Schools often default to mothers when contacting parents, study finds

A recent field experiment shows that U.S. schools are more likely to call mothers first, even when fathers are listed as equally or more available.

Economists examined whether school communication practices contribute to the gender gap in parenting duties. In the summer of 2022 they emailed more than 80,000 K-12 principals with a mock two-parent inquiry, randomly varying names and availability cues. When both parents appeared equally reachable, mothers were contacted first about 60% of the time, a 1.4-fold advantage over fathers.

Highlighting a father’s higher availability shifted some calls his way, yet mothers still received a substantial share. Additional cues, such as the father being the email sender, modestly increased his odds, but did not eliminate the bias. The researchers argue that these routine choices, made for efficiency, may perpetuate the “mental load” that disproportionately falls on mothers across schools, medical offices, and extracurricular programs. They suggest that allowing families to specify preferred contacts at the start of the school year could help align outreach with each household’s division of labor.