On the occasion of Mother’s and Father’s Day, the challenges that parents face come into focus. Two thirds of mothers feel heavily psychologically burdened by the demands of everyday life. Many fathers are similarly stressed: every second father (50 percent) shares the feeling of psychological stress.
Financial independence plays an important role, especially for women. These and other results come from a representative study by the comparison portal Verivox, which deals with the topic of financial independence and highlights the challenges that parents face today.
The compatibility of family, household and everyday organization leads to increased stress and psychological strain for many women. This is particularly true for mothers, 65 percent of whom say they feel heavily burdened by tasks such as financial management, housekeeping, organizing appointments and child care. This compares to 53 percent of fathers and 51 percent of women overall who report similar feelings. In addition, more than three quarters of mothers (76 percent) say that psychological stress has a negative impact on their personal well-being – a higher proportion than fathers (66 percent).
The study also underlines the high priority of financial independence for women: 83 percent of the women surveyed consider it particularly important, compared to 79 percent of men. For women with children it is 80 percent. Sandra Vollmer, Managing Director of Verivox, explains: “The goal of financial independence presents mothers with particular challenges, as they often have to juggle between raising children and their own professional development. Parental leave, parental leave and part-time work often make it difficult to continually build up your own financial cushion and secure your long-term future on your own.”
The results of the study also show that women perceive financial independence more positively than men: 87 percent of women feel that financial independence enables them to determine their own lives, compared to 77 percent of men. For 86 percent of women, financial independence also reduces the feeling of being dependent on others, compared to 79 percent of men. It is also interesting that being able to plan the future more easily is more important for women (85 percent) than for men (78 percent).
The Verivox study shows a clear connection between the pursuit of financial independence and interest in financial education. The question was how important personal financial independence is compared to other life goals. It was found that 85 percent of participants for whom financial education is important or very important attached great importance to financial independence. In contrast, only 54 percent of those surveyed who consider financial education less important give financial independence a similarly high priority.
The survey was carried out on behalf of Verivox by the opinion research institute Innofact in November 2023 and is based on the answers of 2,497 people from an ISO-certified online panel with around 500,000 members. The participants were 33.8 percent men and 66.2 percent women and rated the importance of financial independence in their lives.