London - As if holding down a full-time job isn’t enough, working mothers do a 28-hour week at home looking after the children, a study has found.
It means they put in a shift of more than 13 hours every weekday – and weekends are hardly chore-free either.
Caring for the children and managing the home sees the average working mother’s day begin at 6.45am.
It does not end until 7.52pm, when the children go to bed.
The near 66-hour week means that three-quarters of mothers rarely get a chance to sit down to eat breakfast or dinner.
So it is no surprise that 92 percent believe being a mother is a full-time job in itself.
The study of 2,000 mothers for natural cold remedy Kaloba found that in an average week more than eight-and-a-half hours is spent dressing and entertaining the children while almost five hours is taken up with cooking.
Three hours 38 minutes is spent on household chores and more than two hours on food shopping. One hour 25 minutes is taken up helping the children with their homework and almost as long ferrying them around.
On top of this, 40 percent of mothers hold down a full-time job, adding another 37 and a half hours. Although fathers tend to help more at weekends, almost nine in ten mothers are so busy they often have days when they are doing something from the moment they wake up until the moment they go to sleep.
More than three-quarters worry that their hectic lifestyles leave them run down and more prone to colds and bugs.
A spokesman for Kaloba said: “Moms have to work so hard to keep everyone in the family happy, but it’s amazing to see exactly how many hours they have to put in. It makes you wonder where families would be without a mom doing what they do.” - Daily Mail