By Robert Preidt
HealthDay Reporter
TUESDAY, Oct. 11, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Parenting is more stressful for moms than fathers, a brand new study suggests.
“It's not that mothers are as stressed with their children, but they are more stressed compared to fathers,” said study co-author Kelly Musick. She is an associate professor of policy evaluation and management at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY
The likely reason: Mothers spend more time with their children while doing tedious tasks like cooking, cleansing and childcare, while fathers spend more playtime and leisure time with their children, in response to the researchers. The results come from surveys of greater than 12,000 American parents in 2010, 2012 and 2013.
Mothers are also more more likely to be single parents, have more sleep problems and fewer free time, the researchers said. All are related to lower well-being.
“Mothers do different things with their children than fathers do, things that we know aren't as fun. Playing with their children is a particularly pleasant experience for parents. And fathers play more as a percentage of total time.” “They spend time with their children,” Musick said in a Cornell news release.
In the study, researchers examined parents' reports of how they felt and what they did at three random times of day. Parents rated how happy, sad, stressed and tired they felt and how meaningful the activity was to them.
The research team then compared how parents felt about activities with their children with how they felt about doing the same activities without their children.
Mothers may take on more everyday parenting tasks because society expects them to, Musick suggested.
“As a sociologist, I wish that as a society we could give up some of the assumptions and constraints that we place on mother and father roles. “Mom and dad interact within a social framework that they have no control over to a large extent,” she said.
Although couples can attempt to work together to vary their parenting habits, Musick said that's not the answer.
“The solution is for us to rethink together what we expect from fathers and from mothers,” she said.
The study was recently published within the journal American Sociological Review.