Catherine L. sent in the following picture of a (gramatically incorrect?) ad in the window of a sportings good store in Wellesly, MA:
“Mothers’ hours” refers to those hours during which kids are in school. The term reveals the assumption, or prescription, that it is women who take care of kids after school.
Of course, that a company is offering work to primary caretakers is actually quite nice and supportive of families. But it would be entirely easy to instead say “parents’ hours” instead. Still, it’s possible that employers would be suspicious of any man who wanted to work only part time and assume they were both bad fathers and bad workers. Employers are known to discriminate against men who do not put their job before their family.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 19
mercurianferret — January 29, 2010
Well... grammatically, shouldn't it be mothers' hours?
Katherine — January 29, 2010
It's great that this place is offering work hours with the specific intention of accommodating parents' schedules! That was the part that really jumped out at me.
Annonymous — January 29, 2010
Interestingly, I grew up in Wellesley and knew literally zero mothers who worked at any point through my childhood.
Umlud — January 29, 2010
One question, to me, the verb "to mother" points toward parenting babies, whereas "to parent" points toward actions of parents from birth to empty-nest (maybe beyond). Therefore, a male parent can "mother" a baby just as much as a female parent.
Does this seem to be the case for others, too?
Jadehawk — January 29, 2010
this actually reminds me of Nickel and Dimed, where one of the jobs offered "mothers' hours"; it didn't actually deliver on them, and was using them as an excuse to deny other benefits & pay raises, though...
Sarah — January 29, 2010
Silly me, all this time I thought being a mother was a full-time thing. What a relief to find out it's actually a time-bound activity ! And one which should be spent working at Thunder!
This is a pretty fun & meaning-rich photo you got here. And I really liked your point about genders and professional versus private performance expectations, it’s really not fair on men either is it.
Also, this leaves me wondering, would it be possible to say "school hours" instead?
I mean, it is really school hours they’re talking about, right ? And being a parent (of either sex) is a full time thing, there are no dedicated hours for that, whereas there are dedicated school hours. Then again I’m not a native English speaker so I may very well be wrong, but I guess I’m just wondering if school hours would not be the simplest thing. What do you think?
Tom — February 1, 2010
I found a load of jobs in my area recently for cleaning, housekeeping, baby sitting, general childcare, that were for women only. Very disappointing. I would much rather do that than sales. Apparently my chromosones make me permanently unqualified...
Kelsey — February 5, 2010
I think it’s entirely too common for people to assume that mothers are the ones who say home with the child(ren) and it’s the men that are the bread winnings. Throughout history it has always been this way, but things have changed. Personally, I have many friends whose mother’s work and is even considered the “breadwinner”. It’s not uncommon to see women in a workplace today. Shouldn’t we embrace that and change the housewife mentality?
KSK — February 5, 2010
This isn't true for all families. It is stereotypical to say that women should stay home and be housewives. Women have the right to work the hours that are convient for them, not just giving them the option of working the hours that children are in school. There are single mothers that need the hours to support their family.
Shannon — September 16, 2010
Thank you everyone for your responses to this post; I work for a job recruiter and we recently needed to post an ad for a PT project coordinator. After looking through our pre-written ads in the database I edited the contact and compensation information for this particular position but came to a gender crisis moment when I read at the bottom "mother's hours available."
My boss, although he is understanding and sensitive to most issues, hadn't seen this as an issue to post publicly. So I made him aware of the directly sexist statement we were about to tag on to our company name and personae and was looking for a way to rephrase the term but still convey the information.
I'm going to go with "parent's hours" since it avoids directly gendering the hours, but still makes you think about the former phrasing. "school hours" is a good alternative, however, it ignores the gender issue altogether, additionally I'm concerned that actual students may see this as a flexible PT afterschool job...
ABC123 — November 30, 2016
I doubt anyone will see this as it is years after this article, but I thought I would share my viewpoint. Mother's hours is a term that has been used for years and is commonly known. When a job says mother's hours people will know what that means. Parent's hours is a term that is not used (or at least not commonly used) so having that instead would cause confusion. No stay at home father would look at that sign and say "oh mother's hours that's not for me." No person without children would look at that sign and say "Oh mother's well I don't have children." They would look at that sign and see it for what it is. It is a sign saying that a part time position is available most likely between the hours of 9 and 3. To start getting offended at a "sexist" sign seems a little silly to me. Although today anything that anyone does is seen as offensive by some people mother's hours is one I haven't seen before. There have been more absurd things I've seen people get offended at, but I will chalk this up with many other things people are offended by. This seems like a case of people looking for something to be offensive and in their mind making it offensive where it was never offensive in the first place.