The hidden privilege of uninterrupted time

It sholdn’t be afforded to just one parent.

[Source images: Adobe Stock]

The school calls in the middle of the workday. Your child is sick. That means you have to leave the meeting, cancel the rest of your afternoon, and rearrange appointments for tomorrow. Research shows that when this happens to a father, he has a childcare problem. But when it happens to a mother, she can become the childcare problem.

That distinction explains something we don’t talk about enough when we discuss working parents. The inequality isn’t just about who spends more hours doing laundry, cooking dinner, or making appointments for the family. It’s also about which parent gets uninterrupted time to work and what happens when family life (inevitably) disrupts it.

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