TikTok video
Active 24 hours, hardly any sleep: Mother uses data to show how stressful her parental leave is
© Prostock-studio / Shutterstock
Living with a newborn is a full-time job – especially for the mother. A mother used data visualization to show how high the stress was for her.
To outsiders, it sometimes seems as if new mothers and fathers are using their parental leave to relax: no work, a lot of time at home with a cute baby. However, this has little to do with reality. In most cases, parental leave also means hard work – especially for the mother in the first few weeks after the birth.
A mother from the USA showed what it looks like in a TikTok video. In the United States, paid parental leave is far from a given. The video is an excerpt from an online presentation that Kristen Cuneo gave to her work colleagues after returning from parental leave. Her husband posted the short clip on his TikTok account. It demonstrates the stress and strain young mothers are exposed to – and also how little this is seen and valued.
Parental leave: work around the clock
Cuneo collected data for the presentation: She logged her activities in the first seven weeks after the birth of her daughter. This includes changing diapers, breastfeeding and giving bottles. Even the graph with the frequency of these activities looks like a lot of work. The burden becomes even clearer if you also fade in the time it takes for each task. Changing diapers once takes five minutes, and Cuneo estimates half an hour for breastfeeding once. In addition, there are ten minutes for each time she has given the bottle to her daughter.
© the.data.guy / TikTok
“The real hammer is when it happens,” says Cuneo. “Namely 24 hours a day.” Where other people work eight hours a day and then go home, the mother’s job never ends. This can be seen from another data visualization that Cuneo shows in its presentation. All activities are shown in it. Among other things, a small gap can be seen that the young mother remembers very well: “My husband gave the bottle at midnight in the third week. This made it possible for me for the first time to drink more than three hours at a time sleep.”
1.8 million people have watched the clip on TikTok so far. Not among their colleagues, but also among many users, this illustration may have led to a greater respect for the work that mothers of newborns do. Her husband sees it the same way: “Let’s be honest: she’s the leading actress here in the house,” he wrote about the video.
Source: “the.data.guy on TikTok “
This article originally appeared on stern.de.