“Health care or monitoring is an invisible but fundamental daily task. » Françoise, 68, a retired geologist, recognizes this: she has always “managed alone the health of [ses] two children », then that of his parents. She breaks it down like this: “My husband turned away from these concerns, even though he felt concerned. It weighed on me, because he relied on me a lot. He knew that “I ensured” and that allowed him to never include in his timetable the slightest medical appointment of his children. »
As in the case of Françoise, the mental burden of making appointments and medical follow-up of children weighs largely on female shoulders. On Doctolib, in 2021, 81% of appointments made for minors were booked by women. This theme was also the subject, in February 2022, of a survey commissioned from OpinionWay by the Qare teleconsultation platform. One of the major lessons of this study: women are more involved in the management of household health, in terms of time and money. Indeed, 67% of them believe that they are the main parent who takes care of all the medical tasks of the children, a proportion which rises to 82% among the CSP +; and 12% spend more than 100 euros per month on health expenses (compared to 9% among men).
For Doctor Julie Salomon, pediatrician and director of Qare, such a structural phenomenon required not only to be studied, but also to be qualified with the appropriate term: “The vast majority of our patients being women between 20 and 50 years old, we wanted to know if they assumed what we decided to call the “medical burden” [à savoir la charge mentale liée au suivi de la santé de la famille]. With this survey, we found that this phenomenon was not limited to our teleconsultation activity. » However, this theme is not new. Already in 1995, the sociologist Geneviève Cresson had studied Domestic Health Work (The Harmattan), which consists of a variety of “invisible” tasks mostly undertaken by women to keep family members in good shape. What has changed today is the sensitivity to this type of theme, in a context where the unequal distribution of tasks (household, educational, etc.) is being called into question.
Quasi-military organization
To assume this “medical burden”, many mothers explain that they set up a quasi-military organization. Valérie Clech, 52, HRD and mother of two adult children, says: “My husband being often on the move, and having a position of responsibility myself, I came to manage all the information and the dates of medical obligations on an Excel file (one tab per child, one for me and one for my husband) to remember the last dental check-up, the last pap smear or the last dose of antibiotics. When my father’s health deteriorated, I added a tab… It’s stressful, but I feel that health is part of my role as a mother. »
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