The Journal

The default parent: why the school rings you first

The school rings the same parent every time, and the usual explanation is that its records hold one name, or that they rank two. Neither is what the law says. The English school register is symmetrical; it is the guidance that hands the school the choice about which adult to deal with. This piece sets out what is actually stored in each of the four nations, where the discretion sits, and what to ask for at each institution.

Where the phrase came from, and what it actually names

The default parent is the one the school rings. The phrase is an internet coinage rather than a term of art, and it appears in none of the documents that govern the thing it describes: search the School Attendance (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2024, Keeping children safe in education 2026 and the Department for Education's statutory guidance on school attendance, and "default parent" returns no hits in any of the three. What the phrase names is real — one adult absorbs the interruptions, the forms and the appointments, and nobody remembers agreeing to it. The usual explanation of why is wrong.

That explanation comes in two versions: institutions store one name and it is yours, or they keep a ranked list and you are top of it. Neither survives the same three documents. "First contact", "primary contact" and "order of contact" appear in none of them. "Priority" appears twice in the safeguarding guidance, both times meaning urgency; in the attendance guidance it appears once, about which cohort to support first, and "priorities" twice, about a local authority's aims for improvement. None of those is a contact order, and none of the three ranks parents. What replaces the ranking is more interesting: the law is even-handed, and the discretion is not.

The nearest thing to a research literature is small, and does not claim to generalise. Allison Daminger's 2019 paper in American Sociological Review draws on 70 in-depth interviews with members of 35 couples, and found women doing more of a household's cognitive work and particularly more of the anticipating and monitoring. Writing about it afterwards, Daminger described the sample herself: 70 college-educated, married parents of young children, most of them white or Asian and in different-sex couples, which she says makes it difficult to generalise to other racial groups or to same-sex couples. This site's mental load article carries her four-component definition. She describes the shape of the work, not why the phone rings where it does.

Not one name, and not a ranking either

What an English school must hold sits in regulation 8(2) of the School Attendance (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2024, in force since 19 August 2024, whose Schedule 2 revoked the 2006 Regulations in their entirety. The register must contain "the full name and address of each of the pupil's parents", and "which of the pupil's parents, if any, the pupil normally lives with and at least one telephone number that each such parent can be contacted with in an emergency".

That is symmetrical. The register does not ask for a first and a second, it asks for each. The ranking arrives with the software. Arbor, one of the management-information systems English schools buy, sorts a pupil's guardians by priority, and its help centre tells schools that where two guardians are both Priority 1 the order between them is merely the order they were added, with no way to move one above the other short of demoting one to Priority 2. Bromcom, another, gives each contact a Contact Priority and, separately, a priority on each telephone number. The number on the screen is a product decision, not the regulation the school complies with.

Everything past that line is advice, and says so in its own words. Keeping children safe in education 2026, which the Department for Education's publication page records as in force from 1 September 2026, asks at paragraph 126 that "where reasonably possible, schools and colleges hold more than one emergency contact number for each pupil or student", then says of its own request: "This goes beyond the legal minimum." The attendance guidance makes the same point at paragraph 216 and labels it: "The DfE's advice is that where reasonably practicable, schools should hold an emergency contact number for more than one person for each pupil." The statutory floor is at least one number for each resident parent. A second contact is good practice, not law.

One detail is worth taking to a school office. The footnote to that sentence in the safeguarding guidance reads, in full: "See The Education (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2006" — the instrument revoked two years before the guidance was published. Paragraph 223 of the same document cites the 2024 Regulations correctly. Statutory safeguarding guidance is internally inconsistent about which register law is in force.

The places you became first contact without anyone deciding

The decision nobody remembers making was not, in most cases, made by anybody in the household. Working together to improve school attendance, the Department for Education's statutory guidance for England, first published in May 2022 and last updated on 9 July 2026, says at paragraph 1 that schools, trusts, governing bodies and local authorities "must have regard to it". At paragraph 3 it says this: "Where this guidance refers to a parent, the school and/or local authority will need to decide which adult is most appropriate to work with."

That sentence is the mechanism. The register is even-handed, the guidance hands the school a choice, and the only steer it gives is that the adult be the one "most appropriate to work with" — a test about school business, not about whose phone rings. Somebody in an office chose once, and nothing since has prompted a review.

The surgery works differently, and it is worth being exact about how. NHS England's Personal Demographics Service, the national master database of patients in England, Wales and the Isle of Man, permits only one active and valid contact for each combination of communication method and usage. It is the child's record, not the household's: it can carry related people, a next of kin among them, but the mobile number and the email address are the patient's own, and there is one of each kind. Where a message is sent through NHS Notify, the national messaging service, that record is what it reaches — Notify looks up contact details in the Personal Demographics Service using the NHS number, and using details from anywhere else takes a formal request granted only for specific cases with compelling evidence. Whether a particular surgery's appointment reminder goes through Notify is a separate question, and not one this page can answer: Notify's own service page says it is strongly recommended for national communications and that an approach for local primary and secondary care services is still being worked out. No national guidance could be found stating which parent a child's reminder or recall letter should be addressed to. A club's contact sheet is governed by none of this; it is a form, filled in once.

You are already on the record. You were never the one rung

The common version of the complaint — that the other parent is not on the school's records — is usually false in England. Regulation 8(2) already requires both: every parent's full name and address, and an emergency number for each parent the child lives with. Both of you are on it. One of you has never been the one rung. That is a discretion gap rather than a records gap, which is why adding yourself to something rarely changes anything.

What the register holds still has to be stated by jurisdiction, because the four nations are not drafted alike — though the difference is smaller than it looks. In Wales, regulation 5(1)(c) of the Education (Pupil Registration) (Wales) Regulations 2010 requires the name and address of every person known to be a parent and then, "against the entry on the register of the particulars of any parent with whom the pupil normally resides", an emergency telephone number. Read distributively — and in subordinate legislation made since the start of 1979 the singular includes the plural unless a contrary intention appears — that is a number against each resident parent's entry, which is the duty England now spells out as "each such parent". The revoked English Regulations of 2006 used the same formula word for word, but for a dropped "at" in the Welsh text. What changed in England in 2024 was the drafting, not the obligation.

Scotland and Northern Ireland sit further from the English position than Wales does. The Schools General (Scotland) Regulations 1975 prescribe no parent name, address or telephone number in the registers at all: regulation 9 and Schedule 1 govern the register of admission and withdrawal and the attendance register, and neither asks for a parent. Parent details sit in the pupil's progress record under regulation 10, which asks for a name, an address, an occupation and, where appropriate, a place of work — and, separately, for "the name and address of any person other than the parent who may be notified in the case of any emergency affecting the pupil". Scotland does prescribe an emergency contact, then, but expressly not a parent, and the word telephone appears nowhere in the instrument. Northern Ireland's Registration and Attendance of Pupils Regulations 1974 are older still and shorter: the General Register must show the "name and address of parent", in the singular, with no second parent and no number of any kind.

What to ask for, and in what sequence

Because there is no order, there is nothing to reorder. The ask differs at each institution, and the school one differs at each of the four nations.

Start with the school, and start with the right rule. In England that is regulation 8(2)(e) and (f) of the 2024 Regulations; in Wales, regulation 5(1)(c) of the 2010 Regulations; in Scotland there is no register entry to point at, so the ask is about the school's own records, and the only prescribed emergency contact is the progress record's non-parent one; in Northern Ireland the General Register carries one parent's name and address and no telephone number at all. Where an entry the regulations require is missing, that is a compliance point rather than a favour.

Then ask the separate question that governs the phone call. In England that is paragraph 3 of the attendance guidance — which adult the school has been deciding to work with — and it is worth asking for the answer to be written down. The guidance gives the school the choice; nothing stops the school being told which choice the household wants.

Then the surgery, where the first question is which system the message comes from. If it is sent through NHS Notify it is drawn from the Personal Demographics Service record, and because that record holds one active contact per method and usage, a second mobile cannot sit alongside the first for the same purpose: the change is a replacement, not an addition. If the practice sends reminders from its own clinical system, the Personal Demographics Service rule does not govern them and the ask is simply to change the number the practice holds. Ask which it is before asking for anything else.

Dentists and clubs come last, because there is no rule to invoke, only whatever the enrolment form said. The fix there is a new form rather than an amendment to the old one.

What is left over when the forms are done

Fixing the records fixes the interruptions, not the work that generated them — the part with no field on any register: knowing the term dates, noticing the shoes no longer fit, holding the fact that the appointment is on Thursday. That is the anticipating and monitoring Daminger's interviews described.

The scale can be stated once, carefully. In its article Families and the labour market, UK: 2021, released on 22 July 2022, the Office for National Statistics reported that in March 2022 employed women living with dependent children spent an average of 84 minutes a day on unpaid childcare, against 55 minutes for employed men living with dependent children. Those numbers come from time diaries kept between 12 and 20 March 2022; they count only what the diarist recorded as their main activity at the time, and they average across everyone in the group, including the people who did none of it that day. The Time Use figures in that article were corrected in June 2023. It is a population average for employed parents across the UK, and the article publishes no sample size for the cut. It describes a country, not a house.

First position matters because the call has a cost that lands somewhere. Section 57A of the Employment Rights Act 1996, which extends to England, Wales and Scotland — Northern Ireland has its own equivalent, in materially identical words, at Article 85A of the Employment Rights (Northern Ireland) Order 1996 — entitles an employee to "take a reasonable amount of time off during the employee's working hours in order to take action which is necessary" when a dependant falls ill, to arrange care for a dependant who is ill or injured, when arrangements for a dependant's care are unexpectedly disrupted or brought to an end, and to deal with an incident involving their child that happens unexpectedly while the school is responsible for them. No published UK figure of any quality establishes which parent takes that time, so this page does not offer one. The shape of the right can be stated: gov.uk says there is no set amount of time, because it depends on the situation, and that an employer may pay for the time but does not have to. The person whose number is stored is the person whose unpaid, unquantified afternoon it becomes.

Sources

  • Citation and abstract in full: "The Cognitive Dimension of Household Labor. By: Daminger, Allison. American Sociological Review. Aug2019, Vol. 84 Issue 4, p609-633." The abstract carries "Using 70 in-depth interviews with members of 35 couples", the four components ("anticipating needs, identifying options for filling them, making decisions, and monitoring progress") and the finding relied on: "women in this study do more cognitive labor overall and more of the anticipation and monitoring work in particular" (US spelling in the original). This listing is used because the SAGE version at doi.org/10.1177/0003122419859007 resolves but is paywalled; the page range and components match the citation already published in this site's mental load article. Note that this page does not describe the sample beyond "35 couples" — the descriptors used in the prose come from the next source, not this one. — Allison Daminger, "The Cognitive Dimension of Household Labor", American Sociological Review 84(4): 609-633, as listed by the Work and Family Researchers Network, 2019
  • Daminger's own account of the sample behind that paper, and the source for every descriptor the prose uses: "To get the data, I interviewed 70 college-educated, married parents of young children, representing 35 couples. (Though I sought diversity along other demographic dimensions, the vast majority of respondents were white or Asian and belonged to a different-sex couple, making it difficult to generalize to other racial groups or to same-sex couples.)" Published 19 September 2019 under Daminger's byline; the page's further-reading list cites the American Sociological Review paper at 84(4): 609-633. — Allison Daminger, "How Couples Share 'Cognitive Labor' and Why it Matters", Behavioral Scientist, 2019
  • The two quoted requirements, verbatim: the admission register must contain "(e) the full name and address of each of the pupil's parents" and "(f) which of the pupil's parents, if any, the pupil normally lives with and at least one telephone number that each such parent can be contacted with in an emergency". Commencement note on the same page: "Reg. 8 in force at 19.8.2024". Nothing in the regulation ranks parents or orders contacts. This is the England-only rule the prose points readers at. — The School Attendance (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2024, SI 2024/208, reg. 8(2), 2024
  • The revocation relied on for "whose Schedule 2 revoked the 2006 Regulations in their entirety". The revocations table lists "The Education (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2006, 2006/1751" against extent of revocation "The whole Regulations", together with ten later amending instruments. Commencement note: "Sch. 2 in force at 19.8.2024". — The School Attendance (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2024, SI 2024/208, Sch. 2 (revocations table), 2024
  • The whole-instrument search behind the negatives in section one. Machine-readable full text of SI 2024/208, all regulations and both schedules. Searched on 14 September 2026: "default parent" 0 hits, "priority" 0, "first contact" 0, "primary contact" 0, "order of contact" 0, "point of contact" 0. The word "telephone" occurs twice: in reg. 8(2)(f), and again in the list of information a deletion return must give the local authority, which asks for "at least one telephone number that each such parent can be contacted with in an emergency" in the same terms. This URL serves the instrument as XML; the human-readable equivalent is legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2024/208/contents. — The School Attendance (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2024, SI 2024/208 — full text (XML), 2024
  • The Welsh register rule, quoted in the prose. Reg. 5(1)(c) requires "the name and address of every person known to the proprietor of the school to be a parent of the pupil and, against the entry on the register of the particulars of any parent with whom the pupil normally resides, an indication of that fact and a note of least one telephone number at which the parent can be contacted in an emergency" — the missing "at" is the instrument's own. The obligation attaches against the entry of any parent with whom the pupil normally resides, so on the ordinary distributive reading it applies to each of them; the earlier draft of this piece read it as requiring a number for one parent only, which the text does not say. Latest revised version, no outstanding effects recorded; commencement note "Reg. 5 in force at 1.9.2010". — The Education (Pupil Registration) (Wales) Regulations 2010, WSI 2010/1954, reg. 5(1)(c), 2010
  • The revoked English wording, needed for "used the same formula word for word". The as-made text of reg. 5(1)(c) reads "the name and address of every person known to the proprietor of the school to be a parent of the pupil and, against the entry on the register of the particulars of any parent with whom the pupil normally resides, an indication of that fact and a note of at least one telephone number at which the parent can be contacted in an emergency" — identical to the Welsh provision except for the "at". The revised version of this page is blank, the whole instrument having been revoked on 19 August 2024, so the as-made version is cited. — The Education (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2006, SI 2006/1751, reg. 5(1)(c), as made (revoked 19 August 2024), 2006
  • Paragraph 126 (p.37), verbatim: "where reasonably possible, schools and colleges hold more than one emergency contact number for each pupil or student. This goes beyond the legal minimum." Footnote 30, attached to that sentence and reproduced in full: "See The Education (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2006" — the instrument revoked on 19 August 2024 — while paragraph 223 of the same document cites "the School Attendance (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2024" correctly. Full 198-page text extracted and searched on 14 September 2026: "default parent", "first contact", "primary contact" and "order of contact" return zero hits; "priority" appears twice, both about urgency (engaging parents "as a matter of priority"; "the priority should be to make the victim's daily experience as normal as possible"); "point of contact" appears once, about the designated safeguarding lead and the safeguarding partners, never a parent. — Department for Education, Keeping children safe in education 2026 (statutory safeguarding guidance, 198pp), 2026
  • The in-force date the prose gives for the safeguarding guidance, which the PDF itself does not carry. The publication page is headed "Applies to England" and its update log records, against 1 September 2026: "The September 2026 versions of 'Keeping children safe in education', 'Keeping children safe in education: part one' and 'Keeping children safe in education: part one - overview for all staff' are now in force, replacing previous versions." The 7 July 2026 entry describes the same document as coming "into force from 1 September 2026". First published 26 March 2015. — GOV.UK, Keeping children safe in education (publication page, Department for Education), 2026
  • Paragraph 1: "This guidance is statutory, and schools, trusts, governing bodies, and local authorities must have regard to it as part of their efforts to maintain high levels of school attendance." Paragraph 3, quoted in full in the prose: "Where this guidance refers to a parent, the school and/or local authority will need to decide which adult is most appropriate to work with", followed by a list of who counts as a parent and no further steer. Paragraph 216 repeats the register requirements and then labels the extra contact as advice: "The DfE's advice is that where reasonably practicable, schools should hold an emergency contact number for more than one person for each pupil." Full 100-page text extracted and searched on 14 September 2026: "default parent", "first contact", "primary contact" and "order of contact" return zero hits; "priority" appears once ("make this group the top priority for support") and "priorities" twice, both about a local authority's "aims and priorities for improving attendance"; "point of contact" appears six times, every one a school's named contact in the local authority's School Attendance Support Team, never a parent. — Department for Education, Working together to improve school attendance (July 2026 edition, 100pp), 2026
  • The publication dates the prose gives for the attendance guidance, which the PDF does not carry. The page is headed "Applies to England", "Published: 6 May 2022", "Last updated: 9 July 2026"; the 9 July 2026 entry reads "Updated guidance on 'Working together to improve school attendance' with technical clarifications", and the 7 March 2024 entry describes the guidance as applying from 19 August 2024. — GOV.UK, Working together to improve school attendance (publication page, Department for Education), 2026
  • The description of what the Personal Demographics Service is and holds: "the national master database of all NHS patients in England, Wales and the Isle of Man", holding the NHS number, "demographic data - name, addresses, date of birth", "contact details - such as phone number or email address", registered GP, nominated pharmacy, "related people, such as next of kin", restricted-access flags and "historic information such as previous addresses". This is the page behind the prose's statement that the record can carry related people and a next of kin. It says nothing about appointment reminders. — NHS England Digital, Personal Demographics Service (service description), accessed September 2026
  • The one-contact rule, verbatim: "Within PDS there must only be one active and valid telecom or address for each combination of telecom communication method and usage or address type on a patient's record at a given time. This means the old address, as well as all inactive and invalid datapoints, must be removed from the patient's records." Communication methods are tel, fax, mailto and textphone; usages include home, mobile, temporary and work; address types include home, temporary and correspondence. The page also notes that "The patient's emergency telecom contact is under review for improvements and is subject to change", and, for sending messages, points elsewhere: "For sending communications, see NHS Notify." Searched on 14 September 2026: the words appointment, reminder, read-only and next of kin do not appear on this page. — NHS England Digital, Personal Demographics Service FHIR API - get and update contact details in PDS, accessed September 2026
  • The link between the stored record and a message actually sent, which neither PDS page makes. "NHS Notify uses recipients' NHS numbers in the Personal Demographics Service to find their contact details and check if they have any flagged records or other restricted statuses", and "If you need to use contact details that are not from PDS, you must make a formal request to NHS Notify. This is only granted for specific use-cases with compelling data and evidence to support this." The same page is the authority for the limit the prose puts on that: under National usage policy, "This service is strongly recommended for all national communications that support direct care in England. We are working on an approach for other services, particularly local services for both primary and secondary care, where there is also considerable demand for using the service." Nothing on the page says a GP practice's own appointment reminders are sent through it. — NHS England Digital, NHS Notify (service description), accessed September 2026
  • The first of the two school management-information systems named, quoted verbatim: "If the guardians are both Priority 1, the guardians will be in the order they were added to Arbor, so there isn't a way to move one guardian above the other (aside from setting one as Priority 2)." The same page: "For emergency contact details on a student's profile, the guardian's mobile number will automatically be used as the emergency contact number. There isn't a way to edit this." Vendor help centre, article dated 9 August 2024. — Arbor Education Help Centre, "How are contact phone and mobile numbers ordered?", accessed September 2026
  • The second product, cited so that "the ranking arrives with the software" rests on more than one vendor. Bromcom's documentation lists, among the fields on a student's contact, "Source of Contact Priority - select from dropdown list" and "Contact Priority - this is the Contact's Priority to the Student", and separately, of phone and email entries, "Note: The Priority is the Telephone priority and not the Contact priority." Neither priority is required by any register regulation. — Bromcom Documentation Centre, "How to Manage and Add Contacts from a Student's Record", accessed September 2026
  • The Scottish register-keeping duty, in full: "An education authority shall cause registers to be kept and preserved in respect of every school under their management in accordance with the provisions of Schedule 1 to these regulations." It prescribes no particulars itself; everything the registers must show is in Schedule 1. Commencement note: "Reg. 9 in force at 9.8.1975". — The Schools General (Scotland) Regulations 1975, SI 1975/1135, reg. 9, 1975
  • The Scottish progress record. Reg. 10(1)(a) requires "the pupil's full name and address, date of birth, position in his family and his parent's name and address, occupation and, where appropriate, place of work". Reg. 10(1)(b), quoted in the prose, requires "the name and address of any person other than the parent who may be notified in the case of any emergency affecting the pupil" — an emergency contact who is expressly not a parent, and with no telephone number prescribed. Latest revised version, carrying amendment notes F1 to F8: reg. 10(1)(a) and (b) stand unamended, and reg. 10(2) was revoked on 5 January 2004 by the Pupils' Educational Records (Scotland) Regulations 2003, SSI 2003/581, reg. 11(2). — The Schools General (Scotland) Regulations 1975, SI 1975/1135, reg. 10, 1975
  • What the Scottish registers must actually contain, and the basis for saying they hold no parent details. Paragraph 1 requires a register of admission and withdrawal and an attendance register; paragraph 2 provides that the register of admission and withdrawal "shall show in respect of each pupil admitted or re-admitted to the school his full name and date of birth" and, on withdrawal, the date and reason; paragraph 4 provides that the attendance register "shall contain the name of each pupil"; paragraph 5 governs recording absence. No paragraph of the Schedule asks for a parent's name, address or telephone number. — The Schools General (Scotland) Regulations 1975, SI 1975/1135, Sch. 1 (registers), 1975
  • The whole-instrument search behind "the word telephone appears nowhere in the instrument". Machine-readable full text of SI 1975/1135, all parts and schedules, searched on 14 September 2026: "telephone" 0 hits. "Emergency" occurs exactly once, in reg. 10(1)(b). This URL serves the instrument as XML; the human-readable equivalent is legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1975/1135/contents. — The Schools General (Scotland) Regulations 1975, SI 1975/1135 - full text (XML), 1975
  • The Northern Irish register rule, replacing the earlier draft's statement that no equivalent could be found. Regulation 4 requires the proprietor of every school to keep a General Register containing, for each pupil, "(a) names in full and sex; (b) religious denomination; (c) name and address of parent" and ten further particulars - a single parent, and no telephone number. Searched in full: the words telephone, emergency and contact do not appear anywhere in the Regulations. Made 29 April 1974 under the Education and Libraries (Northern Ireland) Order 1972, revoking the 1948 Regulations; legislation.gov.uk publishes it only as a PDF of the printed version and records no associated documents or amendments. — The Registration and Attendance of Pupils Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1974, SR (NI) 1974/78, reg. 4, 1974
  • The right relied on in the closing section, and the limbs the prose describes. S.57A(1): an employee is entitled to "take a reasonable amount of time off during the employee's working hours in order to take action which is necessary - (a) to provide assistance on an occasion when a dependant falls ill, gives birth or is injured or assaulted, (b) to make arrangements for the provision of care for a dependant who is ill or injured, (c) in consequence of the death of a dependant, (d) because of the unexpected disruption or termination of arrangements for the care of a dependant, or (e) to deal with an incident which involves a child of the employee and which occurs unexpectedly in a period during which an educational establishment which the child attends is responsible for him." Limb (b) is confined to care for a dependant who is ill or injured, which is why the prose no longer says "when care has to be arranged". Territorial extent shown on the page as E+W+S. — Employment Rights Act 1996, s.57A (time off for dependants), 1996
  • Northern Ireland's equivalent, cited because s.57A does not extend there. Art. 85A(1) opens in the same words - "An employee is entitled to be permitted by his employer to take a reasonable amount of time off during the employee's working hours in order to take action which is necessary" - and carries the same five limbs (a) to (e) in the same order and wording as the Act. — The Employment Rights (Northern Ireland) Order 1996, SI 1996/1919 (N.I. 16), art. 85A, 1996
  • The interpretive rule behind reading the Welsh provision distributively. S.6: "In any Act, unless the contrary intention appears, ... (c) words in the singular include the plural and words in the plural include the singular." — Interpretation Act 1978, s.6(c) (gender and number), 1978
  • What carries s.6(c) across to regulations, and the basis for the prose's "in subordinate legislation made since the start of 1979". S.23(1): "The provisions of this Act, except sections 1 to 3 and 4(b), apply, so far as applicable and unless the contrary intention appears, to subordinate legislation made after the commencement of this Act ... as they apply to Acts." S.6 is not among the excepted sections. The Welsh Regulations were made in 2010, and the commencement date is in the next entry. — Interpretation Act 1978, s.23(1) (application to other instruments), 1978
  • The commencement date behind "made since the start of 1979". S.26: "This Act shall come into force on 1st January 1979." — Interpretation Act 1978, s.26 (commencement), 1978
  • The two figures and every qualifier attached to them: "In March 2022, employed women living with dependent children spent more time on unpaid childcare (an average of 84 minutes per day) and household work (an average of 169 minutes per day) than employed men living with dependent children (55 and 106 minutes per day, respectively)." Release date 22 July 2022; the estimates come from Wave 4 of the ONS Time Use Survey, whose 2022 fieldwork ran "12 to 20 March 2022" and covered the United Kingdom. The article's own method note is the authority for the two caveats in the prose: respondents could record more than one activity at once but "activities that respondents regarded as their main activity were used here", and "this average will include people that do not engage in certain types of activities on a given day". The page carries a correction notice dated 7 June 2023: "We have corrected errors in the Time Use Survey data presented in the Main Points, Section 8 and Figure 10 within this bulletin." No sample size is published for this cut, and the article's title and URL carry 2021 while the measurement period is March 2022. — Office for National Statistics, Families and the labour market, UK: 2021, 2022
  • The two quoted sentences: "You're allowed a reasonable amount of time off to deal with the emergency, but there's no set amount of time as it depends on the situation", and "Your employer may pay you for time off to look after dependants but they do not have to." — GOV.UK, Time off for family and dependants: Your rights, accessed September 2026

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