In Argentina, seven out of ten adolescents between the ages of 15 and 17 perform extensive household and caregiving tasks. It is something that happens, as the Latin American Gender Equity and Justice Team (ELA) emphasizes, “when adults cannot attend or are not around (usually because they are working to make ends meet).”
“If we consider only caring for people (such as siblings or grandparents), they spend an average of 3 hours and 30 minutes per day, and female adolescents spend 44% more time than male adolescents.” In addition, they add, “10% of adolescent girls aged 16 to 17 provide care for more than 5 hours per day.”
The researchers concluded that these responsibilities, generally invisible, have a direct impact on school performance, well-being, and, ultimately, future opportunities.
In a previous survey conducted by the organization in cooperation with UNICEF, they analyzed the situation of the children in their care: a phenomenon, they warned, outside the academic and political agenda. In countries such as Colombia and Mexico – which have records – girls and adolescent girls between the ages of 12 and 18 “represent the second caregiver in the home, before the parents themselves.”
“In the same vein, for Argentina, UNICEF’s treatment of the Time Use Survey, conducted by Indec in 2021, shows that for the 16- and 17-year-old age group, female caregivers devote 5.18 hours per day to care, while males devote 3.29 hours.” The gender division of labor occurs at an early age: adolescent girls assume the role of caregiver much earlier, “reinforcing traditional stereotypes that associate care and domestic tasks with femininity.”
The Social Debt Observatory of the University of Central Asia also recorded this fact: 6.1% of children between the ages of 5 and 17 perform intensive household tasks, understood as “taking care of the house (cleaning, washing, ironing, making food, taking care of siblings, doing shopping, errands, collecting water, looking for firewood).” In low-income sectors the percentage is even higher: 10.5% of children and adolescents perform these tasks. As for teenagers, this percentage increases to 12.1%.
The ELA analysis also adds that although the adolescents interviewed attend educational institutions, “it is acknowledged that the performance of care tasks has or may have implications for the management of study time, especially among adolescents from popular sectors.” On the other hand, they point out that the proportion of adolescents who perform various unpaid work tasks “presents strong differences between women and men: while the proportion among women and men rises to 78%, and among the latter it agrees to 54%.”
The need for parents or responsible adults to work more and more hours outside the home has different aspects: “The presence of girls, boys and adolescents at home means the need for greater income to meet their needs, but, at the same time, it restricts the time that adults can devote to paid work, hindering access to good full-time jobs, especially for mothers. A lower number of women in the labor market means lower income in families, thus increasing poverty among girls, boys and adolescents.” In contrast, if the number of hours needed to cover expenses can be covered, older brothers or sisters are more likely to devote themselves to caregiving tasks.
The main solution, as UNICEF has stated in other study documents, is to provide public care spaces, something other international organizations also insist on. As long as there are no policies designed to cover this need, social and economic differences are exacerbated: families in which women have better incomes are able to pay for these services, which ensures better access to qualified jobs. In low-income families, women are forced to give up working hours or work itself, which reinforces and perpetuates their poverty.