Teleworking: fathers who do it are more stressed than others according to a recent study

Teleworking is often presented as the ideal solution for combining personal and professional life. A certain freedom, which allows you to pick up your children from school or treat yourself to an hour of sport between noon and two. Except that in reality, parents who telework with their child nearby face a much higher level of daily stress than others. Explanations.

Fathers who telework are “more stressed”

In this study, researchers attempted to understand how the Covid-19 pandemic (a period during which many parents found themselves, with their children, teleworking, editor’s note) has affected the mental and physical health of teleworkers.

For this, data was collected from May to July 2022 in 77 neighborhoods in Chicago. All participants had to be aged 18 or over and be a parent of at least one child residing in the household.

Result ? “Telecommuting fathers reported higher parenting stress than telecommuting fathers, but there was no association for mothers“, confide the scientists. We may be surprised by this distinction between the two parents… Should we conclude that fathers are less accustomed to multitasking or to habitually managing their children?

A hypothesis that the authors do not put forward, who simply point out that these results are consistent with other studies carried out before the pandemic and which revealed “contradictory or non-existent associations between teleworking and employees’ self-reported health“.

Better assess the effects of teleworking on health

Although these results have certain limitations, such as the duration of the study and the lack of objective data on the health of the participants, the researchers nevertheless consider that it is now crucial “that researchers, health professionals, and policymakers continue to evaluate the associations between teleworking, stress, and parental health.”

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