As brick-and-mortar retailers, especially smaller ones, try to reach their primary shopper, they are competing for a person with very little time. Or at least that is how she perceives her situation.
According to a recent study from the Pew Research Center, for full-time working mothers who balance their jobs and obligations ranging from child care to shopping, “feeling rushed is an almost constant reality.”
Four-in-10 full-time working moms say they always feel rushed, even to do the things they have to do; an additional 50 percent say they sometimes feel rushed and just 10 percent never feel rushed.
In comparison, the report says that about 3-in-10 mothers who are employed part time or not employed say they always feel rushed. But while 61 percent of moms who are employed part time say they sometimes feel rushed, fewer of those who are not employed (49 percent) feel similarly. In turn, mothers who do not work outside the home are about twice as likely as those who do to say they never feel rushed.
Full-time moms working outside the home also are more likely to say they both don’t have enough time with their children and also to say they don’t have enough time away from their children to get together with friends, to go shopping, pursue hobbies or other interests.
And when it comes to the leisure time needed to pursue those interests, about half or more of all parents, regardless of their employment situation, say there is not enough of it. For full-time working mothers this is especially true: 59 percent said they don’t have enough time away from their children to get together with friends or to pursue hobbies and other interests, compared with about half of mothers who are employed part time or not employed.
