2026-09-14·7 min

Schools Call Mothers First: What the New Study Shows

In short. Yes, schools call the mother first more often: in a US experiment, when a principal called a parent back, it was the mother 59% of the time, and still 26% of the time when the father said he was more available. In France, DREES finds fathers rarely in charge alone. Listing both parents equally and sharing every message limits the effect.

The school's number flashes on the screen. A kid scraped a knee at recess, or spiked a fever after lunch. The school secretary picks up her own phone and dials. Which parent does she call first? A study by three American economists, widely picked up at the start of the 2026 school year, just put a number on something many mothers already suspected without proof: in most cases, it's her. And even when the father is listed, in writing, as the more available parent, part of the calls still go to the mother.

This isn't an isolated anecdote. It's a documented, measured pattern — and it lines up with another study published months earlier in France, on how much time fathers actually spend alone with their children. Put the two together, and they tell the same story: twenty years of visible progress on fatherhood, and an institutional reflex that has barely moved. It's one of the most concrete mechanisms behind mental load.

One experiment, 80,000 schools, a number that doesn't budge

Three economists — Laura K. Gee, Kristy Buzard, and Olga Stoddard — ran the field experiment during the summer of 2022, contacting 80,071 school principals across the United States. The design is simple. A fictional email from a couple, a mother and a father, asks the principal to call a parent back about a general school question. Both parents leave a phone number. The researchers varied which parent sent the email and, crucially, which parent was described as more available — the father, the mother, or neither. Then they tracked who the school called back first.

The result, when the email said nothing about availability: among principals who called someone back, 59% contacted the mother first, against 41% for the father. Mothers were 1.4 times more likely to get that first phone call. And the bias only partly yields to information: even when the couple stated in writing that the father was more available, mothers still got 26% of the calls. When the message said the opposite, they got 90%.

The study is American: American schools, an American sample. But nothing suggests the reflex stops at the border. Front offices, town halls, sports clubs, summer camps often run on the same unspoken assumption: pick one reference parent, and by default, that's her.

One phone call doesn't look like much

A single call from the nurse's office, taken in isolation, is nothing. The problem is what piles up over a full school year. The cafeteria registration in August. The permission slip for the museum trip in October. The reminder from the school doctor about the mandatory checkup. The gym teacher's message about the fall sports camp. The soccer club's email that changed practice time on alternating Wednesdays. Each contact, alone, takes two minutes. Stacked across ten months, they form a continuous stream of information to receive, sort, forward, and remember — the raw material of mental load.

It isn't neutral for what comes next, either. Whoever the school calls becomes, almost automatically, the one who knows the parent-teacher conference is Thursday night, that the vaccination record needs updating before December, that the older kid's internship has to be lined up before February break. The information lands with her first. She then has to decide whether to forward it, hold onto it, or just handle it alone — and handling it alone usually wins, simply because there's no time left to organize the forwarding.

The father paradox

A separate study, published in November 2025 by DREES, the statistics directorate of France's health and social affairs ministries, sheds light on this from another angle. Over twenty years, between 2002 and 2021, fathers do spend more time with children under 6 — two and a half hours more per week than two decades ago. But nearly all of that gain sits in time spent alongside the mother, not instead of her: three hours and forty-five minutes more, specifically, in tandem. Time spent alone with the child actually dropped by thirty minutes over the same period.

In practice: mothers spend an average of 23 hours a week alone with children under 6, four times as long as fathers. And 45% of children under 6 are, in a typical week, never cared for alone by their father at all.

The father is there. He plays, drops the kids off, helps with Tuesday night homework. But he's rarely the solo adult in charge — the one who handles the unexpected, makes the call without checking in first, picks up the phone. And that is exactly the role a school triggers when it dials at 3pm on a Tuesday. And that role stays very unevenly split, even when both parents work full-time. DREES looked at those 700,000 couples, 22% of French families with at least one child under 6: in half of them, daycare runs, paperwork and the unexpected (a sick child, night wakings) fall mainly on the mother, against one family in ten where they fall mainly on the father.

That solo availability carries a direct cost in free time. Still per DREES, in these couples where both parents work full-time, the mother has 3 hours and 10 minutes less per week than the father for anything that isn't work or childcare — 20% less free time.

Why the reflex persists

Nobody at a school front desk consciously decides to sideline fathers. The bias is quieter than that. It rests on an unspoken assumption: the mother is the reference contact, the one who'll answer fast and know what to do with the information. That assumption is built on accumulated experience. If, statistically, she's answered the last ten calls, the pattern hardens into a reflex that feeds itself: the more she's called, the more she becomes the reference parent; the more she's the reference parent, the more she keeps getting called.

This mechanism catches even couples who describe their split as balanced. Among these dual full-time couples, DREES identifies a quarter of families where children are cared for by both parents in a balanced way — more often highly educated, better-off parents. Even in those households, the school's first call has every chance of landing on the same phone it always does.

"But the form only has room for one name"

One objection comes up often: intake forms genuinely only ask for a single priority contact, so isn't this just an artifact of bad form design? Partly, yes — and that's worth fixing on its own. But the study tested exactly that. Both parents' numbers were provided, side by side; the parent who sent the email was listed first, and the researchers varied who that was. Having the father send the email did raise his share of calls — yet even when the father sent it and said he was the more available parent, 12% of calls still went to the mother. When there's no form forcing the choice, the reflex shows up anyway. That's the part worth sitting with: even a neutral starting point doesn't produce a neutral outcome.

What actually changes in a household

A couple can't rewrite a school's calling protocol. But there are three things worth changing this fall.

First, the "primary contact" field on the enrollment form. Most forms only ask for one priority number. If the same name always goes there, the school has no reason to change habits. Listing both parents as equal contacts, or alternating who goes first each year, takes five minutes in September — and changes who picks up in March.

Second, forward the information received instead of quietly handling it alone. A call from the nurse, a note from the teacher, an email from the cafeteria: whoever receives it can choose to share it right away, not just the decision that follows two days later. That's where the real difference sits — being informed at the same time as your partner, not informed after the fact about a choice already made.

Third, formalize who handles what on a standing basis, instead of leaving it to whoever answers the phone that particular day. A shared list or a common family calendar does exactly that — it puts the split in writing so it stops depending on the luck of an incoming call. This is what Mental Loadless is built for: turning a scattered stream of information — schools, doctors, activities — into tasks both parents can see, instead of information stored in one person's head. On this exact pattern, our piece on the default parent breaks down how the "who gets contacted" habit gets set in the first place, and our guide to back-to-school mental load covers other concrete fixes for the fall term.

What this number actually says

The American study doesn't prove French schools behave identically. But it documents a mechanism that goes well beyond the classroom: institutions reach out to whichever parent they perceive as most available, and that perception is built almost entirely on who answered last time. Paired with French data on parental time, it draws the same line: fathers are more present than they were twenty years ago, but rarely alone at the wheel. And as long as that's true, the phone will keep ringing on the same side of the bed.

Sources

Do schools really call the mother first?: In the United States, it has been measured. In a field experiment with 80,071 school principals, when a call was made, the mother was called first 1.4 times more often than the father: 59% of calls versus 41%, even though both numbers were provided and no availability was mentioned (Buzard, Gee and Stoddard).
What if the father says he's more available?: The gap shrinks but doesn't disappear. When the couple signals that the father is more available, the mother still gets 26% of the calls. When the message reinforces the stereotype of a more available mother, she gets 90%. Changing what you tell the school helps, but it isn't enough to restore balance on its own.
Do fathers spend more time alone with young children than before?: No. According to France's DREES (November 2025), fathers spend 2.5 hours more a week with children under 6 than twenty years ago, but that gain happens alongside the mother. Time alone with the child fell by 30 minutes, and 45% of children under 6 are never looked after by their father alone in a typical week.
How do you stop the school from always calling the same parent?: List both parents as equal contacts on enrollment forms, or alternate the primary contact each year. Share every piece of information as soon as it arrives, not just the decision made later. And set who handles what on a standing basis, in a shared list or calendar, so the split stops depending on who happens to pick up.