Working moms are used to balancing busy work and home schedules. After all, it’s what we do best. But all that multitasking may be making us more stressed, and decreasing our efficiency, according to a new study published in the American Sociological Review. What's more, juggling more than one task at a time appears to be more stressful for women than for men.

“We find that mothers spend ten more hours a week multitasking compared to fathers and that these additional hours are mainly related to time spent on housework and child care,” write study authors Shira Offer, PhD, and Barbara Schneider, PhD. “For mothers, multitasking activities at home and in public are associated with an increase in negative emotions, stress, psychological distress and work-family conflict. By contrast, fathers’ multitasking at home involves less housework and child care and is not a negative experience.”

Drs. Offer and Schneider also explain that oftentimes moms are multitasking in public places—like taking an impromptu work call while their kids are causing chaos with the supermarket shopping carts—where actions are highly visible to other people: “Therefore, their ability to fulfill their role as good mothers can be easily judged and criticized when they multitask in these contexts, making it a more stressful and negative experience for them than for fathers.”  

We want to know: Does multitasking in public make you stressed out? Or do you find that you’re more efficient when you’re juggling many tasks at the same time?