BS: NO WAY!
The picture is much more complicated. And I think it's important to note that another researcher, a labor economist, looked at the very same time-use data that John Robinson did and came up with a very different statistic - that American mothers have virtually NO leisure time.
JB: I can believe that!
BS: Robinson came up with the number by looking at average work hours over time. The problem with that is, there is no "average" worker. You have white collar workers whose work hours have been on the rise - the US works among the longest and most "extreme" hours of any advanced economy. And you have blue collar workers whose hours have been falling. When you average the two, you get average falling work hours and rising leisure time. But that average worker doesn't exist. So it's a faulty construct from the start.
Robinson also fails to take into account all those stolen glances at work emails and texts, answering cell phones at all hours from the office - the feeling that you're "always on" and never really away mentally from the office. Those aren't logged technically as "work hours" and yet it creates a feeling of vigilance, of being "on call" for work, and not really mentally able to disconnect and move into love or play modes. The same is true for mothers. They are always "on call." Stress researchers say it's like walking around being constantly jet lagged. And that doesn't show up anywhere in typical time-use data that Robinson relies on.
Mothers, too, because they tend to be primarily responsible still for kids and home, carry a heavier mental burden, trying to keep track of everything - and with so many moving parts, and the working memory able to really only keep seven pieces of information at one time in mind, that can feel mentally exhausting and fragmenting. For women, other studies have found that they not only "ruminate" more, going over and over the details of life, but that trying to keep everything in mind actually "contaminates" their time. I love that term. It really resonated with me.
JB: Me too - very apt.
BS: What it means is - you can be in a moment that would LOOK from the outside like leisure, but your thoughts are racing, you're anxious and worried about stuff, and you're everywhere and nowhere at the same time. That's why, I think, for women especially, it can feel like you're crashing through a busy day, and you get to the end of it, and you almost feel like you haven't even lived it - like, where did the day go?
The other thing that Robinson's data doesn't take into account is that women's time has always been more fragmented than men's time. It tends to be interrupted. So any "leisure" has always been experienced in shorter, disjointed bits of time - 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there. And that's hardly enough time to be able to sink into FLOW - that peak human experience where you get so wrapped up in what you're doing you lose track of time. There are a couple other key points when it comes to leisure time and women: From leisure research, we know that true leisure requires to things: choice and control over the activity and time - which many time-starved people, women especially, feel they don't have. And studies have found that women, across the globe, feel like they don't DESERVE leisure time, they have to earn it. So even when a small window of time may open up in your day, the tendency is to grab the To Do list and get on to the next thing, rather than think through what you'd really like, or what would make you feel refreshed.
I often say, once I learned more about the history of women's time, that time is a feminist issue. If you wonder why there aren't more great paintings by women in our art museums or novels in our libraries, it's not that women didn't have the ideas or the talent, they didn't have the time.
So - let me talk about what's really going on with mothers and leisure in three parts. First, the what, then the why, then the what to do about it.
THE WHAT: American mothers spend among the most time with their children of any parent in any advanced country, according to international time-use data. And the time mothers spend with their children has been climbing steadily since the 1970s. So much so, in fact, that another study found that working mothers today spend AS MUCH or MORE time with their children than did mothers in the 1960s and 70s who stayed home (or worked in the home for no pay, as I like to call it - caregiving is good and important work!)
What?! You may be saying. How is that even possible? That was certainly my first reaction. I was so soaked with guilt as a working mother, convinced I wasn't spending enough time with my kids, or rushed and distracted when I was. But the data shows that mothers today have given up time for sleep, time for personal care, time with other adults and with their spouses or partners and that they spend virtually every ounce of their leisure time WITH their children. So they've given up time for themselves. That's how they've done it.
THE WHY: Why? Why spend even more time with kids - and more HIGH QUALITY TIME reading, interacting, and talking, at a time when most mothers work? That's crazy making.
A couple reasons: The standards for what it takes to be considered a "good mother" have never been higher, sociologists who study trends say. Guilt is powerful - for both working and at-home moms.
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