Mothers in Lockdown Due to COVID-19 in Mexico: Does Having a Paid Job Make a Difference?

Abstract

Worldwide lockdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic had one thing in common between different countries: they highly affected family life in different ways. However, the way they affected women with young children has not been well studied. With the purpose of evaluating the experience of lockdown in Mexico in mothers with and without a paid job carried out at home, 220 Mexican women between 24 and 55 years of age, with one or more children under 15 years of age and who lived with their partner, answered online questionnaires. The results show that, although most of the domestic tasks were carried out by the mothers, the partners of those who had a paid job significantly collaborated more with them. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) were frequently used in both groups, but mothers working from home used them to a greater extent. For these mothers, work overload and confinement were among the main problems caused by the lockdown measures, while the economic situation was the main issue for the group with no paid jobs. Both groups considered family coexistence and the lack of the need to hurry as the advantages of lockdown. To face it, the participants mainly carried out coexistence and entertainment activities. To explain these differences between mothers with and without teleworking, new studies will need to be carried out.

Perception of the Effects of Working from Home on Isolation and Stress by Spanish Workers during COVID-19 Pandemic

“…This fact is also in accordance with the nonsignificant impact of these factors on STRESS and reinforces our conjecture about a balanced between men and women in performing household tasks. Our results also contradict reports such as Calleja and Mota (2022) that point out that a woman with children in care is a profile that experiences stress and isolation.…”

“…Neither gender nor having a child in care presents a significant impact on feelings of stress. This result contradicts several reports, such as those by Beckel and Fisher (2022), Calleja and Mota (2022), Pataki-Bittó and Kun (2022) and de Sousa et al (2022), regarding the link between being female and mental issues. Macciotta et al (2022), Heiden et al (2021), Mendonça et al (2022), Pataki-Bittó and Kun (2022), Maillot et al (2022) and Niu et al (2021) found a significant relationship between having children to care for and stress.…”

“…Many studies have reported that gender is a relevant variable to explain positive and negative feelings and psychological effects such as stress and isolation produced by home teleworking (Song and Gao 2020;Mendonça et al 2022). Usually, women perceive worse effects from WFH because they still play a more prominent role than men do in household duties (Beckel and Fisher 2022;Kohont and Ignjatović 2022) and in the care of children (Calleja and Mota 2022;Pataki-Bittó and Kun 2022;Sutarto et al 2021) and, in general, of dependent persons (Beckel and Fisher 2022;de Sousa et al 2022). These reasons explain why they are usually more sensitive to work-from-home conflicts (Magnier-Watanabe et al 2022;Macciotta et al 2022).…”

Analysis of Fatigue Among Nurse Educators in Brazilian Public Universities During the Covid-19 Pandemic

“…Parents needed to care for their children as kindergarten and elementary schools were closed during the pandemic. As a result, in addition to their daily work routine, educators needed to care for and play with their children while educating them, 23 paying attention to their online classes and helping them with school assignments and tests 24 .…”

“…Studies addressing women and men indicate that men are much more involved with housework and childcare than three or four years ago. However, women still carry a more significant burden of housework and childcare [23][24] .…”