Challenges In Tough Times: Portrait of Stress on Housewives and Mother with Dual Role

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought mothers to experience additional roles and responsibilities when their children should study from home. This kind of situation causes stress that cannot be controlled and it continues to increase, so it needs internal support (self) to minimize the level of maternal stress experienced. Following up on this, this study aims to determine the differences in maternal stress levels among housewives and multiple-role mothers during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic. This research was conducted using a comparative quantitative method. 200 people which consisted of 100 housewives and 100 multiple-role mothers participated in this research using the snowball sampling technique. The measurement used is the perceived stress scale (PSS10) developed by Cohen. Comparatively, the result proved that there was no stress difference (sig. t = 0.809) between housewives and multiple-role mothers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, it appears that the problem of shared stress that is experienced is quite risky for the housewives’ and multiple-roles mothers’ mental health during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic.