Sarah Ditum

We don’t talk of a ‘working father’ — so why do we still refer to a ‘working mother’?

The term is doubly redundant, given that most women with dependent children have paid jobs in the UK — and still do the housework

Machinist mothers in Pontypridd in the 1960s would leave their children to be cared for in a nearby nursery. Credit: Getty Images 
issue 09 May 2020

The phrase ‘working mother’ ought to be as redundant sounding as ‘working father’ would be if anyone ever said that: in the UK three-quarters of women with dependent children work. Yet the working mother still feels provisional, something that lockdown has made sharply apparent to many women. Will it be Mum or Dad who claims the spare room, while the loser retreats to the kitchen table? Mum or Dad who does the home-schooling? Who will preserve their professional status, and who will slide into the domestic? The answer is that, in most cases, the woman loses, and her male partner...

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