"When husbands spend more time on household chores they do not necessarily reduce the burden on wives, because it is usually in jobs that the two do together." Javier García Manglano, a researcher at the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra, summarized one of the conclusions from an article he published together with Alexandra Killewald of Harvard University.

The article addresses the consequences of paternity in the use of time, work and wages of more than 1,400 American couples who had their first child between 1984 and 2013. The article was one of the five finalists for the 2017 Kanter Prize, an international award granted by Purdue University’s Center for Families and Boston College’s Center for Work and Family. This year’s finalists were selected from 2,500 papers published in 65 English-language journals from around the world.

The study reveals that, after motherhood, the wife reduces her professional dedication by 10 hours a week and increases homework by 6 hours (not counting the time dedicated to the care of the baby). In addition, her salary sees a 13% reduction. In contrast, the change that most men experience after paternity is much lower: their dedication to domestic chores goes up an hour per week and their professional dedication and salary remain constant.

Double shift: Working at home and in the office

According to the researchers, to date, the distribution of domestic tasks has been explained with the theory of specialization, which points to each member focusing on the function for which they have a comparative advantage: men traditionally focus on making money, and women on the care of the home.

In their study, García Manglano and Killewald propose a new concept, that of "tethered autonomy." "It can be said that women are autonomous because there is great variability in their responses to motherhood: some hardly reduce their professional dedication, while others reduce it to a greater extent; surprisingly, this does not depend on what their partner does," García Manglano explained.

"The husband," he adds, "hardly changes his dedication upon becoming a father, and when he collaborates, he does so mostly with, not instead of, the woman. That is why the autonomy of mothers is tethered, conditioned by lack of support from the father."

The ICS researcher warns that, "most mothers want to combine work and family, but sometimes the burden is too great. When they try to ‘have it all’ and strive for maternity not to affect their work, they fall into what is called the double shift, which is like having two jobs: a profession during the day and the care of children when returning home.”

"The result is the opposite of what was intended: a strong feeling of not having it all, which produces remarkable stress," he emphasizes. To avoid this, he suggests that, "it is important for men to focus their contributions in the home on tasks that would actually relieve women’s burden."