Mothers Take on the Responsibility of Their Household’s Health and Wellness

PYMNTS Intelligence created the 2024 Women’s Wellness Index to assess factors negatively impacting women’s health and how to overcome them. The index paints a holistic picture of health and wellness outcomes by leveraging several key factors. These include respondents’ reports of overall health, their skill in securing healthcare, the amount they spent on personal health relative to that of their household and the time they spent caring for their own health and well-being.

Considering these complexities, the 2024 Women’s Wellness Index accounts for health and wellness and the resources needed to support women’s overall well-being. This brief focuses on the finding that women, especially mothers, are more likely to report responsibility for their household’s health and well-being.

This brief is part of the 2024 Women’s Wellness Index, a collaboration with PYMNTS Intelligence and CareCredit, a Synchrony solution. This edition draws on insights from a census-balanced survey of 10,045 U.S. consumers conducted from Nov. 10, 2023, to Dec. 6, 2023.

• Key Findings
• Conclusion
• Methodology

Key Findings

When women become mothers, their health priorities shift.

PYMNTS Intelligence finds that women with children are more likely to prioritize their household’s health above their own health. Conversely, women who live on their own are most likely to report that their personal health and well-being is their main priority. For women who live on their own, health and well-being come before interpersonal relationships, spirituality and financial goals. Health and well-being are less important for women who live with romantic partners, with half prioritizing their own health. Among women who live in nontraditional households — such as those living with roommates or people who are not their partners — health priorities are also split, data shows.

As women become mothers, their families become a greater priority. This effect is especially strong for mothers in nuclear families, where less than one-quarter say their personal wellness is their top priority.

Though household health still takes precedence for 64% of single mothers, single mothers prioritize their own health 64% more than mothers in nuclear families. Why? Some single mothers think maintaining their own health is key for their children’s well-being, our interviews reveal.

Women — especially mothers — are the primary caretakers of household health.

Women predominantly think of themselves as being the caretakers of their household’s health and well-being — particularly mothers. Those who live with others are more likely than men to consider themselves responsible for their household’s health and wellness. The data shows this resonates with women regardless of their household composition.

Women who live with their partners but have no children report being responsible for household wellness 53% of the time. Meanwhile, just 16% of women living with partners note that their male partner holds this responsibility.

Consequently, even with no children in the picture, women often assume a maternal caretaking role for their male partner. Maintaining household health is a priority even among women living with others who are not their romantic partner or their children.

More women function as the family caretaker when they become mothers, the data confirms. Our findings show that 63% of women in nuclear families and 66% of single mothers say they are responsible for the household’s well-being. For comparison, only 17% of moms in nuclear families say their male partner does the most for the family’s health. Nearly as many — 15% — rely on a household member other than the father.

Women report doing a higher share of their household’s care work.

Data surrounding women’s time commitments shows that women typically do more household care work than men. This is true whether women consider themselves to be the main decision-makers on household health or not.

A likely related finding reveals women in cohabitating households have difficulty finding time for their own wellness. Further analysis revealed 14% of women cohabitating with no children cite chores as barriers, while 7.6% identify caretaking responsibilities and 9.7% identify caring for household health and wellness as barriers. Cohabitating men, in turn, are somewhat less likely to report experiencing all these barriers.

The difference grows more pronounced for parents. Mothers in nuclear families are more than twice as likely as corresponding fathers to report that a lack of time due to chores limits their ability to manage their personal health and wellness. Similarly, mothers are 57% more likely to report a lack of time due to caretaking responsibilities. Additionally, mothers are 49% more likely than fathers in nuclear families to note not having enough time due to caring for household wellness. Among single parents, these differences are smaller. In single-parent homes, or those with no women in the household, men take on a higher share of the household health responsibility.

Women report that care work similarly eats into their time to take care of their own well-being, regardless of who is primarily responsible for household health. This suggests that women end up shouldering the weight of care work — no matter who receives the credit.

Conclusion

Motherhood tends to mark a distinct shift in how women prioritize their own health and that of their household. Particularly among nuclear families, mothers are the most likely to say that the household’s health is more important than their own. Single mothers understand that their own health is a means to maintaining the family’s well-being — but even so, they often prioritize the household’s health more. Many women, especially mothers, consider household caretaking as a necessary job — one they do not always get credit for. But divergences in health outcomes suggests that this selflessness has costs, with mothers’ health outcomes faring worse than average.

Men do not tend to shoulder these responsibilities to the same degree, data suggests. A more equal labor distribution would likely lead to better health outcomes for women and mothers. Although there are many factors in this distribution, parental leave is a large driver of gendered labor inequality. International policy research suggests equalized maternal and paternal leave goes a long way in shifting the gender distribution of care work, but all solutions that level the playing field could help improve women’s health outcomes.¹

Methodology

The 2024 Women’s Wellness Index: Women’s Life Stage Priorities in Health and Wellness, a collaboration between PYMNTS Intelligence and CareCredit, a Synchrony solution, is based on a survey of 10,045 U.S. consumers conducted from Nov. 10, 2023, to Dec. 6, 2023. The survey explored how women’s finances, time and social context impact their overall health and well-being. Our sample was census-balanced across a number of key demographic variables: The average respondent was 48 years old, 51% identified as women, 33% had college degrees and 38% reported incomes of $100,000 or more per year.

Read more from this series.

^{1. [Collins, C. Making Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving. Princeton University Press. 2019. Accessed August 2024.]↩}