Sarah Howlett always equated peace with a clean space. But during the height of the pandemic, the freelance journalist and mother of 8-year-old twins found it impossible.
With her kids at home, Howlett found herself cooking additional meals for the family, supervising their Google Meet classes, doing “tons more laundry” and “more gross bathroom cleaning.” These responsibilities fell to her in exchange for her husband taking the lead on homework, a task she wanted to stay far away from.
Since he was working full time and had less flexibility than she did, it made sense for her to take on this work, said Howlett, who lives in Boulder, Colo. Even though her husband would relieve her when he could, doing the dishes and putting laundry away for example, it was still overwhelming.
“When they’re here, they’re busy and messy and having fun and changing clothes. It kind of never stops,” she said. “You’re cleaning up the craft project to put dinner on the same table.”
With less energy to put toward her writing and being an attentive partner, Howlett struggled with the feeling that she was failing — at everything. It was familiar to her friends who were also moms.
“I just had sad days where I just felt like everything was falling apart,” she said.
A study from the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. finds that, far from creating more balance in the home, the pandemic caused an increase in working moms’ housework and caregiving responsibilities. According to the report, moms were more than three times as likely as fathers to take on most of the domestic labor during the pandemic, and were 1.5 times more likely than working dads to spend an additional three hours or more on housework and child care each day.
