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By Erika Jooste, Education and Gender Manager, at Sesame Workshop International South Africa
This Women’s Month, we can honour South African women’s strength while also recognising that no caregiver should have to carry impossible loads alone. A caregiver’s strength should never be measured by how much she can endure without help. Despite this, mothers and other female caregivers are still too often expected to absorb the financial, practical and emotional pressures of family life while continuing to provide children with calm, attentive and responsive care.
The effects of that pressure aren’t felt by the caregiver alone. A young child may not understand why a demanding shift, a long commute, rising household costs or an endless list of chores has left their mother or other female caregiver overwhelmed. But children definitely notice changes in tone, patience and attention. Of course, one difficult day or an impatient response will not harm a child, but persistent stress without enough support can be a concern because it makes responsive caregiving tough to sustain.
For many women in South Africa, that stress is shaped by the triple burden of paid work responsibilities, unpaid household chores and caregiving, and the emotional labour of keeping a family functioning. The burden also includes the unseen work of anticipating children’s needs, remembering appointments and keeping family life on track. It consumes time, attention and emotional energy.
These responsibilities are not shared evenly. Women are still far more likely to carry the greater share of daily care, household management and the unseen planning that keeps family life on track. Grandmothers, aunts, older sisters and other women often carry this load too.
A 2024 report by South Africa’s Commission for Gender Equality – Women in the South African Economy – provides evidence of this imbalance, finding that women continued to spend more time than men on childcare and household work. It also found that women devoted more than twice as much time to unpaid care work in and around the home.
Exhaustion under these conditions is not a personal failure; it is a predictable response to a heavy load. When caregivers are stretched beyond capacity, it can become more challenging to notice a child’s cues, respond calmly or remain emotionally available.
Care is not a private responsibility for women to carry. It is a shared social responsibility that enables children, families and communities to thrive. Truly supporting our nation’s children means reducing the pressure on the adults who care for them. Practical help, emotional support and a fairer sharing of responsibility can give caregivers more capacity to respond with the patience, attention and consistency that children deserve.
This support can take many forms – from another adult sharing daily care or a relative providing reliable help to flexible workplaces or services that reduce strain on the household. The aim is to ensure that one person is not expected to absorb every demand alone. This is not simply a story about women’s resilience. It is also about how care is organised in our society and whether the systems around families ease or deepen the pressure caregivers face.
Fathers and male caregivers are an important part of this wider support system. Fathers do not ‘help with caregiving’; they are caregivers in their own right. Shared care means taking ownership not only of daily tasks, but also of noticing children’s needs, making plans and carrying the mental load that keeps family life functioning. Research also shows that fathers benefit from caregiving. Equimundo’s 2026 State of the World’s Fathers report, drawing on data from 16 countries, found that nearly 90% of fathers described involvement with their children as one of the greatest sources of happiness and meaning in their lives.
South Africa’s revised parental-leave position offers one example of how policy can encourage greater sharing of care. In October 2025, the Constitutional Court ruled that employed parents may share a collective leave entitlement of four months and 10 days. Beyond giving families more choice, such shared parental leave challenges the assumption that mothers should automatically be the default caregivers.
Of course, policy alone will not create equality in the home. Greater choice will only reduce women’s workload if another parent takes genuine responsibility. Sesame Workshop’s own impact findings support this. Fathers reported wanting to be involved and believed mothers supported their involvement, while mothers did not always experience fathers as sufficiently supportive. Greater participation will not reduce women’s burden if women remain responsible for organising, delegating and monitoring it. Shared care requires genuine ownership from fathers and other caregivers, alongside family-friendly workplaces, accessible childcare, reliable services and a wider circle of safe, responsive adults.
So, this Women’s Month South Africa must do more than admire women’s resilience. We must strengthen our commitment to building a stronger culture of care recognises that raising children is not the work of mothers alone. It is the responsibility of families, communities, workplaces and society as a whole.
About Sesame Workshop International South Africa
Sesame Workshop International South Africa is the impact nonprofit whose mission is to help children everywhere to be stronger, smarter, and kinder. For over 25 years, we have worked at the intersection of education, media, and research, creating joyful experiences that enrich minds and expand hearts, all in the service of empowering each generation to build a better world.
Our beloved characters, iconic shows, direct services, and outreach in communities bring playful early learning to children in the context of all the ecosystem partners (families, parents, ECD Centers, educational institutions etc.) that enable them to be the best they can be. Takalani Sesame, the South African adaptation of Sesame Street launched in 2000 and has impacted millions of young lives to date.
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