Why are mothers always treated as the default parent?

Mothers out there: are you the parent who daycare or school calls when your child is sick or needs picking up for whatever reason?

Are you the parent expected to attend school events during work hours?

Does your employer think you (not the dad) will be the one to take time off when your kids are sick, pick them up from school, juggle the school holidays etc?

I’m sensing some nods.

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This is all about the social expectation for mothers to be the ‘default parent’. Basically, mothers are treated as the default parent because traditional gender roles are still deeply ingrained in society.

Through no fault of mothers, this becomes a reinforcing cycle: this is what’s expected of mothers, so they do it, so they’re expected to do it, and so on.

Auckland mother-of-two Cassie* was chatting to colleagues who also had kids in primary school.

“We talked about how you’re expected to be quite involved with the school, and to often attend events at school during work hours. My personal experience, and what I’ve witnessed amongst friends, is that it usually all falls on mothers, not fathers. So, you have to figure out how to juggle that with your job.”

Cassie gives an infuriating example. Her children’s primary school held its Father’s Day morning tea at 7am, and its Mother’s Day morning tea at 10am.

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“It made me really upset,” Cassie says.

“Because, firstly, it assumed that many mums weren’t working, which definitely wasn’t the case for most of the families. It also assumed that, even if the mums were working, they probably didn’t have particularly important jobs, so they could leave work at 10am.”

“So I had to figure out how I could be at the Mother’s Day morning tea. I didn’t want my kids to think they weren’t important – they’d prepared a song and everything – so of course I wanted to be there, but it was challenging to fit it in at 10am.”

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Prepare to be even more annoyed. “I also had to arrive to work late after the Father’s Day morning tea, because I had to be at school from 7-9am to cook for the dads.”

Yes, really.

Did Cassie say something to the school about it? “I mentioned it the first time it happened, but it wasn’t particularly well received by the school. And I didn’t want to be this person going on and on about it, when it was clear they weren’t willing to change.”

“Also, on the PTA [parent teacher association], there was only one dad and the rest were mothers.

“Again, there’s this expectation that mothers, not fathers, will do these things. Schools need to catch up with the times. It’s a lot of juggling to fit in what they’re asking of mothers, particularly during the primary-school years.”

“I feel quite passionately about all this, because that double standard is just unfair.”

Also, daycare or school usually phones the mum not the dad, as Cassie can attest to.

“I was in a very senior role and travelled around the world for about three weeks at a time. I emailed the school, talked to the teachers, and explained that I’d be travelling and unavailable, so if anything happens, just call their dad.”

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“One day, in the States, I got to my hotel about 2am, had a massive presentation coming up at 8am, and at 4am my phone rang. It was the school, saying my kid had a nosebleed and did I want to pick them up? I was like, ‘no!’. It kept happening and every time I’d say ‘please update the contact details – you have to call my partner, not me’. But they kept calling me!”

It was extremely frustrating for her.

“These are small things, but they add up to a big thing. They’re signs that are representative of a social expectation and wider situation: how much mothers, not fathers, are expected to do.”

Prepare to be even more aggravated. “My kids had a swimming day, but each of them was only swimming for five minutes’ total or whatever. I thought ‘OK, I’ll juggle things to fit in going’.

“I drove to work to do a presentation at a board meeting, then rushed to the swimming day and missed my son’s first swim race, but was there for the next two. Then a father told me off about not being there for my children that morning. It really hurt, you know?” Whereas a dad would probably be told how wonderful it was that he turned up at all.

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“And I got it from other mums as well.” They said she should have been there earlier.

“I felt really hurt and angry. But I didn’t say anything, because what can you say? Why should I have to justify myself? I’m doing my best, I’ve just left a meeting, I’m going back to a meeting.”

Yes, There IS Another Way

France, where Cassie is from, does things differently.

“I haven’t been a mother there, because my kids were born in New Zealand, but I have friends and family living there.” Plus she remembers what things are like.

“In France, it’s very much encouraged for mothers to be fully invested in their careers. There aren’t many stay-at-home parents. Everything is set up for both parents to work full-time. There are lots of incentives.

“One is that preschool starts at age two and is free. Another is that children have before-school and after-school activities organised for them. And it’s not common for parents to be very involved in the school.”

Cassie has spent some time in Sweden for work.

“I was walking from the hotel to the office, and saw mostly dads pushing the prams with toddlers and one-year-olds. It shocked me, because it was so unusual to see. I thought ‘Are they filming a dad for TV or something?’.”

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Nope. Sweden does things differently. “There’s 18 months’ paid parental leave. To get the full 18 months, the dad has to take at least six months. So most of the time, mothers take nine months – usually the first nine months, particularly if they’re breastfeeding – then the dad takes the next nine months.”

“And in the Stockholm office, the leadership team was all women. The CEO was a woman. And I thought ‘there’s a correlation here.'” When there’s a social expectation that both parents are equally involved, women aren’t held back from leadership roles.

Cassie would like to see policy changes in New Zealand. “For example, Sweden’s parental-leave policy actually drives change – in behaviour, in beliefs, in systems. Otherwise, things just keep benefiting men, so why would they want to change the system?”

Annoyingly, fathers are often praised for doing parenting that’s simply expected of mothers.

“It’s interesting,” Cassie says, “that whenever I was travelling for work, some of our friends, and some people from school, brought over dinners so my partner wouldn’t have to cook.

“Because, the poor guy – he’s looking after a seven-year-old and nine-year-old for three weeks – like, ‘oh my God, how will he manage?’.

“It’s like ‘he’s wonderful because he’s looking after his kids!’. I thought, no-one would bring over dinners if it was the dad travelling for work and the mum at home.”

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Default Parent Syndrome

Of course, in many countries, the expectation from schools and employers that mothers are the ‘default parent’ is part of (and reinforces) a wider societal expectation for women to handle the parenting and home front.

And the term ‘default parent’ encapsulates this.

A story for mom.com says “if you’ve been hearing a lot of talk about being the ‘default parent’ lately, it’s not just in your head.

The controversial buzz word has once again been trending on TikTok, with more moms opening up about the burnout they’re experiencing as the first-in-line person for all things kid-related.”

In an essay for Psychology Today, psychologist Dr Amber Thornton of The Balanced Working Mama podcast writes that “it quickly became apparent to me that the Default Parent Syndrome was more than just a TikTok trend and rather an actual experience that was eating away at the well-being and mental health of millions of mothers every single day.”

“Default Parent Syndrome is more than just an individual problem; rather, it is a systemic and collective experience in which there is a bias toward women and mothers in providing primary care for parenting and home-related tasks.

“This bias is largely the product of decades of patriarchal cultural history that has continued to evolve in various ways throughout our time.”

So what can we do about it?

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