The Silent Theft Of Women’s Time — 'Why Isn’t Every Mother Out Rioting In The Streets?'

Why isn’t every mother out rioting in the streets? 

This was a question I asked more than once during my early years of motherhood. I asked it when I added my name to the 10th waiting list for a daycare I couldn’t afford. I asked it when my coworkers whispered behind my back about taking time out of the workday to pump. I asked it when my husband slept in on Saturdays like he didn’t have a care in the world.

I knew the answer, of course. We weren’t out rioting in the streets because we didn’t have the time. Should we pencil in rioting between evening bath routines? Before dinner prep? After Saturday storytime at the library, but before the weekly grocery shopping?

How we exploit women’s time — especially mothers

Prostock-studio / Shutterstock

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It’s not just mothers who are short on time. No matter our gender or parental status, capitalism profits from our time and tries its best to take as much of it as possible. 

Despite all the amazing time-saving technology we now have at our disposal, and all the various “revolutions” we crow on, and on about, business leaders remain stubbornly attached to the minimum viable 40-hour workweek, demanding that at least half our waking hours at least five days a week be spent in the pursuit of profitability. Not that most of us are personally profiting much, but at least we can pay the bills.

Now, even in our so-called “leisure time,” we are often fielding work demands because our time-saving technology has granted us the ability to be reachable at any hour of the day. This same time-saving technology also grants us the ability to download up to nine million apps, many of which have built their revenue models around dopamine-inducing tactics specifically designed to keep us clicking, streaming, and scrolling.

And speaking of nine million apps, it’s not just digital products that are flooding the marketplace. The engines of capitalism keep us consuming with constant messages of more, more, more. Decades ago, shopping for toothpaste entailed choosing between one or maybe two dozen options. 

Today, we find ourselves faced with over 200. Decades ago, clothes and shoes were expensive; buying them was a Big Deal. Today, we buy more abundantly because globalization has made things cheap, and we also buy more often because nothing is made to last.

In short, capitalism is exploiting our time for profit, whether we’re engaging in leisure or engaging in paid work. This excellent paper from economist and sociology professor Juliet B. Schor, which examines work and leisure before the advent of modern capitalism, puts it this way:

One of capitalism’s most durable myths is that it has reduced human toil. This myth is typically defended by a comparison of the modern forty-hour week with its seventy- or eighty-hour counterpart in the nineteenth century. The implicit  —  but rarely articulated  —  assumption is that the eighty-hour standard has prevailed for centuries. The comparison conjures up the dreary life of medieval peasants, toiling steadily from dawn to dusk. We are asked to imagine the journeyman artisan in a cold, damp garret, rising even before the sun, laboring by candlelight late into the night.

These images are backward projections of modern work patterns. And they are false. Before capitalism, most people did not work very long hours at all. The tempo of life was slow, even leisurely; the pace of work relaxed. Our ancestors may not have been rich, but they had an abundance of leisure. When capitalism raised their incomes, it also took away their time.

In today’s world, we often think in terms of paid work vs. leisure, or what many of us refer to as work/life balance. But this is, and has long been, a false binary. That’s because life requires a lot of labor that isn’t paid. And it is in the layering of unpaid labor that the demands on our time become untenable.

I fancied myself a busy person before having children. I’d always been a high achiever in school and had learned how to parcel out my time in order to attain Maximum Productivity.

After having children, I found that there wasn’t so much as a minute of the day that belonged to me. 

During those intensive early years of parenting, even when I managed to carve out 30 minutes to go running, I did it with a stroller in tow.  Every morning, the alarm ripped me from a sleep that had already been interrupted multiple times throughout the course of the night. Every day, I woke up, exercised, got my kids ready, took them to school/daycare, commuted downtown, worked the minimum viable 8.5 hours, picked up my kids from school/daycare, made dinner, ate dinner, got the kids to bed, smoked, and passed out.

Rinse and repeat. The weekends were a blur of chores, playdates, errands, and customer service calls. They were more relentless than the weekdays, and by the time Monday rolled around, I often breathed a sigh of relief.

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There is an inconvenient truth that capitalism fails to account for: Care work is not directly profitable, but without this labor, the engines of capitalism would grind to a screeching halt. That’s because in order for laborers to feed these engines, someone has to be tending to our children, our elders, and anyone else who requires care.

Capitalism’s answer, of course, is to pay as little as possible for care work when we have to and nothing at all if we can. In order to pull this off, capitalism positions care work as unskilled labor more naturally suited to women, whether or not women also engage in paid labor. The end result? We devalue the vital work of caregiving, and we devalue women’s time.

Studies show that men consistently enjoy more leisure time, even men with wives who earn the same amount as they do at their paid jobs. And whether or not women have children, time use data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that women are more likely to engage in unpaid elder care and more likely to care for multiple adults at a time.

Globally, women engage in three to six hours a day of unpaid labor, compared to 0.5 to two hours spent by men. 

The above statistic is from the University of Melbourne, and according to the World Economic Forum, when both paid and unpaid labor are taken into account, women work an hour longer than men per day.

Studies and reports like these help identify broad trends, but the gender discrepancies are actually wider in practice. That’s because they fail to take into account the mental and emotional labor that care work entails — labor that we can’t see or ever clock out of. It’s also because they are based on self-reported estimates. Since men tend to receive disproportionate social praise for participating in any caretaking duties at all (see Clint Smith’s excellent poem, Gold Stars, about this phenomenon), they also tend to overestimate their involvement.

Research conducted at Ohio State University revealed this phenomenon, comparing survey data collected from dual-earning egalitarian heterosexual couples to time diaries following the birth of their first child. According to Pacific Standard, “The time diaries, which are considered a more accurate metric of categorizing time spent on an activity, told a different story. Men had actually dropped five hours per week of housework [after their child was born], but they believed that they had added 15.”

Men, as a whole, are astonishingly apathetic about these disparities. If my male-hating readers get their hands on this story, I can already anticipate every comment they will make — likely some variation of one or more of the following:

• The higher standards argument: Women have higher standards when it comes to caretaking and domestic labor, and their high standards are not my problem.
• The “I do yardwork” argument: I do the grueling stuff, like yardwork, and therefore my wife should never complain.
• The maternal gatekeeping argument: My wife likes being in charge. I want to help more, but I’ve stopped trying because my wife just does it over anyway.
• The natural caregiver argument: Women are just better at these things. They are natural caregivers so it makes sense for them to do more.
• The martyr argument: Women just like martyring themselves. If you’re going to be a martyr, don’t complain about it.
• The “I do more than my dad did” argument: Are you really going to whine because you have to make your husband a list? You should be grateful he helps out at all. My father didn’t do anything around the house.
• The “it’s all in your head” argument: Invisible labor doesn’t really exist, or if it does, it’s not nearly as big a deal as women make it out to be. You just like to overcomplicate things.
• The “bean-counting isn’t romantic” argument: We should just each do what we like to do and stop keeping score.
• The “blame the feminists” argument: Don’t complain to us. You’re the ones who wanted to join the workforce.
• The “not all men” argument: I’m one of the good ones! I’m not perfect, but my wife shouldn’t ever complain because I’m trying.
• The “it isn’t important” argument: I don’t think this work is important, and I have better things to do with my time.

While some of these arguments may hold grains of truth, what they all have in common is a stunning lack of curiosity, empathy, and accountability. Even though women have been highly vocal about the stress of taking on disproportionate unpaid caretaking duties in a system that minimizes and trivializes their social and economic value, the vast majority of men simply shrug, get defensive, redirect the blame toward women, or all of the above.

To be clear, this is a systemic issue. The answer lies not in blaming men, but in unpacking the underlying narratives about the value of unpaid care work (or lack thereof). It simply astounds me that men, as a group, do not feel more invested in challenging capitalism’s persistent devaluation of the work that enables all other work to be done.

Capitalism, meanwhile, just rubs its greedy hands in glee. It has a vested interest in keeping all of us busy and distracted. Exploiting our time not only drives profit, but it’s a remarkably effective way to maintain the status quo. The more we work and scroll and buy, the less likely we are to riot in the streets.

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This is an especially effective way to control women. By disproportionately saddling us with caregiving responsibilities, capitalism minimizes, if not silences, the voices of 50 percent of its population. 

Here’s what happened when I had children and my time no longer belonged to me:

• I stopped writing. I lost my creative outlet. I lost my voice.
• I became a less generous neighbor and community member. I didn’t check in on the people around me. I didn’t pitch in if they needed help. I didn’t even know if they needed help, as I did little else than wave in passing.
• I withdrew from activism and civic engagement. I didn’t vote in local elections because I didn’t have time to research the candidates or the issues. I didn’t call my representatives or show up to protests.
• When I struggled with inequities in my marriage, I didn’t speak up. I didn’t have the time or energy to fight. I let frustrations fester, and resentments build.
• I was constantly impatient with my children. The majority of my time with them was spent not building essential life skills or modeling how to be a good citizen and community member, but rather transitioning them from one activity to the next — from bed to the breakfast table, from the car to daycare, from daycare to the dinner table, from the dinner table to the bath, from the bath to bed.

Some women have claimed their time and voice by opting out of caregiving. Others have pursued enough material wealth to hand off the bulk of the unpaid work to underpaid workers. Others, like me, have simply tried to “do it all” for as long as possible until they reach a breaking point.

I don’t personally recommend any of these strategies; they all still play into capitalism’s hand. Women should absolutely be able to choose whether or not we want to have children, but we should do so on our own terms, not because of the false ambition vs. care binary that capitalism promotes. As career feminists have proven, handing off undervalued care work to underpaid laborers does nothing to advance the feminist cause. And in practice, trying to “do it all” means nothing we do is ever enough.

I have some ideas based on my own middle-aged reckoning, but I’m going to warn you: These are not mommy hacks. These are not magic formulas or simple solutions. Acting on them while still having to navigate the capitalist waters in which we’re all flailing is no straightforward task.

But these ideas deserve serious consideration because if we’re going to be busy, we may as well be busy on our terms. We may as well spend our time creating networks and systems that will actually benefit us. We may as well invest our time in people who will invest in us.

So, what can women and mothers do to take back our time?

1. Prioritize friendship over romance

If you’re a single woman, chances are you’re spending almost an hour a day on dating apps. Yep, that’s nearly 365 hours a year, not to mention the hours you spend actually going on dates. I’ve been officially divorced since June, and people keep asking me when I’m going to go on the apps. My answer is, I ain’t got time for that. It’s not just because I’m a single mom, it’s also because I’m focusing on the friendships that will endure through whatever romantic turbulence might lie in my future.

Investing in friendship takes time, but when you build mutually supportive relationships, it’s time you get back. The same can’t be said for the time women sink into relationships and situationships that ultimately fizzle out. It’s also time you’re more likely to enjoy. I’d rather meet my friends for drinks any day of the week than some random dude who swiped right.

If you’re a partnered woman, may I gently suggest that you invest a little less time in your partner and a little more time in your friends and community? I spent years believing that if I were a devoted enough wife, the labor that I invested in my marriage would somehow pay off. For me, and for many other women, this never came to pass. I am lucky that I had generous friends, family, and community members who forgave me for more or less ghosting them all those years, and who were there to offer support when my marriage unraveled.

2. Re-orient care labor around connection

The Internet might be seething with mothers who feel burdened by care labor, but to be clear, it’s not the labor itself that’s the problem. Care labor can be challenging, to be sure, but the real problems we’re responding to are the uneven distribution of care labor, the devaluation of care labor, and the isolated contexts in which this labor is performed. Chores are a slog when we do them by ourselves at the end of a long workday. But have you ever cleaned up after a meal with other people and hardly noticed that you’re cleaning? Similarly, parenting can feel draining when it’s just you and the kids for hours on end. But have you ever loosely supervised your kids at a summer barbecue where multiple adults are keeping an eye on them?

Communal care and domestic work are a tall order in the context of a system intent on isolating and overburdening us. But when we’re able to manage it, the time and energy we spend can end up filling our emotional bank accounts rather than draining them.

3. Buy way less stuff, especially online

I am not an impulse shopper, and I generally hate spending money, so this one might be easier for me than for most. But I still subscribed to Amazon Prime and bought my share of things. 

Then, a few years ago, I challenged myself to only buy retail items from locally owned stores. In some ways, it was more time-consuming (and sometimes impossible) to find local options, but because it was so much work, I began to truly question how much I needed or wanted each thing. 

I was also more motivated to participate in clothing swaps or to ask to borrow things, like a hedge trimmer or a coffee grinder, that I didn’t need to always have around. And unlike online shopping, borrowing from friends and neighbors or patronizing neighborhood shops can be a pleasurable, community building experience.

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4. Quit your job

Ever notice how companies tell you, “We’re like family” on your way in and, “It’s not personal, it’s business,” on your way out? If your employers are demanding more hours and energy than you have to give, fire them before they fire you. 

I can’t tell you how many ambitious, hardworking women I’ve seen give their all to companies that end up laying them off or finding other reasons to let them go. Most companies do not have your back. Most companies couldn't care less about the care labor awaiting you at home. Most companies don’t care about your health. Forget the lip service they pay on their Careers page. I continue to be flabbergasted by the toxic behaviors and policies that people put up with at work.

Most of us need a paycheck, obviously, but most of us have more agency than we’re led to believe. We need to prioritize companies that actually prioritize their people. (B Corps, companies offering 4-day workweeks at full pay, and worker-owned cooperatives are a good place to start.)

5. Get divorced

Most of the divorced women I know, even those like me who are mostly single-parenting, tend to have more time to themselves than married women. A well-known study of 23,000 mothers found that single mothers do less housework, enjoy more leisure, and get more sleep than married mothers. That’s because performing the role of wife, particularly a heterosexual wife, is time-consuming. It’s not just about the extra seven weekly hours of housework most husbands create for their wives, but also about all the negotiating and delegating that women do in their largely ineffective attempts to distribute the load.

If you’re a married heterosexual woman whose husband expresses little to no curiosity or empathy when you feel overworked and has little to no interest in taking any level of accountability, I’m sad to say that, despite what the couples therapists may claim, there is no way you’re going to communicate your way to a more equitable relationship. Divorce won’t solve these inequities either, but by relieving you of a thankless role, it can give you back some of your precious time.

This is as much about reclaiming our time as it is about developing a healthier relationship with our time. Time is only money in a system that monetizes our time. But even within this system, we can reframe that narrative.

For me, time well spent is time spent connecting with humans who fill my cup and time spent recharging (I’m an introvert, after all). Sure, I have to occasionally deal with humans who don’t fill my cup, and sure, I don’t always get as much time to recharge as I’d like. But when faced with choices, these are my two guiding principles. I no longer care about Maximum Productivity, or corporate career advancement, or any kind of ambition that renders me unable to show up for the people I love.

The status quo flourishes when women are exhausted and distracted. Keep working, keep scrolling, keep moving, keep consuming, they say. Yes, it takes time to reimagine and unlearn. But it’s time that actually serves us, and it’s time that should be ours for the taking.

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Kerala Goodkin is an award-winning writer and co-owner of a worker-owned marketing agency. Her weekly stories are dedicated to interrupting notions of what it means to be a mother, woman, worker, and wife. She writes on Medium and has recently launched a Substack publication, Mom, Interrupted.