Female bosses carry child care burden — survey

Allison Linn Senior writer • Profile • E-mail

Most working parents know the drill well — you’re at the office, trying to finish a report for your boss, prepare a presentation for your client or just get through your e-mail inbox, when the phone rings.

It’s your child’s school, and suddenly you need to drop everything to deal with an unexpected emergency.

Chances are, if you’re a woman, that’s a more common scenario than if you’re a man.

An Elle/MSNBC.com survey of more than 60,000 people found that about 15 percent of people thought their female bosses’ child care responsibilities interfered with their ability to do their job. Only about half that many — or 7 percent — thought child care duties were interfering with their male bosses’ workday.

The Work & Power survey didn’t ask how many respondents’ bosses had children, which the survey’s creators said could make it difficult to assess the overall scope of the issue.

Still, the fact that female bosses were more than twice as likely to be seen as having family obligations interfere with work tasks wasn’t surprising to experts. They say women still bear the brunt of child care duties, even in families where both parents work.

“Men are taking on more,” said Kim Elsesser, a research scholar with the Center for the Study of Women at the University of California, Los Angeles, who helped with the study. “It’s still primarily the women who do a lot of the work, though.”

Maintaining that balance can be particularly tough on working women because, despite some changes over the last few years, it remains difficult to fit things like parent/teacher conferences and children’s doctor’s appointments in amid work obligations.

“The culture of work is still not very sympathetic to working parents,” said Rosanna Hertz,  a professor of sociology at Wellesley College and author of “Single By Chance, Mothers By Choice.”

Hertz, who was not involved in the study, said female bosses who are parents can have it both easier and harder than their non-management counterparts. For example, a female boss may have more flexibility to leave in the middle of the day, or more power to negotiate a family-friendly workday for herself.

But if she does either of those things, she also may risk creating tension with her employees if they are not granted the same flexibility. That’s a particularly tough thing to balance in jobs such as nursing, where workers must be there in case of an emergency.

“It’s a kind of ‘do as (I) say, not as I do’ thing,” Hertz said.

Janet Lever, a professor of sociology at California State University in Los Angeles who worked on the study, said she was actually surprised that the percentage of workers who thought their bosses were missing work for parenting duties was so low.

But, she said, one factor leading to those lower numbers could be that some women have decided not to have children in order to focus all their energy on becoming the boss. Other women may have elected not to take on management duties while they have young children.

Lever also thought the fact that 7 percent of male bosses were perceived to have some child care responsibilities could be seen as evidence that men — while still very rarely primarily responsible for child care — are increasing their parenting duties.

“To me, the 7 percent is actually good news,” she said.

But Hertz said she continues to see a double standard in how women and men are perceived when they do miss work because of a child care need.

“Men are applauded for fatherhood actions, and women are seen as not committed to the organization,” she said.

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