This oxymoron exposes the difficulties faced by these women, who have to cope with spouses who do little in the way of housework or parenting.

If one video perfectly illustrates this trend, it’s the one posted by Hannah, aka healing sadiee on TikTok.

In this video, viewed almost five million times, this married mother of a young son discovers the state of her home after isolating for a week upstairs with her child because they had caught Covid, leaving the lower floor to her husband.

Her video shows her kitchen in disarray, the sink overflowing with dirty dishes, and with bags and boxes strewn across the table and countertop. “The entire kitchen smells like vinegar, that means there’s rotten food hidden somewhere,” she says.

Hannah, followed by nearly 25,000 users, regularly documents on TikTok her efforts to maintain a family home while dealing with mental health issues. But the video soon sparked widespread outrage in the comments, pointing the finger at her husband’s failure to clean up while she was sick.

“You deserve better,” wrote several social media users. Some even went so far as to advise her to divorce him. Others call Hannah a “single married mom.”

This expression refers to married women who take on a large part of the domestic and parenting tasks, as if they were single and without a partner to help them. And Hannah appears not to be an isolated case.

A simple search for the hashtags #Singlemarriedmom or #Singlemarriedmomlife on TikTok reveals a multitude of videos in which women take care of the household or children, in contrast to their passive husbands and fathers.

In one video, for example, a mother juggles feeding her three children in a restaurant while her husband eats undisturbed.

In another video, a woman, already carrying two large bags on her shoulders, falls over backwards as she takes her child out of the car, while her husband carries nothing.

Far from new

Although these situations are now exposed on social networks, this inequality of roles is far from recent.

“It’s similar to the discussion around the ‘mental load,’ which sees things like the planning and scheduling in relationships falling to the woman, as well as chores around the house such as washing, cooking, cleaning, and meal planning,” Melbourne psychologist Carly Dober told news.com.au.

According to the expert, these domestic tasks are often seen as “women’s work.

“For instance, in France, two-thirds of women say they do all the housework – and 70% of women aged 35 to 65 – compared with 39% of men, according to a survey*. Even if they advocate equal sharing, men are seen more as a helping hand in the household.

“However, many women have seen what unequal partnering has done to other women in their lives, such as their mothers and grandmothers, and how this [has] … negatively contributed to their health, well-being and unhappiness. This is why we’re seeing it talked about more than ever, and the birth of new names which call out these tiresome stereotypes,” Carly Dober adds.

Compared to previous generations, more and more women are working and don’t have the time to take care of everything.

“More women have entered the workplace and are also trying to navigate and juggle parenting and running a household and finding time for their health and well-being, which is an incredibly difficult juggling act,” explains Carly Dober.

“Therefore, women are noticing more if they are not getting help and are advocating for this to change.”