Sixty-three percent of mothers in dual-full-time-income households say they handle more of the day-to-day parenting than their partner, and the same share say they do more of the household chores, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of 2,242 working parents.
The gap isn’t just about who’s folding laundry or handling drop-off. It’s showing up in how satisfied each parent feels with their marriage’s daily rhythm, and the numbers suggest that gap in satisfaction is wide.
Key Points
- 63% of moms say they do more parenting tasks than their partner, and 63% say the same about chores, per Pew’s March 2026 survey of parents in different-sex, dual-full-time-earner households.
- Dads see it differently: Pew found they’re “much more likely than moms to say these responsibilities are divided about equally.”
- 55% of dads say they’re extremely or very satisfied with how parenting tasks are split, compared with just 36% of moms.
- On chores, the satisfaction gap is even wider: 49% of dads versus 26% of moms.
- Satisfaction tracks closely with equality: 65% of moms who say tasks are split evenly report being satisfied, versus just 22% of moms who say they do more.
The pattern holds for fathers too, just from a higher starting point. Among dads who say responsibilities are split evenly, 71% report being satisfied. That number drops to 45% among dads who say their partner does more, evidence that carrying an uneven share erodes satisfaction on both sides of a marriage, per Pew’s findings.
Pew’s survey, fielded March 2-15, 2026, focused specifically on different-sex couples in which both parents work full time, a group that has expanded as women’s labor-force participation has climbed over recent decades. Deseret News, reporting on the same data, noted it was “much more common” for households to report mom doing more than dad across nearly every category the survey measured.
Zoomed out to how entire households answered, not just moms’ or dads’ individual responses, 52% said mom does more parenting tasks against 10% who said dad does more. On chores, 43% said mom does more versus 17% for dad.
The findings arrive alongside a slower-moving shift researchers have tracked for years: fathers today handle significantly more hands-on childcare than fathers a generation ago, even as mothers’ hours in paid work have grown too. Both parents are carrying more, Pew’s data suggests. The imbalance is in how unevenly that added load has landed.
What the survey doesn’t show is a household where either parent feels the arrangement is working well by default. Even among fathers, satisfaction depends heavily on perceiving the split as fair, not simply on doing less. That suggests the fastest route to closing the gap isn’t just dads doing more, but both partners agreeing on what “equal” actually looks like day to day.
