We wanted to understand whether schools themselves might unintentionally contribute to this imbalance by defaulting to contacting mothers more than fathers. Economists and other social scientists have long recognized that mothers spend more time than fathers on childcare, even when both parents work full-time. This gap matters, because the way child care is divvied up shapes much more than parents’ work schedules. Schools received an email from a fictitious two-parent household with both a mother and father interested in enrolling a child. Laura K. Gee, Kristy Buzard and Olga Stoddard are associate professors of economics at Tufts University, Syracuse University and Brigham Young University, respectively.