You’re Not Alone: Parents Everywhere Log 'Ghost Hours'

As the familiar rhythm of carpools, homework, and sports restarts with children going back to school, a silent health crisis is becoming increasingly recognized in popular culture, research, and public health warnings: the stress of the invisible work logged by parents—and, too often, mothers.

In mid-July, singer Katy Perry released a music video, “Women’s World,” showing a mother—still in her pearls and soft pink work jacket—washing dishes at the kitchen sink as Perry marches behind her, muscles flexed. The music rolls as Perry sings optimistically: “It’s a woman’s world, and you’re lucky to be living in it.” Then, in August, during the Olympics, Downy aired a commercial showing a father, likely a remote worker, stepping through a threshold in his home to help his wife with laundry and childcare, a male narrator opining: “Sometimes your work shift needs to be for more than just work.”

Dynamics of working parents, particularly working mothers, outsourcing child care to other working moms.

Source: New Yorker / R. Kikuo Johnson

The next month, The New Yorker magazine published an evocative, multi-layered cover for its September issue by artist R. Kikuo Johnson, depicting women supporting families. A woman of color sat on a park bench, presumably taking care of another mother’s child, as she showed a photo of her own child in cap-and-gown to another nanny of color, who held a red-haired girl’s scooter. It spoke to the dynamics of working parents, particularly working mothers, outsourcing the caring of their children to other working moms so they could do their job as the nannies work to support their own families.

The U.S. Surgeon General offers a health advisory for parent's high level of stress.

Source: Office of the U.S. Surgeon General / Office of the U.S. Surgeon General

Soon after, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy released a public health advisory, “Parents Under Pressure,” revealing that 48 percent of parents say that most days “their stress is completely overwhelming,” managing their homes and careers, caring for children, and juggling countless unseen responsibilities, compared to 26 percent of other adults.

“Parents are at their wits’ end,” Murthy says. Some 33 percent of parents report “high levels of stress” in the past month, compared to 20 percent of other adults.

Parents Are Haunted, Working’ Ghost Hours’

Leadership coach Chitra Ragavan, a former journalist, C-suite executive, and working mother who raised two sons, has introduced the phrase “ghost hours” to describe the thousands of hours parents spend doing the tasks that keep households and relationships running smoothly but largely go unpaid and undocumented. The growing numbers of so-called “panini sandwich moms,” simultaneously taking care of young children and their own aging parents, as Ragavan once did, also add to the stresses.

“I call them ghost hours because it can really spook working parents and their relationships,” says Ragavan. “It takes a subterranean toll on our quality of life, health, happiness, and pocketbooks.” The concept of “ghost hours” is a haunting reminder of the invisible labor that underpins our society. As working mothers, we have experienced this dynamic in our personal and professional lives, caretaking while working full-time as we researched for our book, Our (In)visible Work.

Calculating a Parent’s ‘Mental Health Load’

Studies on the economic value of invisible work support this reality. In a survey released in July of 2,005 parents with children under the age of 18, Harris Poll and Skylight, a company specializing in family-sharing products, found that if U.S. parents were compensated for the “parental mental load” of managing their households, they would collectively earn $3.8 trillion annually, or about $60,000 for the average of 30.4 hours per week that parents say they spend planning and coordinating family schedules and household tasks.

Skylight launched a “mental health load calculator” that surveys parents about activities most of us take for granted, like meal prepping, soothing tantrums, planning family social events, household shopping (even keeping lists!), reminding partners and children about upcoming appointments, organizing family time, managing children’s school needs from homework to parent-teacher meetings, and delegating household chores. It assigns a dollar value to the work “if the mental load was a full-time job” at a median household income of $35.86 per hour.

Singer Katie Perry recognizes invisible work in ‘Woman’s World’

Perry said she tried to turn that narrative around with her song, “Women’s World.” In an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Perry said her perspective as a new mother gave her newfound respect for “all the invisible work” that her own mother did raising her and her siblings. She said: “I always respected my mother, but after I gave birth, there was this huge level of growth of respect for her. Just watching her as I grew up, all the invisible work that she did—how she raised three kids without iPads, oh, yeah, in the ’80s. And just how women are unstoppable.”

The rise of dual-income households and single-parent families in the decades since Perry’s childhood has placed additional strain on parents, who are juggling work responsibilities with the demands of caring for children and elders. Additionally, the advent of social media has intensified the pressure to present a picture-perfect image of parenthood, further fueling the invisible workload.

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One mother we interviewed for our book spent over 30 hours a month volunteering at her children’s school and caring for aging relatives but didn’t consider herself a “worker” because she wasn’t formally employed.

Giving the Myth of the ‘Super Mom’ a Rest

So, what can be done to address this issue?

First, we must recognize and value the invisible labor of parenting. This means acknowledging the time, effort, and emotional investment that parents pour into their families. It means appreciating the countless tasks that often go unnoticed and unthanked. For example, one entrepreneur living in her mother’s home started paying her mother 10 percent of her business revenues to recognize her mother’s work making lunches and keeping the home running smoothly.

Secondly, we need to create a more supportive environment for parents, including policies like paid parental leave, affordable childcare, flexible work arrangements, and established work-life boundaries. Thirdly, we must challenge the societal expectations that perpetuate the myth of the “supermom.” We need to encourage more collaborative parenting between parents sharing the weight of care.

As we step back into back-to-school routines, let us remember that the ghost hours of parenting are a silent health epidemic, but they don’t have to be, as the recognition by singer Katy Perry and the U.S. Surgeon General reveal. By shining a light on this invisible labor, we can create a healthier environment for families.