Parents spend 1.5 working days a week doing child-related admin

Sleepless nights, the absence of clean clothes, never being able to consume a hot drink while it’s actually hot – these are the things most expectant parents are warned about, but what’s often missed is the onslaught of child admin.

So what do we mean by child admin? Well it seems to cover a whole host of things. We’ve just commissioned new research that has uncovered the full brunt of school research, doctors’ appointments, homework projects, party planning, and more.

Incredibly, parents spend a staggering 10.5 hours¹ a week managing these additional admin tasks, and more. That’s 546 hours a year, which equates to £7,644 of unpaid work, or a quarter of the UK’s average annual salary¹.

Of course, when you measure the weight of new admin against the pleasure and satisfaction of adding to the clan, any extra time spent seems worthwhile. The challenge is fitting our lives around the upheaval. How do we plan for the busy, brilliant years, when our lives seem to suddenly accelerate and the to-do list grows longer by the hour?

We asked parents all over Europe to tell us how they cope with the extra weight of child-related admin. And while our research showed the strain some parents are under, some of the stories we heard showed that it is possible to find a balance. Here are three things we learnt:

1. Impact at work

With more and more people working longer hours, the impact of child admin is causing additional strain. According to our research, dads are more likely to get into trouble using the work printer for child admin than mums. 56% of dads have found themselves in trouble with the boss for printing at work, compared to 36% of mums¹. To avoid admin piling up, invest in a printer for the home office, helping you to stay on top of things without it affecting your career prospects.

2. Time for a holiday

One in five parents openly admit they would rather give up a day of holiday than manage extra child admin, perhaps indicating the emotional impact of all those extra tasks¹. So what’s the solution? How about giving yourself an allocated time every week? By picking a single morning or evening it may be simpler to stay on top of things, making the rest of the week easier to manage. 

3. Impact at home

Time-consuming child admin is having a impact on relationships with a fifth of UK parents (23%) citing it as the main cause of household arguments¹. Our research highlighted two possible solutions: either divide the weekly to-do list straight down the middle or agree upfront which areas of your children’s lives you will manage (so for example, one of you takes school admin, while the other handles after-school activities). Both solutions should lead to greater clarity, and a happier home environment. 

Our research shows that child-related admin is a hidden and significant cost of family life. With three in five parents reporting the need for more printing power to cope with their child admin needs, having a cost-effective, reliable printer that doesn’t need cartridges means one less thing to worry about¹. The Epson EcoTank printer offers convenient cartridge-free printing with ink bottles that last up to three years, leaving you more time to enjoy the busy, brilliant years to come, and fewer worries over how to manage the admin¹.

Speaking of new arrivals, watch what happened when we helped the Bell family announce the best news their kids will ever hear.