Jerry Jacobs and Allison Dunatchik were featured in a Penn Today article about their research on parenting and the gender division of labor during the COVID 19 pandemic. Their study, recently published in Gender & Society, finds that among couples with children, the consequences of increased domestic workloads resulting from the loss of in-person schooling and childcare depend not just on individuals’ own work circumstances but on their partners’ as well. Among couples where both parents worked from home, mothers and fathers reported similar increases in childcare and housework time during the pandemic. However, when only mothers worked from home or where neither parent worked remotely, mothers largely picked up the slack, intensifying existing gender disparities.
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