the family unit by improving child and family development.

Although expectant fathers and mothers in this study tended to follow traditional patterns in their qualitative division of various household responsibilities, they devoted similar amounts of total time to household tasks (18.2 and 20.0 hours/week, respectively). This finding contrasts with that of previous studies showing a much greater share of household work being performed by women,^1,14,15 often twice as much or more.^1,14,16 The results could be related to several factors. First, the observed prenatal work patterns may be somewhat atypical for these couples: Several women indicated that they had cut back on their housework or employment hours because of pregnancy-associated fatigue or other health problems. Second, this was a very homogenous population of employed young couples without children, in contrast to the more diverse samples (which included adults with children and more unemployed wives) used in many previous studies. Alternatively, these findings might represent a societal trend toward men and women sharing housework more equitably.

Importantly for many of these parents, the changes in work that they anticipated after giving birth likely represent the largest and most abrupt increase in work responsibilities that they will face in their adult lives. Unfortunately, it is a change for which many parents are ill-prepared. This lack of preparation is likely due, at least in part, to the paucity of information available on new parents’ actual workloads (no specific information was found in the medical, sociological, and psychological searches), society’s tendency to focus on the health needs of newborns and children more than those of their parents, and the absence of a consistent method for educating adolescents and young adults about the responsibilities of supporting and nurturing a family.

Each of these needs will be addressed. First, additional research is needed on changes in work responsibilities for new parents from more diverse populations, and we need a greater understanding of how these work responsibilities affect health and marital well-being (the goal of the ongoing randomized controlled trial). Second, we need a broader view of postpartum care, such that the physical, mental, and social needs of both the parents and newborn are considered in an ongoing manner. This is a perspective that family physicians are uniquely positioned to adopt and foster within the context of prenatal and postpartum care for the family unit. Moreover, family physicians could also be part of the solution to the third need, that of teaching would-be parents about postpartum work and family responsibilities. These efforts may pay important dividends in strengthening the fiber of the family and improving the well-being of its individual members.