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Having a Working Mother Is Good For You

Jim Aisner jaisner+hbs.edu 617-495-6157 Rimjhim Dey [email protected] 917-514-3359

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For mothers in the workplace, a year (and counting) like no other

Working mothers are a resilient group, accustomed to juggling work responsibilities and family time with aplomb. Before the COVID-19 crisis, they had slowly been making progress in the workplace. But the challenges of the past year have made many wonder whether all the scrambling has been worth it.

McKinsey’s 2020 Women in the Workplace report , conducted with LeanIn.Org , revealed a startling statistic: one in four working women in North America said that they were considering downshifting their careers or dropping out of the workforce entirely. For working mothers, and particularly those with young children, the number was one in three.

Research from McKinsey over the past year shows just how dramatically the pandemic has affected working mothers. They’ve grappled with a “double shift” of household responsibilities, mental health challenges, a more difficult remote-work experience, and concerns about higher rates of unemployment—particularly among mothers of color and single mothers. These burdens come on top of structural barriers for working women, including being the “only” woman in the room and playing an allyship role for others.

We know that women’s advancement in the workforce matters; companies with more women executives  are more likely to outperform those with fewer senior women. Working mothers comprised nearly a third of the female workforce in the United States in 2020, 1 Cheridan Christnacht and Briana Sullivan, “About two-thirds of the 23.5 million working women with children under 18 worked full-time in 2018,” US Census Bureau, May 8, 2020, census.gov. so employers cannot afford to ignore or minimize the hardships that millions of women now face. If organizations respond well by building a more flexible and empathetic workplace, they can retain the employees most affected by the pandemic and nurture a culture in which working mothers have equal opportunity to achieve their potential. And there are signs that this is beginning to happen.

In this article, we explore McKinsey analysis that highlights the challenges facing working mothers, coupled with actions that companies can take to help these women get back on track.

At the beginning of 2020, the representation of women in corporate America was trending in the right direction. Between January 2015 and January 2020, the number of women in senior-vice-president positions increased from 23 to 28 percent, and in the C-suite from 17 to 21 percent.

The pandemic stall: Working mothers hit a wall

Our research shows that before the pandemic, working mothers had similar career ambitions as working women overall. In fact, the Women in the Workplace data from 2019 indicated that working mothers in North America appeared to register higher ambition numbers in several key categories (Exhibit 1).

But the pandemic altered that equation: the added burdens at work and at home since the COVID-19 crisis began have pushed roughly 33 percent of working mothers to consider downshifting their careers or leaving their jobs altogether. In a workforce that generally begins at gender parity but drops off steeply throughout the promotion pipeline, a step back from employment—and a related drop in promotion rates for women—may upend years of progress.

Mental health has taken a hit

Mental health challenges and burnout have emerged as significant issues for all workers during the pandemic. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey in 2020 found that 45 percent of Americans feel that the COVID-19 crisis is harming their mental health. Globally, the impact on women has been striking: our survey on diverse employees showed  that across both advanced and developing countries, mothers (at 75 percent) are more likely than fathers (69 percent) to be struggling with mental health concerns.

In a separate survey on the employee experience , McKinsey looked at how remote work was affecting different groups and found that while all workers were experiencing some degree of disruption, the impact on working mothers versus working fathers was stark. Remote-working mothers showed much lower levels of well-being than remote-working fathers (Exhibit 2).

“Women with children always have some stigma attached to them in the workplace. I never want that stigma to be attached to me and my work.” An Asian American working mother with three children under the age of 5

The ‘double shift’ burden grows

Decades of research show that women do significantly more housework and childcare than men—so much so that women who are employed full-time are often said to be working a “double shift.”

Now, women, and mothers in particular, are taking on an even heavier load. Mothers are more than three times as likely as fathers to be responsible for most of the housework and caregiving during the pandemic. In fact, they are 1.5 times more likely than fathers to spend an additional three or more hours per day on housework and childcare. Single mothers have faced even greater loads—10 percent more single mothers report spending an additional three or more hours per day on housework and childcare than mothers overall (Exhibit 3).

Working mothers aren’t being recognized for time spent, either. More than 70 percent of heterosexual fathers in dual-career couples think that they are splitting household labor equally with their partner during the COVID-19 crisis, though only 44 percent of heterosexual mothers in dual-career couples agree.

And the home-care burden is spilling over to work. Nearly a quarter of mothers said they worried that their work performance was being judged negatively because of their caregiving responsibilities, compared with 11 percent of fathers.

“I have weeks when I feel burned out. Before the pandemic, my parents helped with childcare, but now everything falls on me. I feel overwhelmed at least two or three days a week.” A Latina manager with two children under the age of 4

For mothers of color, a double shift—and then some

The pandemic has affected working mothers of color disproportionately. Latina mothers are 1.6 times more likely than white mothers to be responsible for all childcare and housework, and Black mothers are twice as likely to be handling these duties for their families (Exhibit 4).

Latina and Black women are more likely to be their family’s sole breadwinner or to have partners working outside the home during the COVID-19 crisis, so leaving the workforce or downshifting may not be a realistic option. Of mothers who have considered leaving the workforce, Asian and Latina mothers were more likely to say that their decision was related to domestic and childcare responsibilities (Exhibit 5)

Black and Latina women were already underrepresented in the workforce in 2020, particularly at higher levels of the organization. In fact, for every 100 men promoted to manager, only 85 women were promoted —and the gap was even larger for Black and Latina women, with only 58 Black women and 71 Latinas being promoted for every 100 men.

Potential grows for long-term career loss

The gender-regressive effects caused by the COVID-19 pandemic harm not only immediate economic security for millions of women and their families but also long-term economic growth and social stability, research from the McKinsey Global Institute has found .

In the United States, pandemic-related job losses have disproportionately affected minorities, women, and other vulnerable workers . During the heart of the crisis, Black and Hispanic workers faced 1.6 to 2.0 times the unemployment rates of their white counterparts; households with less than $30,000 in annual income faced double the unemployment rates of higher-income households.

The unemployment crisis has been acute for all mothers—Black, Latina, Asian, and white. Jobless rates for single mothers, which are drawn from all of those groups but are particularly inclusive of mothers of color, remain far above prepandemic levels, soaring from a prepandemic level of 9.8 percent to peak at more than 28 percent in May of 2020, nearly twice the overall national peak of 14.6 percent. It remained at 18.8 percent in February of 2021. By comparison, unemployment among mothers in two-parent households in the United States rose from a prepandemic level of 7.2 percent to 13.6 percent in February (Exhibit 6).

However, the recent outlook for women’s employment has improved slightly. In March, unemployment rates for women dropped to nearly the same level of decline experienced by men, suggesting a rise in household employment, according to the White House. 2 Cecilia Rouse, “The employment situation in March,” White House Briefing Room, April 2, 2021, whitehouse.gov.

The value of unpaid-care work performed by women is $10 trillion, or 13 percent of global GDP , according to the McKinsey Global Institute. Interventions to tackle this problem include better recognition of unpaid work, reducing the amount of unpaid work, and rebalancing it between men and women.

How companies can respond

During this crisis, organizations have increased resources to help employees, including mothers, cope with heightened challenges. However, as pandemic-related stress and burnout continue into a second year, employers must not take their foot off the gas. Here are several actions they can continue, augment, or refine.

Help mothers stay in the workforce

To start, organizations should ensure that working mothers have the support they need, particularly with respect to childcare, work–life flexibility, and performance reviews.

Adjust childcare-related policies and programs. Companies can establish policies that are designed to mitigate the uneven burden on mothers , including increased childcare support and other related programs. Some have provided emergency childcare resources or subsidized childcare, tutoring programs for school-aged children, or other programs. These policies should not be viewed as short-term emergency actions during the pandemic but rather as long-term adjustments.

Take an intersectional approach. Companies should acknowledge and address the unique challenges facing mothers of color and single mothers. For instance, recognizing that Black women have a different experience—both in and outside the workplace—from Black men and other women can help organizations tailor solutions to set goals and track representation. To foster an inclusive culture that supports and values Black women, companies can focus on formal and informal support structures such as mentorship and allyship programs. An emphasis on intersectionality also helps those women who experience being an “only”—for example, being the only person of their gender  in the room.

Reset norms around flexibility. The need for greater work–life flexibility is the number-one issue raised by both women and men at work, and companies have responded by increasing flexibility over the past five years. The need for flexibility at work has only grown during the pandemic. According to McKinsey research, remote-working mothers who report more effective time management and schedule flexibility—both key indicators of work–life balance—are three times more likely than those who report work inefficiency and schedule inflexibility to have a positive state of well-being.

Employees with young children are more likely to prefer primarily remote-working models and flexible work locations, our recent survey on the future of remote work shows , with only 8 percent suggesting that they would like to see a fully on-site model in the future (Exhibit 7).

The cultural context around paternity leave is changing, as more countries and companies offer the benefit to new fathers. Worldwide, 90 out of 187 countries offer statutory paid paternity leave,  with almost four in ten organizations providing paid leave above the required minimum. But despite this shift in support, less than half of eligible fathers in OECD countries take the benefits offered to them.

Normalize the use of flexible programs. As companies establish childcare policies and create flexible working models, they should encourage both men and women to participate in them. Our survey on the employee experience indicated that the top priority for remote-working women is to balance work and private life. For remote-working men, that need didn’t even rank in the top ten. Reducing that gap is crucial for working mothers.

Parental leave is a great example of the difference in expectations between working mothers and fathers. We are accustomed to thinking of maternity leave as the big early-childcare solution, but paternity leave is now an option as well, as more organizations are offering it. A recent McKinsey–McGill University survey of men  who have taken paternity leave found that they were unanimously glad they took it, with most saying that it helped them form stronger bonds with their partners and children. A work culture that encourages taking leave, policy support from their employer, and an unaffected promotion timeline all helped them make the decision to take paternity leave, respondents said.

Organizations should take these principles to heart, applying them beyond parental leave to all flexible programs. By equalizing and normalizing participation in these programs, companies will ensure that working mothers aren’t the only ones affected in terms of career trajectories.

Remove bias in people processes. Performance reviews are crucial, but they can also become forums for bias that can inhibit the progress of mothers. To ensure that fair and objective performance criteria  are tied to work output, it is important to revisit any performance markers that may either be irrelevant or misleading. For example, to do quality work and to be a good team member, is it always necessary to be accessible and to have a lightning-fast response time?

Make sure the appropriate criteria are used effectively when it comes to promotions. Consider a checklist of items for minimizing bias: require unconscious-bias training for the employees involved in promotion decisions; provide reminders about how to avoid unconscious bias, and designate a team member to call it out; and track outcomes to check for bias.

“There’s a kind of magnifying glass that if my light doesn’t look green to show I’m available to talk, or if I’m not in a meeting, then I’m not working.” A working mother

Create opportunities for mothers to return

Even with all the actions we list above, the fact remains that working mothers are leaving the workforce in higher numbers than before. The following steps can help them return:

Adjust the hiring process. Help set the expectation that mothers can return to the workplace by using a different hiring process—one that does not question their gap in employment. Ensure that job descriptions and interviews focus on the fundamental capabilities required to do the job well, without added dimensions that could create bias against women and mothers. For example, remove requirements for recent experience or for knowledge of new technology trends that can be learned on the job. Be open to investing more heavily in training candidates who have the fundamental skills and potential for growth.

Implement ‘returnships.’ Companies should consider creating returnship programs to help women reenter the workforce gradually but without losing prior progress. Many Wall Street companies began to use them during the 2008–09 financial crisis to help returning women establish an upward trajectory. 3 Jason Wingard, “Are returnships the key to relaunching your career?,” Forbes , February 13, 2019, forbes.com. For example, JPMorgan Chase implemented a reentry program in the form of a paid fellowship for women returning to the industry. The 2019 Women in the Workplace report revealed that company leaders believe returnships and other similar programs have helped them develop and retain talented women, contributing to their representation of women in the C-suite at more than double the industry average.

Create on-ramp programs. Develop processes that allow mothers to adjust to returning to work, recognizing that the childcare and other responsibilities that prompted their departure have likely not disappeared. This can include formal mentorship and sponsorship programs, as well as placement with managers who are equipped to help mothers be successful as they navigate new challenges.

Companies that take action to help working mothers—including tailoring policies and programs and normalizing flexibility and leave for all employees—will create a better environment for mothers to stay in the workplace and thrive. For those women who must leave, policies that help them return when they are ready not only help women’s careers but also ensure that companies don’t lose all that talent and experience. The choices that companies make today will have consequences far beyond this difficult pandemic era, influencing gender equality  in the workplace for decades to come.

Alexis Krivkovich is a senior partner and the coleader of McKinsey’s Bay Area office, where Jess Huang  and Ishanaa Rambachan  are partners and Lareina Yee is a senior partner and McKinsey’s chief diversity and inclusion officer.

The authors wish to thank Andrea Alexander, Aaron De Smet, Jonathan Emmett, Alison Gerard, Meredith Langstaff, Matthew Petric, Dan Ravid, Matt Schrimper, and Alexandra Wood for their contributions to this article.

This article was edited by Barbara Tierney, a senior editor in the New York office.

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Understanding and Overcoming Challenges Faced by Working Mothers: A Theoretical and Empirical Review

• First Online: 20 August 2016

Cite this chapter

• Isaac E. Sabat 3 ,
• Alex P. Lindsey 3 ,
• Eden B. King 3 &
• Kristen P. Jones 3  

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Working mothers face different sets of challenges with regards to social identity, stigmatization, and discrimination within each stage of the employment cycle, from differential hiring practices, unequal career advancement opportunities, ineffective retention efforts, and inaccessible work-family supportive policies (Jones et al. in The Psychology for Business Success. Praeger, Westport, CT, 2013 ). Not only do these inequalities have negative effects on women, but they can also have a detrimental impact on organizations as a whole. In this chapter, we review several theoretical and empirical studies pertaining to the challenges faced by women throughout their work-motherhood transitions. We then offer strategies that organizations, mothers, and allies can use to effectively improve the workplace experiences of pregnant women and mothers. This chapter will specifically contribute to the existing literature by drawing on identity management and ally research from other domains to suggest additional strategies that female targets and supportive coworkers can engage into help remediate these negative workplace outcomes. Finally, we highlight future research directions aimed at testing the effectiveness of these and other remediation strategies, as well as the methodological challenges and solutions to those challenges associated with this important research domain. We call upon researchers to develop more theory-driven, empirically tested intervention strategies that utilize all participants in this fight to end gender inequality in the workplace.

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Sabat, I.E., Lindsey, A.P., King, E.B., Jones, K.P. (2016). Understanding and Overcoming Challenges Faced by Working Mothers: A Theoretical and Empirical Review. In: Spitzmueller, C., Matthews, R. (eds) Research Perspectives on Work and the Transition to Motherhood. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41121-7_2

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The Upside of Working Motherhood

There are lots of reasons women should feel hopeful about having a career and children.

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You’ve heard the story: Motherhood and work are at odds, and women who pursue both have to make endless trade-offs and compromises. And yet, lots of women go for it, with great results for themselves, their families, and their careers. In fact, research suggests that parenting can enrich our careers, and vice versa.

Professors Danna Greenberg and Jamie Ladge talk about the benefits of being a working mom. They share advice around setting expectations, finding child care, asking for help, and advocating for ourselves as kids get older. Then, our fellow HBR editor Erica Truxler checks in with a listener about returning to work after parental leave.

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Danna Greenberg is a professor of organizational behavior at Babson College.

Jamie Ladge is a professor of management at Northeastern University.

• Maternal Optimism: Forging Positive Paths through Work and Motherhood , by Jamie Ladge and Danna Greenberg
• “ How Working Parents Can Manage the Demands of School-Age Kids ,” by Daisy Wademan Dowling
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DANNA GREENBERG: It’s hard to imagine the positive pieces of this story when so much of it is about going to work with clothes that are messed up, your hair undone, worrying about how your boss is going to see you, worrying about how the stay-at-home moms on the playground are going to see you. And that rhetoric makes you feel like you’ve got to focus on just self-preservation and management.

NICOLE TORRES: You’re listening to Women at Work, from Harvard Business Review. I’m Nicole Torres.

AMY BERNSTEIN: I’m Amy Bernstein.

AMY GALLO: And I’m Amy Gallo. This episode, we’re looking at an aspect of working motherhood that in my opinion doesn’t get nearly enough attention: the positive pieces. There are lots of reasons women should feel hopeful about having a career and children.

NICOLE TORRES: We’re talking to two professors who — between their academic research and experience raising three kids each — are experts on working motherhood: Danna Greenberg, of Babson College, and Jamie Ladge, of Northeastern University.

JAMIE LADGE: A lot of the women that have been part of our research over the years are older first-time mothers, so much of their identity is wrapped up in their professional life, and pregnancy and impending motherhood throws a real wrench in that identity.

AMY BERNSTEIN: They’ve organized their insights and advice into a book; it’s called Maternal Optimism.

[MUSIC ENDS]

AMY BERNSTEIN: Jamie, let me start with you. What were you seeing in the coverage of working motherhood that made you want to do this work?

JAMIE LADGE: Well, as you all know, there is no shortage of books about working mothers, and we knew that there were quite a few. And we were a little bit hesitant to get into it. But we were frustrated by a lot of the rhetoric — having it all — and a lot of the negativity surrounding the issues that a lot of working mothers face. And certainly, that exists, all the biases and stigma associated with being a working mother. But we really wanted to first and foremost try to come at this with a very positive spin, not that it’s all positive, but there are experiences that women face throughout the course of their motherhood transitions and working mother transitions that work out well. And we wanted to be able to share those stories through the stories that we had seen and the research that we’ve done over many years.

AMY GALLO: Yeah.

JAMIE LADGE: The other thing we were sort of tired of was kind of this one-size-fits-all approach. We know that a lot of women share common ground with their experiences around being a working mother, but we also think that no two mothers and working mother stories are alike, and we wanted to make sure that we shared a wide variety of different experiences in the book.

DANNA GREENBERG: Part of that of no two mothers stories being alike is the idea that there is not a start and end to being a working mother. So many of the books out there talk about this idea as if, you’ve returned to work. You made it. You are a working mother. And that’s just the first of so many transitions women experience throughout their careers as working mothers. And we felt like it was really important to help women start to understand: this is, this is a long distance run. It’s not short term. It’s not just about return to work. And there are constant iterations going on. And we thought giving them some perspective on that could be really helpful.

AMY BERNSTEIN: So in your book, you talk about how working motherhood really starts well before you have a baby in your arms. What do you mean by that?

DANNA GREENBERG: So, one of the things that we find is how frequently young women, long before they even have a partner, are starting to ask questions about combining work and motherhood. In ways that I don’t think we did in our generation. And one of the things that we worry a lot about and we see is that women are making choices early on that are about, will this be a career that I can eventually combine work and motherhood? And so I’ll give you a perfect example. My daughter is a chemistry and women’s health major. She’s premed. And she recently had a family member say to her, why don’t you think about becoming a physician’s assistant or a nurse practitioner, because it’s going to be much easier down the road to combine work and family. Now, my daughter is really career driven. She’s thinking about surgery and specialties. She is not, by the way, a nurturing primary caregiver. [LAUGHTER] So, nurse practitioner is not here thing. But women start to do that as young women, even in college and in those early years. And one of the things that we see, and we really advise women, is that this is a really important time to build your career, to figure out what you want to do and to use the time and space you have to build up your power, your credibility, your skill sets, your knowledge so that if and when you have a family, you have the resources to ask for what you need. And as I go back to my daughter’s story, as a physician who perhaps some day is in a specialty, there are lots more ways to create a flexible schedule if that’s what she wants, or to structure or to have the financial resources to have the childcare she needs than would be the case if she were a nurse practitioner. But this is advice many young women are still getting today.

NICOLE TORRES: So Jamie, your research on working motherhood started with this question: Is there ever a good time to have a baby, in terms of your career? And you’ve studied the effects that the timing of childbirth can have on a woman’s career. What have you found?

JAMIE LADGE: So one of the things I wanted to do, because there had been tons of research done, particularly in sociology, that looked at the effects of timing childbirth on women’s wages, and also on promotions. And so we knew that was a problem for women, that it’s much better to wait to have your first child, because during those early years in your 20s, you know, you’re building up your educational attainment. You’re making connections and building up your network, and all the human capital variables are just building up for you. And so that made sense for wages and for promotions. But I actually wanted to find out, well, are women happier? Are they more satisfied with their careers? So I wanted to take a more subjective approach. And so we looked at that, and I mean, sadly I can’t say that there’s a magic age for when the best time is to have a baby. I would have loved to have been the one that discovered what that age was. But I have to be like, you know, typical consultant mode and say, it depends, because it really, it does depend. But one of the things we did find, that the women that had their children earlier in their careers were actually more satisfied later on. This is taking more of a life course approach. And we surmise that that’s because they had more time that had elapsed since when they started their families. So they were able to build their career back up. As opposed to a lot of the women that we’ve interviewed over the years who were much older first-time moms, well into their 30s, some in their 40s, and they had kind of the sense of, well, I paid my dues at work. And now that I’m having my child, I can kind of take a step back, or I can mold my career however I want to mold. So, not a perfect age, but if you want to be happy with your career, it really doesn’t matter, but it does seem that you can get going a little bit earlier.

AMY BERNSTEIN: So, I want to talk about the decision to have more than one child. We know that, you know, there are penalties to having more than one kid. You know, there’s your wages will suffer and so forth. How do women who would like to have more than one kid stay positive? What should they be thinking about?

DANNA GREENBERG: So, one of the things we don’t think about is how the family structure changes when you have multiple children. One of the things that we know from our own research is that when women have their first child, one of the biggest challenges is enabling their partner to be a real partner, particularly if they’re in a situation where they’ve got a maternity leave, and their partner doesn’t. They start taking on a lot of the childcare responsibilities, and they don’t figure out a way to really share parental responsibilities with their partner, and they don’t make them a real partner. When you have a second child, that goes out the window, because all of a sudden, there’s a lot more childcare responsibilities to have, and they have to be shared. So women have to let up. They have to enable their partner to be a real partner to them, to share some aspects of that childcare responsibility, which enables them to be more confident and more engaged at work. Because they know that there is another person who is equally capable at home. So that’s one of the things that happens in the family that can be really beneficial for a working mother. The other thing that we talk about in our house is that having multiples of children, somebody’s always happy, and someone’s always unhappy. [LAUGHTER] We call it the Whack-a-Mole game. Remember that old game you had as a child? And you hit the mole, and they’d pop right up. But one of the things women often do, working mothers, is they add guilt to themselves when something’s not working with their child. Oh, it would be different if I were home full time, if I wasn’t working, if I were focused. When you have multiples, you get that go, because you start to realize, their challenges, they’re experiencing them as individual people. And you see one child having a good day and one child having a bad day, and it really has nothing to do with you. It has to do with them. So, those feelings of guilt that you’re causing this really change.

AMY BERNSTEIN: So, the second and third and fourth and 12th child give you perspective.

DANNA GREENBERG: They give you a lot of perspective. You’ve also accumulated a whole level of knowledge. You get to the third one — for me, I had three sequentially. You get to the third, and there’s a whole knowledge about how to deal with this, how to ask for help. You start to get much more comfortable being transparent about your work life and your family life, because you’ve been doing it for a while. It’s not a question of, am I a working mother? I have to hide it. What are the people going to think of me? This is who I am. So I actually have a colleague, the CFO at Babson. She has five children. She most recently had the fifth child, and the baby came with her to many, many meetings, and we just passed the baby around. This is a woman whose children range from 19 to probably 2. And she is a rock star CFO. There is no question. And you know what? Her childcare broke down, and she needed the baby to be there, and the baby just got passed. But there wasn’t this sense of conflict or guilt, which she certainly would have experienced having a first child. Never bring a first child to a meeting. But a fifth child, forget it. [LAUGHTER] Bring the child, send me around the meeting, all is good.

AMY GALLO: So, what are the positive benefits of being a working mom?

DANNA GREENBERG: It’s funny you ask, because I just did a study looking at women and asking them very much that question. After you’ve returned to work, what do you experience as positive about that? Or, what has enabled you to be more mindful. And there a couple of different things that we’re seeing in the research as we’re starting to look at the data. The first of which is perspective. There is a sense of, you know what, how important is this? Where does it fit into my day? How much do I have to do all of this myself? Or is 80% good enough? And that can be helpful for women to do their job more effectively. One of the things we see changing in managers is a stopping of micromanagement, because they don’t have time to do that. One of the things that women often do is they want everything to be perfect. They want everyone who’s working for them have everything perfect, and when they return to work after having a child, they realize, you know what, that’s not what really needs to get done, and that’s not helpful for my team. The third thing, which is a really interesting one we’re starting to see, is something we’re seeing in relational capacity. Women talk about returning to work and having now be in this caretaker role, all of a sudden I’m better with my employees. I am more thoughtful. I’m more understanding. I don’t always like what they’re saying. I don’t always agree with what they’re saying. But I have a little bit more patience for dealing with people in a way that maybe I didn’t before becoming a parent. So, I suspect that these are things — this study we’re looking specifically at women, but I would suspect these are absolutely very similar things for working men when they become fathers and are engaged caregivers.

AMY GALLO: One of the themes I took away from your book is that working moms need to have realistic expectations. I would say lower their expectations, but I’m trying to be optimistic. What are some examples of how you can set realistic expectations? And maybe you could specifically talk about the crappy dinners example. I loved that example in your book.

DANNA GREENBERG: Crappy dinners example. So, the crappy dinner idea is a great idea that we’ve seen written about where —

JAMIE LADGE: Otherwise known as every night for me. [LAUGHTER]

DANNA GREENBERG: I like to cook. I find it relaxing. This was actually really empowering for me was the idea that you get together with another friend during the week. You bring your families together, and you serve whatever you can find in your house. No one’s allowed to clean up. No one’s allowed to buy anything. It’s not the Martha Stewart, Real Simple of the world. It’s just, let’s get together and share some friendship and help each other out during these difficult periods of time. And women need to let up. They need to let up at home, they need to let up at work so that they can embrace those more joyful moments, which sometimes are just about connecting and sharing stories of our day.

AMY GALLO: Yeah. I met a woman who, our kids were in preschool together. I said, oh, our families should get together for dinner. And she said, we just can’t handle that. But if you’d like to meet us for a grocery store picnic, you can. I was like, what is that? And she said, we go to the grocery store. We go grocery shopping. We let the kids get stuff from the hot food bar, and then we sit in the car and talk. And I was like, wow, I’m totally doing that. And it became like a weekly thing we started doing on our own, too, because it was, you got your errands done. The kids were super happy, because they got to eat crappy food from, you know, the grocery store. And there was no cleanup. You know, it was just, it was so easy.

JAMIE LADGE: I actually think the setting realistic expectations is an interesting proposition because there’s so many idealistic expectations. And I actually just wrote a paper with Laura Little at University of Georgia about this very topic, where the expectations very much become our reality. And we subscribe so much to what we think we should be doing or what other people think we should be doing in terms of being an ideal worker or an ideal parent, that we don’t even have time to figure that out for ourselves, or that influences what that turns into, or what that looks like for us. So, our identity is very much shaped by this whole idealistic expectation. So, I wish we could have realistic expectations, and I think that women need to really figure out what that means for them as opposed to what it is at a more societal level.

AMY GALLO: It strikes me that being a working mom is really just an extreme exercise in prioritization. And you just have to decide what you’re going to prioritize at the moment, because your life is full, as is everyone’s, whether you’re a mom or not, and you just have to decide what you’re going to do and what you’re not going to do. And it’s not about necessarily sacrifice. It’s just about prioritizing.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Also what I’m hearing is what you’re going to care about, what you’re going to let get to you. Because people are really judgy. They always have been. They always will be. [LAUGHTER]

JAMIE LADGE: And some of those people are the people that are closest to you. Right?

DANNA GREENBERG: I also think, Amy, your point about what are your priorities at the moment is a really important one to figure out. Right? Because those priorities are going to shift and change, and that’s part of the story. Right? And so you make those decisions. This is right for me at this moment. And that can be really easing up for a working mother, versus, this is a choice I’m making, and I’m locked into it, versus I’m doing this now. It’s right for me today. In six months, in a year, in five years, it’s probably going to look really different, and that’s good.

AMY GALLO: Right. Well, and I think, when you look at kids, how much they change from infancy to teenage years, or even young adulthood, you have to think about how as a mom you’re going through the same evolution, right, and as many changes. I remember thinking, you know, I want to work part time while my kid is really young. And then I realized, I hated fighting about nap, right, when she was giving up her nap, one of her naps. I was like, no, this is a great time for me to work, and someone who’s a professional to handle this nap transition. And then six months later, it’s different. I had the luxury of making different choices about how to handle my work life and go full time or part time, because I was working for myself. But you know, I think we think there’s going to be a plan for the 18 years, and really, you know, really the plan’s six months at most. Right?

NICOLE TORRES: But how do you deal with, how do you make yourself OK knowing that priorities could shift at a given moment, a given day, when if you’re working in an organization that is not very flexible, and is not going to accommodate your shifting priorities?

DANNA GREENBERG: There are a couple of different ways to think about that. It’s not an easy situation. Right? Organizations don’t make it easy for us and our shifting priorities, and also, as you point out, as your children change. And so thinking about some of that in advance can be really helpful. Preparing for yourself about, OK, my children are going to be going to elementary school or middle school, and what might that look like, or who in my organization can I talk to who’s parenting older children? And what advice can I get from them about how do I manage this next stage? What am I going to do differently? Keeping your professional network up is absolutely critical, because at the end of the day, if you can’t make it work in your current organization, having a strong professional network means that maybe you can find choices outside in different organizations.

NICOLE TORRES: So, both of you write in your book, you talk about the importance of new mothers developing what you call “childcare bench strength.” What is that?

DANNA GREENBERG: So, bench strength is a term that we adopt from athletics. Right? When you think about a really strong athletic team, you’re thinking about not just having that first-string player, but having a really strong second-string player, and even a third-string player, because at some point the first-string player, something’s going to happen. And they’re going to be out of commission, and you have to rely on the second string. When we talk to women about childcare, we find they spend a lot of time thinking about what I call that first-string childcare: what’s the best childcare I can find that works for my child, works for my job, and works for our financial situation? And that’s great. But that childcare’s going to break down. It’s going to break down because your child’s going to get sick. It’s going to break down because you’re going to have an emergency meeting first thing in the morning, and your partner’s going to be traveling. It’s going to break down because the childcare provider is going to be sick. It’s going to break down, in my case, because we had to fire our childcare provider suddenly. Right? It breaks down. And so those are the moment that women often panic. They’re also the moments where women who always thought they were going to work may decide not to work. If you’ve got bench strength, it helps ease the anxiety about that. So figuring out in advance when my childcare situation breaks down, what am I going to do? What’s it going to look like? And we’ve seen women do a lot of very different creative things on this. It can be anything from obviously family members. It could be an elderly, if you don’t have family members in the area, an elderly neighbor that you’re close with. It can be another stay-at-home mom, somebody who’s staying home and can take your child and help you in that particular way. It can be formal backup care programs. But figuring out that in advance, having those phone numbers, being ready to dial so when the childcare situation breaks down, you’re ready to figure out what comes next. Because it’s going to break down. It’s just a part of being a working mom is, you’re going to have days where the childcare isn’t there.

AMY GALLO: One of the stories I really liked in the book was a woman named Martha, who was a single working mom, and befriended another working mom, and they essentially ended up co-parenting. Right? Even though they didn’t coexist in the same household. Can you talk about how common that is?

JAMIE LADGE: I actually don’t think it’s common enough, because I think women are so worried about asking for help. I do it. I don’t do it as much as I probably want to do it, because you do feel like you’re leaning on someone too much. But it’s really challenging. I mean, there’s a lot of people who don’t have families around them. You know? I mean, not everybody has the luxury of having grandparents and whoever around to fill that bench strength. And so I would just, this might be digressing from your question, but just to add to what Danna was saying, it’s not only the woman or the mother building up that bench strength, but also making sure, you know, in terms of people, physical people that are helping you out, but also making sure that it’s OK. Like the example you gave of the professor or the faculty member who brought their child to a meeting. But making sure you’re surrounded, you’re surrounding yourself with people at work that are perfectly fine with you doing kooky things like that, or even, I’m just reflecting back on when I was in my PhD program. I started that program, and I was with three single men. And I just stated right up front, we’re having any group meetings at my house. I mean, fortunately, I lived right near the university, but every group meeting is going to be at my house. And they were perfectly fine with that. They loved that. And my baby was there, and they would play with the baby, and so there’s a different form of bench strength that also goes beyond the childcare aspect as well.

AMY GALLO: I want to be clear that we are strongly advocating for more babies at meetings. [LAUGHTER]

AMY BERNSTEIN: All for it.

AMY BERNSTEIN: So, the challenge of finding supportive childcare doesn’t stop when the kids go off to school. So, talk to us a little bit about the stress of, you know, the after school pick up, on women’s careers, and how people deal with it. What are some creative strategies?

DANNA GREENBERG: So, when we’re talking about after school stress, one of the things, there’s been a lot of research actually done on this topic, we know that when working parents feel a lot of stress about, is their child well taken care of after school, or in this out of school time, it affects their engagement at work, it affects their work stress. It actually affects the quality of work they’re doing, as well as their overall psychological and emotional well-being. So, the impact of after school stress isn’t just on us at home. It’s on us in our workplaces as well. So, one of the things that really happens for working mothers in that first transition is when you’re child leaves whatever traditional childcare arrangement you’ve figured out for yourself, they transition to elementary school, typically a kindergarten in the United States. And all of a sudden, you’re shocked. It’s a shock to a family system because kindergarten, or any elementary school situation is usually about six to seven hours. It runs 10 months of the year. And about 30 of those days are not covered. Right? So you’ve got huge gaps in the care situation you have, and while we’ve done some work to improve quality childcare in the early years, we’ve done very little to improve quality childcare in those later years. So again, thinking about that in advance can be really helpful for working families. One of the things that we talk to families about a lot is this idea of, how do you think about the community you’re going into, and to what extent is this going to be a community that has systems in place that are going to help you as a working mother? So people make decisions about doing into a community based hunt, typically. What kind of house, how big a house I can afford? What’s the quality of the school system? But they don’t think at all about, is there before-school care in the system? Is there after-school care? Is there an after school care program that my kid’s going to have to get bussed to? How does bussing work in the system? Will they pick my child up at the end of my road? Or will they pick them up at the end of my driveway? That creates a really different context. Are there other working parents? You can use that from census data and available data. Does the recreation system, is it set up in a way that there’s summer camps, and there are vacation camps? And are those things that are actually used by parents in the community? Doing some research on that can help you figure out, how do I get into a community that’s going to be able to be a place where I can be authentic about who I am and have the support I need and be more comfortable asking for those supports, versus feeling like I’ve got to hide a little bit, either side of my life.

JAMIE LADGE: And emotionally, as well, I think finding communities where there are other working parents, working mothers, around, because I’ve used after-school programs, and even, well, in a community where there’s probably predominantly fewer working mothers, but you feel guilty about being the last one to pick up your kid in an after school program that goes until six. You feel guilty about dropping your kid off at seven in the morning when you don’t see any other parents or kids around. There’s this emotional struggle having to feel like you have to downplay your work, or you have to sacrifice your work to be there. And so the stress is not just the financial stress, but there’s also the psychological stress associated with feeling the guilt about, you know, utilizing these programs that are the very programs that are supposed to alleviate the stress to begin with. So I think the community thing is an interesting one, not just in terms of what resources are available, but also what people, you know, you surround yourself with in those resources.

DANNA GREENBERG: And I also tell people to really try to find partners in your organization, other working families that you can switch off or trade off with. So I really advise our junior faculty about this. They struggle with those vacation weeks, because we’re teaching. We’re in the classroom. And so, find another faculty member who’s got kids, maybe around your same age, maybe not, and maybe you can trade off one day for one day, that kind of a model. Or you can trade off pickups. And so that community support can be at your home community, but it can also be in your work community too.

AMY GALLO: Our neighbors, we have a text chain that, whenever school vacation’s coming up, or snow days, it’s like, who’s going to be home? Where can the kids go? It’s OK if they watch TV all day, but will anyone be home? And it’s great, because it’s, you know, I can still go to work if I need to.

DANNA GREENBERG: Right, and it sounds like you live in a neighborhood where you have a lot of dual-career working parents. Right? So being in a neighborhood where you know sending that text out, or also knowing on the other hand that you’re sending the text out, and there might be a stay-at-home mom who’s happy to help and pitch in, because there are going to be other ways you’re going to be able to support her, too. So part of the network and community is also building relationships between those who are currently working and those who aren’t.

AMY GALLO: There’s a stay-at-home mom at my daughter’s school who is like the uber stay-at-home mom. And I know if I send her a text and say, I can’t get to pickup, can you pick up my daughter, she will text back within 30 seconds. She’ll list the snacks she has packed. Are there any food allergies? I mean, it’s insane, and so comforting, because you know she has your back. And there’s no judgment about it at all. She’s great. She’s amazing.

DANNA GREENBERG: I want to move to your neighborhood. [LAUGHTER]

AMY GALLO: So Jamie, your twins are 12. My daughter is also 12. So, I’m particularly interested in what you have to say about how work changes for women when they’re mothering pre-teens or teens. I understand from your research that workplaces sort of forget that women have caregiving responsibilities at this age. How do women advocate to still get the support they need when they’re mothering older children?

JAMIE LADGE: I think that’s a great question. And one I think about all the time. I hate saying this. But I know it’s true. You know, little children, little problems, big children, huge problems. And I think people forget that. But I think one thing is figure out what your best approach is for how you deal with your work and family challenges. There’s research that shows that people often either make a choice between whether they segment their work and family or integrate their work and family. I think as I know I’ve gotten older, and accumulated more work and family knowledge, I’ve become more of an integrator, and I’m not afraid to show people that I —

AMY BERNSTEIN: So what does integrating look like?

JAMIE LADGE: So in other words, when I was starting out having kids, I didn’t have pictures of them on my desk. I didn’t talk about them at work. And I feel like I am confident enough in my ability as I’ve gotten older through the years, and as my children have gotten older, I’m less worried about any stigma that I may face as a working parent, because I’ve already proven myself, or at least I feel as though I’ve proven myself to others. A segmenter would not have pictures on there, and an integrator would bring their child into work and not have any qualms about it. And I try to signal that preference to people. And hopefully I’m a model to others that will do the same, because I think that there’s a real positive aspect of being able to show and highlight to people that work and family are important.

NICOLE TORRES: Is it harder to talk about parenting challenges older children than younger children?

DANNA GREENBERG: Absolutely. The conversation about I’m leaving early because they’re little or sick, there’s an assumption that older children are very self-sufficient in our society, good or bad. Even in high school, they’re not yet really self-sufficient. And so there can be needs to be present there that just aren’t articulated. And they’re not comfortable being incredibly transparent about what are those needs. The other thing that checks is, how interested are you in filling those needs? I don’t love big children. [LAUGHTER] Again, maybe my children listening to this, I’m not as good in the teenage years. It’s not my strength. Right? I’m lucky. I have a partner who’s really good in the teenage years. And so one of the things that we’ve actually flopped a little bit. I’m much more active and engaged at work, and he is much more the call, the go-to when they have those particular problems. And in a certain way, I think it’s easy for him to respond, because he didn’t respond when they were little. Right? So it’s new, and it’s different for him. So, it is really hard in organizations to say and advocate. I think it’s also hard for women if they worked full time their whole careers, and all of a sudden they’re saying, you know what, my kids are teenagers, they’re in high school, and I want to be a little more present. How do I advocate for myself now when I never advocated for that before?

JAMIE LADGE: But I do think it’s easier to advocate when they children are older, because there’s less fear that there’s going to be some kind of bias involved. I think one of the real challenges in what we’ve seen in our research for pregnant women or new mothers is that if I ask for something, if I advocate for something, that’s going to set the tone for my whole now life as a working mother in this profession, or whatever. And like I said before, if you have the confidence in yourself, and you know you’ve proved your value, then advocating things when your children are a little bit older I think becomes slightly easier to a large extent. But I think the challenge, what Danna’s pointing out, is the challenge of having older children doesn’t necessarily get easier.

AMY BERNSTEIN: So Danna, your kids are, you know, as you’ve said, a little older than Jamie’s. One’s in college. Two others are 16 and 18. You’re entering a new family stage. What transitions are happening to you professionally? What feels positive to you about this period?

DANNA GREENBERG: So, all of a sudden for me, there’s this energy to engage in my research and my writing and leadership in the college in a way that I just didn’t have before. And so it’s a really exciting phase. There’s also a lot of positive feedback, that starts to come from your young adult children that you don’t get from a toddler or an elementary schooler. Right? When you’re dealing with little children, there often can be more angst and tension and things that they say that make you realize and think, oh my gosh, they’re upset I work, or why do you work, Mommy, or those kinds of questions that cause you angst. When they’re older, they’re excited about your working. And Kathleen McGinn’s done some great research on this, looking at how working mothers impact both their daughters’ and their sons’ careers. And see it in my household all the time. My daughter’s studying chemistry and women’s health, and she’s done research and done research projects, and she calls me for help. My sophomore came home one day from his honors English class with 20-some odd kids in it, six boys, and the six boys got on a conversation that all six of them noticed they had working mothers in a community where there are not a lot of working mothers. And so they start to see ways in which your life has impacted them positively. And that has really exciting repercussions for a working mom.

AMY GALLO: I can imagine that being really rewarding.

AMY BERNSTEIN: So, you know, as your kids are getting older, and more independent, and they’re going off to college, you get, you know, there’s a lot more coming your way. You’ve got more bandwidth. You have more opportunities. You have more experience. How do you figure out what to do with your time? How do you sort of sort through all of the options?

DANNA GREENBERG: I think it comes back to the same thing you do at early stages, which is, you have to hear your own voice. The options that come your way are exciting. They’re flattering in a lot of ways. And it’s very easy to jump in and say, yes. Yes, I’ll do that. Yes, I’ll do that. And we hear a lot from women at this stage that all of a sudden, instead of being overwhelmed with home responsibilities, they’re overwhelmed with work responsibilities. They’re overwhelmed by board responsibilities. They’re overwhelmed by community engagement responsibilities. So, taking some moments to think about, again, I don’t have to do everything at the same time. What’s my priority? Where do I want to engage? What’s going to be rewarding and fulfilling in this moment? And where am I going to say no? Because just like in your early careers, you’ve got to say no to some things. And so making those decisions based upon what I want, not what everybody else is expecting or asking of me, is really important to do.

AMY BERNSTEIN: And so, we hope by this point in your life, with all of these other balls you’ve had in the air, you’ve figured out which ones you really want to catch, right? Is that the idea?

DANNA GREENBERG: Or, which ones you want to catch now. Something — a ball that wasn’t important to you five or 10 years ago may all of a sudden be really important to you, and you’re going to really want to run with that.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Mhm.

AMY GALLO: I loved the line in the book about having a proud, engaged mother be more important than a big backyard. Why do you think women lose sight of the positive sight of the positive impact their working has on their children?

DANNA GREENBERG: I think they lose sight for a couple of reasons, the first of which is the rhetoric we talked about, that we’re all told. I think the other reason you lose sight of the positive is that it is hard. The day-to-day responsibilities of loving your job, wanting to be successful in your career, in your work, wanting to be there and be present for your family and be an active and engaged parent and partner, if you have a partner — it’s not easy day to day. And I think like anything else, we lose sight of the big picture; we lose sight of the joy in those really small moments that happen, and we lament what we didn’t do. And so giving up a little of that rhetoric, giving yourself space, and looking for the joy in the day. What is that joyful moment? It might be just the cereal bowl and what happened over that conversation. Or it might be one thing that you do during the day that has an impact on a colleague or a client. But focusing on the joy changes the story you’re telling yourself. And that’s what we need to help women do, change the story we’re telling ourselves.

JAMIE LADGE: And we need more positive stories. We need women to feel good about — we need ourselves to feel good about — the choices we make, as opposed to, like Danna said, lamenting over decisions. We shouldn’t look back. We shouldn’t always feel we have to look back and say, I wish I had done that. We need to own and feel confident about the choices we make. And if they don’t work out the way we intended them to, OK, they didn’t work out, but at least we know that we can move forward from that, and maybe the next choice will work out. And just because so-and-so down the street did this or my colleague in the office did that, that doesn’t mean it’s going to work for me. It’s good that I have that model. It’s good that I have that guide to follow, but I’m going to chart my own path.

NICOLE TORRES: Jamie, Danna, thank you both so much for joining us and talking to us today.

JAMIE LADGE: Thank you for having us.

DANNA GREENBERG: Thank you.

NICOLE TORRES: So do you, Amy G, feel more optimistic about this? I mean, you’re kind of entering this new phase of working motherhood. Harper is 12. You know, she’s an older child. [LAUGHTER] How are you feeling after the conversation?

AMY GALLO: I do feel more optimistic. Reading the book, I felt there was a lot that resonated with me that I thought, oh, I hadn’t quite those about it that way. Because I think there is this sense that it’s motherhood and working are at odds, and that it’s more about compromise on both sides so you can make it work. And I like that they sort of talked about them actually feed one another in a positive way. And I’ve definitely seen that in my own life. And the transition I made from Harper being sort of a young child to being this tween, that was a very optimistic transition for me, because she was more independent, and she was observing me working in a way that she hadn’t before, because she was completely self-centered, as kids are.

AMY BERNSTEIN: So, I’m curious, though — you just said that being a mother and working, that the two sides of you fed each other. How — what was that? How did they feel each other?

AMY GALLO: Yeah. Well, I think the way that Danna and Jamie talked about it was that, and this is what felt true to me, is that I’m better, I’m more efficient with my time, because I have greater demands on my time than I ever have before. I use work, particularly research we find, or tactics I use, time management, I use those at home. So, I think I’m better organized at home because of it. And I think because of having a kid, I’m much more empathetic with other people. You know, having a kid, trust me, you get frustrated and mad, but you realize it’s not their fault. And I think I treat people like that at work more often. I see them all as like the child whose needs aren’t being met, rather than the adult who’s being a jerk to me in this meeting. I’m sort of more emotionally grounded than I was before I had Harper.

NICOLE TORRES: Like Danna says, working motherhood isn’t just return-to-work; it’s a long-distance run. But returning to work is the start.

HANNAH: I’d decided to take four months off. This is my third child, but it’s my first time going back to work full time because my other two children, I was self-employed, and I worked from home part time.

NICOLE TORRES: That’s Hannah, a listener who’s been in touch with us over email. Hannah first wrote us after hearing our episode “Managing Parental Leave (Yours or Someone Else’s).” She was on leave at the time, after having her daughter Greta.

HANNAH: As the three-month mark was approaching, I was feeling so unprepared, and I wasn’t ready to leave Greta, and I just had so much guilt about being away from her for so many hours during the day.

NICOLE TORRES: Hannah said the stories our colleague Erica Truxler shared in that episode helped her feel like she could manage the challenges of returning to the office full time after leave. A few months later, Hannah offered to tell us how it’s been going for her. And we thought it would be great to get Hannah and Erica on the phone together. And it really was.

ERICA TRUXLER: Well, Hannah, I just wanted to start by saying thank you so much for emailing us after our episode from last season. You know, it was very vulnerable putting myself out there and how difficult I had a time getting back into work, and hearing that you found comfort in my story really, honestly, helped me, too. So, we were helping each other [LAUGHTER] from across the country.

HANNAH: Yeah.

ERICA TRUXLER: So, I just wanted to know how, how things are going and — I don’t know if you could go maybe just into a little bit more detail about maybe even just your first month back at work and how that went and, really, yes, just an update on how things are going on your end.

HANNAH: Yeah. Yeah. So, I had a positive outlook, but I think — I mean, I tend to be a little bit type A, so I think I took it, like, to the extreme a little bit. And I was just — I went back to work with this attitude of, like, I’m going to do it all. I’m going to fit it all, everything I want to do in one day into a day. And I’m going to do all this self-care. I had this — you know, I had this crazy schedule of, like, I’m going to wake up at 5 a.m. every morning and meditate and work out and do all these things before the kids wake up. And I was kind of doing it on some weeks, but I had such a frantic energy, going from one thing to the next. And even though I was trying to practice all this self-care, it was not really self-care because —

ERICA TRUXLER: Yes, yes.

HANNAH: It was like a stressful thing to complete it. So then it was like this crazy rollercoaster. Within two weeks of getting back to work, our whole family got hit with the stomach flu. Oh, then I got strep throat.

ERICA TRUXLER: Oh, my goodness, yes, I had exactly the same experience. [LAUGHTER] I was going to mention, this was my first winter, daycare, germ-filled winter, with my 1-year-old now, Claire. And truly it was almost, like, back to back. We also had — I think it was two or three stomach flus, the flu, also pink eye, hand, foot, and mouth, double ear infection at the same time as hand, foot, and mouth. So, anyways, all of this is to say, I hear you, and I feel that it’s one of those things where, you know, you kind of go in and you’re like, I can do this. I set myself up for success. I even carve in some me time before babies wake up. And then the reality hits.

HANNAH: Yeah, and it’s hard to figure out, like, what is, like, the best perspective to have. And I know that you gave me the advice to just be gentle with yourself. And I feel like that’s a really good thing to focus on, but sometimes, like, I know for me, I had to go through that curve of having all these expectations and having them backfire and being like, oh, OK, this is what it means to be gentle with myself, you know?

ERICA TRUXLER: Yes, yes. And Amy is — Amy Gallo is careful to say it’s not lowering our expectations; it’s setting expectations for the moment that we’re in in our lives.

HANNAH: Yeah. I work with a coach through my work that was actually a leadership coach to start, but she morphed into my maternity leave coach [LAUGHTER].

ERICA TRUXLER: Yes.

HANNAH: So, and we were working on all these things, like, OK, don’t expect to do everything in one day. Let’s stretch out the time. Maybe it’s you’re trying to complete those things in one week or two weeks. The other thing I did, which was crazy, but I stopped drinking coffee. And I feel like that really helped my frantic energy. And even though I was sleep-deprived and tired, I think it was better to be in that state than it was to have that kind of buzz going on all the time.

ERICA TRUXLER: Anxious energy, yeah.

HANNAH: Yeah. So, like I said, I’ve always been kind of a go-getter, exerciser every day — that type of thing. And I just was like, you know what, I’m not even going to exercise. I’m not going to do anything. I’m just going to go to work and be with my family. And I feel like taking it way down I finally accepted it, and I feel like that was a huge —

ERICA TRUXLER: It’s huge!

HANNAH: Yeah, it made such a difference.

ERICA TRUXLER: Yeah, and I do feel that there is positivity that we often miss in the rush and the bustle of going back and forth and rushing to daycare and doing deadlines and work.

HANNAH: Mhm.

ERICA TRUXLER: And I was just wondering if there are any moments that you can think over the past few months where you really did feel happy at work, and you came home and you felt happy at home, and you realized, wait a second, I wouldn’t have this feeling if I weren’t doing both?

HANNAH: Yeah. Well, for one, I mean, compared to my first two children, I think — and this is of course something that’s so different and is such a personal thing for everybody, but I really like working outside of the home. It’s really nice having that — I mean, it is like a little bit of a break. You know, when you’re a parent and you’re working so hard, and it’s such a demanding role, sometimes it’s nice to step out of that. And I think if you’re not working outside of the home, it’s a little harder to orchestrate that as frequently or have it be as effective as working outside of the home. So, I think that that was something that was really a positive thing this go-around. And the other thing about that, I was so worried about all the hours I was going to be away from Greta, and in the end, that was probably one of the least challenging things for me.

HANNAH: I mean, of course I missed her at work, but I don’t feel like I have a deficit of time with her.

ERICA TRUXLER: Yes, you know what’s funny is, I’ve noticed, on Sundays, when I’m with Claire all day, and I’m there starting at 5:30 in the morning, by, like, 9:45, I’m, I’m starting to get very tired, and I start to check my phone. And I start to go on Instagram or something while she’s sitting next to me.

HANNAH: Right.

ERICA TRUXLER: And I’ve had this realization that when I pick her up from daycare, it’s such a happy moment for me. Like, literally, yesterday, I was in her — they have a little playground — and I was talking to one of her teachers, and I didn’t see her right away. And then all of a sudden, I hear, mama, mama, and she’s running towards me, and it was just, like, the happiest moment, honestly.

ERICA TRUXLER: And then we come home, and we have about two hours, so it’s not much, but those two hours I make a point to not have my phone in front of me, and we are playing, and I value that time so much. And when I’ve had a good day at work, I often think, I’ve been able to accomplish, you know, edit that article, and I came home and had a great evening with Claire, and I feel very positive about it. And often those positive moments do get overrun by, you know, the illnesses. And so I’ve been trying to kind of note the positive moments more when I can as well.

HANNAH: Yeah, yeah. And I think that’s something that for me, when I slowed everything down, it really helped me to have more of that kind of attitude and really recognize what I was accomplishing.

ERICA TRUXLER: Right! Thank you so much, Hannah. This has been such a great conversation.

HANNAH: Thank you.

AMY GALLO: That’s our show. I’m Amy Gallo.

NICOLE TORRES: And I’m Nicole Torres. Our producer is Amanda Kersey. Our audio product manager is Adam Buchholz. Maureen Hoch is our supervising editor. We get technical help from Rob Eckhardt. Erica Truxler makes the show’s discussion guides. And JM Olejarz is our copyeditor.

AMY GALLO: And one more note: we’ve heard from a lot of our listeners about the discussion guides. I was actually at an event in California a couple weeks ago, and someone stopped me at the sink in a bathroom to tell me that she uses the discussion guides with her women’s group at her organization.

AMY BERNSTEIN: That is fantastic. We also got this email saying, and I’m going to quote here: “The guides are having an impact on how we talk, act, and lean on each other in the office.”

AMY GALLO: If you want access to the guides, you can find them on our website, at HBR.org/podcasts, on the Women at Work page.

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This article is about gender, partner center.

• Open access
• Published: 04 March 2022

Working mothers during COVID-19: a cross-sectional study on mental health status and associations with the receipt of employment benefits

• Melissa A. Kirwin 1 &
• Anna K. Ettinger 2  

BMC Public Health volume  22 , Article number:  435 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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Beyond the sweeping physiological effects of COVID-19 infections in 2020 and 2021, the psychosocial impacts of lockdowns, social distancing, and the associated disruptions to daily life have brought on a simultaneous mental health crisis, particularly among many working mothers who are disproportionately balancing childcare, virtual schooling, and employment vulnerability. The aim of this study was to measure the mental health status of working mothers in the United States and associations with the provision of family-friendly employment benefits one year into the pandemic.

Cross-sectional data were collected from a sample of working mothers in the U.S. using an online survey of mental health status and the receipt of employer-provided family-friendly benefits. Mental health was measured with the Kessler 6 (K-6) and the Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (SWEMWBS). Perceived helpfulness of benefits was assessed through self-reported Likert-scale scores of 0 (not at all helpful) to 4 (extremely helpful) to determine mean helpfulness scores for benefit types. Multivariable logistic regression analyses were conducted to determine associations between receipt of employment benefits and serious mental illness (SMI).

A total of 728 participants met the study criteria, 83.7% were non-Hispanic/Latino white and 61.1% were 35–44 years of age. Among study participants, 54.3% ( n  = 395) and 21.8% ( n  = 159) reported psychological distress levels associated with moderate mental illness (MMI) and serious mental illness (SMI), respectively. Not receiving benefits was associated with a 50% increase in odds of SMI ( aOR  = 1.50, 95% CI [1.03–2.20], p  = 0.036). Benefits perceived to be the most helpful for participants were flexible hours/schedule (3.5; SD  ± 0.9), flexible work location (3.3; SD  ± 1.1), and supplemental paid time off (3.1; SD  ± 1.1), with mean scores above very helpful.

Results suggest employment benefits may help support the mental health of working mothers and provide a call to action to employers and policy stakeholders to develop solutions addressing gaps in workplace benefits and mental health support for working parents, with sustainable reform in mind to mitigate employment benefit inequities exposed by the pandemic.

Peer Review reports

The broad physiologic, psychosocial, and economic impacts of the COVID-19 public health emergency have raised significant concerns for the mental health status of adults globally [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]. A critical subpopulation of concern is the 21.7 million working mothers that comprise 13% of the American labor force [ 4 ]. The strain on mothers of children school-aged and younger during the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred anxiety, depression, and the exacerbation of other mental health disorders [ 5 , 6 , 7 ]. Working mothers have faced unique challenges in simultaneously juggling employment and increased domestic responsibilities during the absence of stable childcare and schooling options [ 8 ]. Mothers’ stressors range from concerns over their children’s well-being to potential financial challenges related to wide-spread employment instability during the pandemic [ 9 , 10 , 11 ]. Approximately 1.9 million women have exited the labor force during the pandemic with peaks occurring in March and September 2020, coinciding with the transitions of children to home-based learning [ 12 , 13 ].

COVID-19 pandemic-related job insecurity has been linked to an increased risk for poor mental health [ 14 ]. Additionally, for those individuals who lost or left a job during the pandemic and did not receive unemployment benefits, associations have been found with more unmet health-related social needs, such as food and housing, and poor mental health [ 15 ]. To partially alleviate the burden on Americans, including working mothers and their family members, the U.S. government enacted a number of COVID-relief legislation packages, including family-friendly policies such as the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) entitling a subset of employers with fewer than 500 employees to receive tax credits to partially offset the costs of providing leave benefits [ 16 ]. Some larger employers turned to existing policies such as the Family Medical Leave Act [FMLA] to provide employees with paid leave to assist with increased caregiving responsibilities; notably, only one-quarter of larger employers offer some sort of paid leave benefit even in non-pandemic times [ 17 ].

American employees more likely to have access to paid family leave benefits are full-time workers at large employers, higher-wage earners, and in management and professional occupations [ 18 ]. These employee characteristics disproportionally apply to more white men in higher income households than to women of any race or ethnicity, contributing to the inequities in the provision of critically needed paid leave benefits for mothers, especially mothers of color and lower income households [ 19 ]. One-third of the highest quartile of wage earners in the private sector has access to paid leave benefits compared to 8% of the lowest quartile of wage earners, providing evidence of the paradox that groups such as low income populations have one of the lowest rates of access to paid family leave benefits [ 18 , 20 ].

Beyond the availability of paid leave for a minority of working mothers, other parental or family-friendly employment benefits have been enacted in a patchwork fashion across employers in the U.S. with the intention to ease strains around childcare and school closures, including flexible work location, flexible hours, and childcare assistance. For example, many professional-level workers have been given options to telecommute. This alternative potentially creates the unrealistic expectation that parents, especially mothers who disproportionately handle most of a household’s domestic workload, are able to complete both work responsibilities and meet the needs of children in virtual schooling environments [ 21 ]. Frontline workers such as most healthcare workers and low-waged, service industry workers do not have the option to telecommute, creating untenable scenarios of simultaneous work and childcare demands, especially among dual working parent families or single parent homes. Many individuals within these groups carry additional intersections as low-income households and as people of color [ 22 ]. This highlights one of the many inequalities exposed and exacerbated by the pandemic [ 23 ], along with discussions that rectifying these types of inequities and gaps in social safety nets should be continued as Americans emerge from the pandemic.

The provision of family-friendly or parental employment benefits such as paid family leave has been associated with improved mental health outcomes and reduced levels of chronic stress in pre-pandemic times [ 24 , 25 ]. In 2004, California became the first state to enact paid family leave for working parents to care for a family member, providing 60 to 70% of wages for up to eight weeks within any 12-month period [ 26 ]. A longitudinal study measured mental health effects on parents prior to and after policy enactment, finding a sizable decrease in the levels of psychological distress for mothers at a time when they were eligible for paid family leave [ 27 ]. Other studies in the U.S. and abroad support the views that paid family leave is positively correlated with maternal mental health outcomes [ 25 , 28 , 29 ].

Additional benefits provided prior to the pandemic such as flexible work location and hours arrangements have also demonstrated positive maternal mental health outcomes such as reduced stress levels, lower rates of depression, and a greater sense of well-being, with much of the positive mental outcomes predicated by high levels of support and communication from managers and peers [ 30 , 31 ]. Drawing evidence from Canada’s implementation of the universal childcare benefit (UCCB), childcare financial assistance and associated positive mental health outcomes serves as another example of the positive impacts of family-friendly employment benefits [ 32 ]. Canada’s UCCB, implemented in 2006, introduced a $100 CAD monthly payment per child under the age of six [ 32 ]. Mental health outcomes in a study leveraging Canadian population-level data showed the UCCB was associated with positive effects on maternal mental health, with stronger effects observed in single mothers [ 32 ]. Mental health impacts of similar child-related monetary benefits are evident in the expansion of the U.S. earned income tax credit benefit structure throughout the 1990s and 2000s and associations with maternal mental health [ 33 ]. Receipt of child-related earned income tax credits were associated with improved maternal mental health outcomes in both dual and single parent households, demonstrating that these types of safety nets not only positively influence financial instability issues, but concurrent mental health impacts [ 33 ].

While currently no studies have examined the longer-term mental health impacts of a scenario of the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic and related economic implications, experiences of populations impacted by previous pandemics and economic crises may be informative, including the 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and the Great Recession occurring between 2007 and 2009. SARS pandemic survivors showed elevated levels of stress during the outbreak that continued one year later without any indication of decreases; survivors showed higher levels of depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic symptoms than control subjects [ 34 ]. Individuals who experienced a negative job impact during the Great Recession demonstrated higher odds of poor mental health three to four years after the recession had ended [ 35 ]. Mothers in particular showed poor mental health outcomes in association with negative financial impacts during the recession [ 36 , 37 ].

Although studies have assessed the mental health impact of the pandemic on U.S. adults, less is known about specific employment solutions that will support the mental health of working mothers. Additionally, working parents’ perceptions of and satisfaction with family-friendly employment benefits during the pandemic has not been widely studied. Given the challenges and burdens facing working mothers, additional research is needed to better understand working mothers’ mental health status approximately one year into the COVID-19 pandemic and potential associations with the receipt of family-friendly employment benefits that have positively influenced maternal mental health in non-pandemic times. The goal of the study was to assess the prevalence and type of employment benefits received by working mothers during the pandemic, understand levels of satisfaction with benefits provided, and evaluate working mothers’ mental health status after enduring approximately one year of balancing work and family during unprecedented times. Study outcomes not only provide an objective view of mental health associations with family-friendly benefits, but an understanding of the satisfaction with benefits provided from the perspective of working mothers. Without a clear plan for many mothers to return to work as they knew it prior to 2020, insights must be provided leading to possible employer and government policy pathways for further investigation, and the subsequent development of potential social, workplace, and government support strategies to ease associated burdens for working mothers and their families.

Study aims, design, and setting

The aim of this study was to investigate working mothers’ mental health status and associations with the types and prevalence of family-friendly employment benefits provided during the first year of the pandemic. In addition, the study aimed to identify subpopulations with an increased risk of mental health issues and associated gaps in workplace policy. Our study addressed the following research objectives:

To assess the prevalence and type of family-friendly employment benefits received by working mothers in the U.S. and working mothers’ perceptions of and satisfaction with employment benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic.

To examine the current mental health status of working mothers in the U.S and associations with the provision of family-friendly employment benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic approximately one year after the declaration of public health emergency.

A cross-sectional quantitative research study was performed using an anonymous online survey to collect data from U.S. working mothers. The survey consisted of 26 questions including validated and newly developed items and was open for responses for a period of two weeks between April 20, 2021 and May 3, 2021. The survey was created using Qualtrics, leveraging Qualtrics’ anonymity capabilities to ensure responses remained anonymous [ 38 ].

Sample & recruitment

Through virtual social media platform ads, working mothers were invited to participate in the survey if they met the following inclusion criteria: (1) 18 years of age or older, (2) reside in the U.S., (3) have at least one child under the age of 18 in their household who they care for, and (4) have engaged in paid part- or full-time work for at least three months since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The online survey was distributed through social media platforms through paid ads, organic (unpaid) ads posted in working mother and moms’ groups, and by email outreach efforts to relevant individuals and organizations (e.g., public health professionals, maternal health and community organizations) for a period of two weeks. Virtual snowball sampling through sharing of paid Facebook ads, Facebook posts, and email outreach efforts was used to recruit additional survey participants. Sampling and recruitment through convenience and virtual snowball techniques leveraging Facebook is a cost-effective approach to reach populations such as working mothers in the U.S. [ 39 ]. As an incentive for participation, survey participants had the option at the conclusion of the survey to complete a separate, unlinked survey to capture contact information to be entered in a drawing for one of ten gift baskets valued at approximately 50 USD each.

In anticipation of a potential overrepresentation of young white females in survey responses, as has been demonstrated in previous health research studies leveraging Facebook for recruiting purposes, sociodemographic characteristics were monitored while the survey was open [ 40 ]. Survey response rates were reviewed to identify over- and under-representation of specific sociodemographic groups and to inform audience outreach approaches to ensure the inclusion of frequently underrepresented groups (e.g., people of color and lower income mothers). The most current data available on the U.S. workforce by race/ethnicity and the U.S. household income distribution ratio from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and Statista, respectively, were used as baseline comparison ratios informing target audience adjustments [ 41 , 42 ].

Sample size and response rates

The estimated sample size required to detect a two-point difference in the Kessler mental health scores was 120 participants based on similar populations mean scores, which would generate findings with a 95% confidence level, a 5% margin of error and a power of 80%. Given the social media outreach strategy, a traditional survey response rate was not able to be calculated. Of those participants who completed the screener, 96.2% ( N  = 866) were eligible to participate in the survey and 80.9% ( N  = 728) successfully completed the survey.

Ethical approval

All study methods were performed in accordance with the relevant guidelines and regulations under the George Washington University Committee of Human Research for ethical human subjects research. The study was approved and determined to be exempt by the George Washington University Committee of Human Research (Reference number: IRB NCR213382). An informed consent was displayed at the initiation of the survey to inform the participants of the purpose of the study, how the data will be used, and their rights as participants in the research project. Participants were assured that all information collected would remain confidential and used strictly for research purposes. Participants who provided consent and agreed to continue were asked screening questions at the beginning of the survey to determine if participants were eligible and could proceed with the data collection component of the questionnaire.

Due to the potentially sensitive nature of survey questions related to a participant’s mental health status participants had the option to discontinue the survey at any point by clicking a button indicating, “I would like to stop taking the survey” and have mental health and parenting assistance resources display such as the Crisis Text Line, National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and Circle of Parents support resources. Participants who completed the survey were also provided with the same mental health and parenting resources at the end of the survey.

Description of measures

The online survey obtained responses from participants on self-reported measures of pandemic-related family-friendly employment benefits received, mental health status, sociodemographics, family characteristics, and work characteristics.

Independent variable: family-friendly employment benefit receipt

Pandemic-related, family-friendly employment benefits were measured by self-reported benefit receipt (yes/no) and by participants providing the benefit types received. Benefits included temporary increased wages, supplemental paid and unpaid time off, flexible hours/schedule to help with caregiving responsibilities, additional sick leave, flexible work location arrangements, flexible work location set-up, financial assistance, childcare financial assistance, mental health and well-being programs, and enhanced health insurance programs. A freeform field allowed participants to self-report benefit types not prepopulated in the survey. All freeform benefits provided were reviewed and allocated to suitable benefit categories for data analysis.

Independent variable: perceived helpfulness of benefits

Participant provided responses were used to determine a mean helpfulness score for each benefit on a Likert-scale of 0 (not at all helpful) to 4 (extremely helpful). All mothers, regardless of benefit receipt or non-receipt, were prompted to provide the Likert-scale benefit helpfulness score based on how helpful a benefit has been or could be based on their current employment experience. Collection of the benefit helpfulness scores from those who did and those who did not receive benefits informed the calculation of a subjective benefit helpfulness measure applicable to the full sample of diverse mothers. The benefit means scores allowed further investigation into which benefits had potentially stronger associations with mental health outcomes.

Dependent variables: maternal mental health

Mental health is a multidimensional state with constructs beyond psychological distress to consider when evaluating an individual's or population’s mental health status, so the study included assessments of both mental distress and a mental well-being. Psychological distress was obtained by the Kessler 6 (K-6) short-form screening scale to provide levels of psychological distress over the last 30 days [ 43 ]. The K-6 is widely regarded as a concise screening scale with good precision in identifying mental health disorders with a sensitivity of 0.34 and specificity of 0.96 at cut points of 5+ and 13+ to identify moderate and severe psychological distress, associated with moderate and serious mental illness, respectively [ 44 ]. The screening scale is used widely in the U.S. and abroad in surveys to measure mental health at the individual and community levels. In the self-administered version of the K-6 used in this study, participants self-reported a Likert-scale from 0 to 4 to six questions providing insights into their levels of psychological distress. Items were summed for a total score ranging from 0 to 24 and cut points of 5 and 13 were leveraged for assessing the prevalence of moderate mental illness (MMI) and serious mental illness (SMI), respectively [ 45 ]. Numeric scores were also retained as a continuous variable to provide more detailed findings regarding mental health status. Cronbach’s alpha demonstrated our use of the K-6 scale was highly reliable (α = 0.86).

To assess mental well-being, questions from the short version of the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (SWEMWBS) were included. The WEMWBS was developed to enable the examination of mental wellbeing in the general population through positively worded statements and Likert-scale responses [ 46 ]. Participants responded to seven items with responses ranging from 1 to 5 and a total raw score was calculated. Raw scores were transformed to metric scores as indicated by the Warwick Medical School’s scale use standards [ 47 ]. Scores from the SWEMWBS can be divided into high, average, and low mental wellbeing categories using the cut points of 28–35 and 7–19 for high and low mental wellbeing, respectively [ 47 ]. Continuous numeric scores were retained similarly to the K-6 scores for further analysis. Cronbach’s alpha demonstrated our use of the SWEMWBS scale was highly reliable (α = 0.84).

Covariates: Sociodemographics, family and work characteristics

Sociodemographics included age (18–34 years old, 35–44 years old, > 44 years old), race/ethnicity (Asian; Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC); Hispanic/Latina; White), annual household income (less than $34,999, $35,000 to $49,999, $50,000 to $74,999, $75,000 to $99,999, $100,000 to $149,999, Over $150,000), highest level of education completed (some college or less, associate degree, bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, doctorate), and U.S. geographic region (Midwest, Northeast, South, West). BIPOC individuals were defined as those participants that self-reported Black, Indigenous American, or Alaskan Native as their race in the survey and were combined due to smaller sample sizes in these groups preventing the ability to report on each separately. Family characteristics included marital status (married or in a domestic partnership, or single, separated, divorced, or widowed), number of children under the age of 18 living in the household (one, two, three, four or more), the presence of children under the age of six living in the household (yes/no), level of disruption in childcare/schooling (never, rarely, sometimes, often, always). For data analysis, a significant disruption in childcare/schooling was categorized by responses of either often or always. Work characteristics included part-time or full-time work and work environment (home or flexible location, office or warehouse setting, educational establishment, health care establishment, setting with regular public interaction, other).

Data analysis

For the first research objective, family-friendly employment benefit type prevalence measures were used to assess the receipt and distribution of benefits across the sample of working mothers. Descriptive statistics were examined for participants receiving and not receiving benefits across sociodemographic, family, and work covariates; chi-square tests were used for categorical covariates and two sample t-tests for continuous covariates. Participants’ perceptions of and satisfaction with employment benefits were measured by mean Likert-scale scores for each employment benefit type. Means for numbers of benefits received by categorical measures were tested using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA).

For the second research objective, descriptive statistics were compared between participants that did and did not report poor mental health using chi-square tests for categorical covariates and two sample t-tests for continuous covariates. Means for mental health measures were tested using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Frequencies of benefit types and means for reported benefit helpfulness also informed associations between mental health outcomes and benefits received. Finally, unadjusted and adjusted multivariable logistic regression was used to determine associations between psychological distress (K-6) or well-being (SWEMWBS) and family-friendly employment benefits receipt or non-receipt. Adjusted models included age, race/ethnicity, household income, educational attainment, and marital status. P -values less than 0.05 were considered significant. All analyses were conducted using SPSS software version 27.

Characteristics of study participants by receipt of benefits

Of the 900 participants who responded to the survey, 172 participants did not meet study inclusion criteria or complete the questionnaire. In the final sample of 728 working mothers, 55.6% ( n  = 405) reported receiving one or more pandemic-related employment benefit during the last year. Participants who received benefit(s) were more likely to be between the ages of 34 and 44, report higher levels of education and higher levels of household income, reside in the West region of the U.S., currently work at home or at a flexible location, and be married or in a domestic partnership (Appendix: Table 2 ). Differences in receipt of benefits were not observed by race/ethnicity or part-time or full-time work status.

The number of benefits received varied by sociodemographics and work characteristics. The youngest mothers aged 18–34 years received the fewest benefits with a mean of 1.3 ( SD  ± 1.7) benefits per participant, while participants aged 34–44 years and those older than 44 years received an average of 1.7 ( SD  ± 1.8) and 1.5 ( SD  ± 1.8; p  = 0.014) benefits, respectively. Overall increases in the number of benefits received were observed with increases in educational attainment and household income. Those completing some college or less received a mean of 0.6 ( SD  ± 1.1) benefits, while those holding bachelors, masters, or doctoral degrees received means of 1.7 benefits ( SD s ± 1.7, 1.8, 1.8; p  = 0.001). Participants with annual household incomes less than $34,000 received a mean of 0.6 ( SD  ± 1.1) benefits, while those at the top of the income scale making over $100,000 receiving a mean of 1.9 benefits ( SD  ± 1.8; p  < 0.001). The number of benefits by work type and work environment was also statistically significant, with those working in education and healthcare receiving fewer benefits ( M  = 1.3, SD  ± 1.6 and M  = 1.0, SD  ± 1.5) compared to those working in government or non-profit jobs ( M  = 2.1, SD  ± 1.8 and M  = 2.1, SD  ± 1.7).

Family-friendly benefit type receipt and perceived helpfulness

The family-friendly benefit most frequently received was flexible hours/schedule to help with caregiving, with 46.3% ( n  = 337) of participants reporting receipt (Table 1 ). Flexible work location and mental health and well-being programs were received by 37.4% ( n  = 272) and 22.7% ( n  = 165) of participants. Mean benefit perceived helpfulness scores were calculated for the total sample, those who received benefits, and those who did not receive benefits. All three mean helpfulness scores demonstrated that the three benefits perceived to be the most helpful for participants were flexible hours/schedule, flexible work location, and extra paid time off. The three benefits’ mean scores fell above 3.0 indicating that the benefits were perceived to be very helpful across the sample.

Mental health outcomes and associations with employment benefit receipt

The mean psychological distress (K-6) score for the full sample was 8.5 ( SD  ± 4.9), indicating the sample mean score fell above the cut point of 5+ for moderate psychological distress associated with MMI. Mothers who did not receive benefits had higher mean psychological distress scores ( M  = 9.2, SD  ± 4.9) compared to mothers who received benefits ( M  = 7.9, SD  ± 4.8, p  < 0.001). As the number of benefits received increased among participants, the mean K-6 score decreased ( p  = 0.002). Statistically significant differences in K-6 mean scores were observed by mothers’ level of education attainment, household income, and disruption in childcare/schooling. Compared to their counterparts, higher mean K-6 scores were reported for mothers with lower levels of education attainment ( M  = 11.8, SD  ± 5.0, p  < 0.001), lower levels of household income ( M  = 10.6, SD  ± 6.4, p  = 0.001), and for those perceiving significant disruptions in childcare/schooling ( M  = 9.2, SD  ± 4.9, p  < 0.001).

The mean SWEMWBS score for the full sample was 20.2 ( SD  ± 3.3), placing the sample mean score in the average mental wellbeing category, slightly above the cut point of 19 for Low Mental Wellbeing (LMW). Statistically significant differences in mental well-being scores were found by race/ethnicity, benefit receipt, number of benefits received, and disruption in childcare/schooling. Reporting worse mental health on the SWEMWEBS than their counterparts were white working mothers ( M  = 20.0, SD  ± 3.2, p  = 0.033), participants who did not receive benefits ( M  = 19.8, SD  ± 3.5, p  = 0.013), and those who perceived a significant childcare/schooling disruption ( M  = 19.8, SD  ± 2.6, p  < 0.001).

Categorical mental health measures were evaluated using the widely accepted cutoff points for both the K-6 and SWEMWBS (Appendix – Table 3 ). The prevalence of any mental illness (i.e., MMI and SMI) for the sample was 76.1% ( n  = 554), with 21.8% ( n  = 159) meeting the psychological distress threshold for SMI. A higher prevalence of SMI was detected among participants reporting no benefits received compared to those receiving any benefit(s) (27.6% vs. 17.3%, p =  0.001). Four specific benefits were found to be associated with a significant lower prevalence of SMI among recipients compared to nonrecipients: flexible hours/schedule for caregiving (15.7% vs. 27.1%, p <  0.001), flexible work location (17.6% vs. 24.3%, p =  0.030), extra paid time off (15.2% vs. 23.0%, p =  0.045), and mental health and wellbeing programs (13.3% vs. 23.1%, p =  0.008). The prevalence of LMW in the sample was 39.0% ( n  = 284). A higher level of LMW was associated with participants not receiving benefits compared to those receiving benefits (44.0% vs. 35.1%, p =  0.050). Mothers with higher levels of mental wellbeing more often reported receipt of flexible hours/schedule (33.8% vs. 43.2%, p =  0.038) and mental health and wellbeing programs (30.9% vs. 39.3%, p =  0.049).

Separate multivariable logistic analyses assessed employment benefits and factors associated with SMI and LMW (Appendix – Table 4 ). In adjusted analyses, not receiving benefits was significantly associated with increased odds of SMI ( aOR  = 1.50, CI [1.03–2.20], p  = 0.036) and LMW ( aOR  = 1.38, CI [1.00–1.89], p  = 0.049). Mothers who received benefits showed decreased odds of SMI as the number of benefits received increased ( aOR  = 0.50, CI [0.27–0.93], p  = 0.031). Not receiving two specific benefits were significant predictors of SMI: flexible hours/schedule ( aOR  = 1.64, CI [1.10–2.42], p  = 0.014) and mental health and wellbeing programs ( aOR  = 1.72, CI [1.03–2.86], p  = 0.037). Not receiving flexible hours/schedule was also associated with LMW ( aOR  = 1.40, CI [1.02–1.93], p  = 0.038).

This study is one of the first to focus on working mothers and their mental health status, approximately one year after both the acute dangers of COVID-19 became clearly apparent and school closures were at their peak [ 48 ]. At the time of data collection in April and May 2021, the U.S. was experiencing a decline in infections, progress with vaccinations, a steady return to in-person schooling, and an unemployment rate for women of 5.1% compared to that of 13.6% at the same time one year earlier [ 12 , 13 , 45 ]. Despite progress in a reduction of infections, more reliable childcare/schooling options, and many women returning to employment, working mothers’ mental health is still suffering as described by our findings.

Several studies have examined mental health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the U.S. population and subpopulations of women and mothers during various perceived peaks of the pandemic in 2020 and found that the mental health across the country declined [ 5 , 49 , 50 ]. The magnitude and prevalence of mental illness among working mothers presented in our research closely mirrors the levels of psychological distress in the U.S. population in April 2020, approximately one month after stay-at-home orders upended almost all routines for Americans. At that time, 71.4% of women fit the criteria for MMI or SMI, and 27.2% of women fit the criteria for SMI [ 50 ].

More recently, longitudinal studies of a nationally representative population found an initial rise in psychological distress among Americans in April and May of 2020 and a subsequent fall back to baseline later in 2020 [ 51 , 52 ]. These studies postulate that a level of resilience within the population, along with swift governmental action to provide financial support for many Americans, potentially mitigated further mental health deterioration among much of the population. Another study, focusing on the mental health trajectories in UK adults during the pandemic arrived at similar findings, with most adults returning to pre-pandemic levels of mental health by October 2020 [ 53 ]. The findings of our study reveal the unlikelihood of a return to a mental health baseline for working mothers as high levels of psychological distress persist in this subpopulation.

In addition to examining the overall mental health status of U.S. working mothers, our study was one of the first to assess the provision of pandemic-related, family-friendly employment benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic and the associations with working mothers’ mental health outcomes. Not receiving family-friendly employment benefits was significantly associated with maternal SMI. Working mothers who received benefits showed reduced odds of SMI as the number of benefits received increased. Receiving more benefits was associated with higher education attainment and household income; this finding corresponds with BLS data as of March 2020, indicating that many workplace benefits were more often provided to the top versus bottom quartile of wage earners (medical benefits: 93% vs. 41%, paid leave: 94% vs. 52%, flexible workplace: 18% vs. 1%) [ 54 ]. The contrast between lower wage workers receiving few or no benefits and higher wage workers receiving higher numbers of benefits supports the need to mitigate this inequality highlighted by the pandemic.

Work schedule flexibility, location flexibility, and mental health and wellbeing programs demonstrated promise in driving better mental health in our adjusted models. Flexibility in work arrangements have been linked to better mental health outcomes among employees in pre-pandemic times and have become a recurrent discussion topic in the context of mental health as the U.S. begins its emergence from the pandemic, with employer support cited as a critical component necessary to reap mental health benefits [ 55 , 56 ]. Mean helpfulness scores for mental health and wellbeing programs in the current study was marginally above the “somewhat helpful” threshold, yet associations with improved mental health outcomes were significant. The link between provision of mental health and wellbeing programs and better mental health outcomes warrants further investigation to understand the types and usage of programs yielding positive mental health benefits.

Paid time off was associated with a lower prevalence of SMI among participants and was reported as one of the most helpful benefits among working mothers. However, paid time off was no longer significantly associated with SMI in our adjusted models controlling for sociodemographic variables (i.e., age, race/ethnicity, household income, educational attainment, and marital status). Our mixed results suggest additional research is necessary to better understand the mental health benefits of paid leave across sociodemographic segments of working mothers. Existing literature has demonstrated physical and mental health benefits of paid family leave and should be considered in tandem with our mixed findings when determining family-friendly employment benefit policies to improve the work experience and related mental health impacts for mothers [ 57 , 58 , 59 ].

This study had several limitations. First, while snowball sampling through social media platforms is a rapid, cost-effective means of reaching target populations, there are limitations to this sampling approach. Participant response rates could not be calculated, and participants could have taken the survey more than once, as the survey was anonymous. A potential low response rate could impact the generalizability of the findings, and the participating sample may be biased. BIPOC and Latina mothers were underrepresented in the study sample; the survey was only available in English which may have had a negative impact in recruiting Latina Americans. Lower household income segments were underrepresented as well. Lower income individuals may not have the time or resources to dedicate to taking the survey, potentially resulting in self-selection bias. Furthermore, working mothers suffering from poor mental health may have been more likely to complete the survey, again resulting in self-selection bias. Household size was not collected preventing the ability to adjust household income by number of family members per household. The cross-sectional study design allows the simultaneous observation of exposures and outcomes, while longitudinal studies are necessary and recommended for future research to examine the temporal relationship between benefits and mental health outcomes. Finally, statistical models adjusted for potential confounders, yet some confounders may still present limitations in the ability to generalize findings across the full population of 21.7 million working mothers in the U.S. [ 4 ].

The lack of statutory family-friendly employment benefits across populations of all backgrounds in the U.S. is just one of the many inequalities and vulnerabilities exposed and exacerbated by the pandemic [ 3 , 23 , 60 ]. Employment-related benefits and unemployment safety nets have demonstrated value with increases in met health-related social and economic needs and decreases in poor mental health [ 15 , 25 , 32 ]. Discussions and policy mitigations that rectify these types of inequalities and gaps in social safety nets should continue beyond the country’s emergence from the pandemic, as has been signaled by the current federal administration’s recent efforts. The American Jobs Plan, introduced on March 31, 2021 included a proposal for the allocation of $25 million to create more childcare facilities in the most high-need areas and to build on-site childcare facilities at places of work, creating flexible childcare options for those mothers needing it most [ 61 ].

Statutory paid family leave has been discussed on numerous occasions in the recent past, with President Biden addressing Congress in late April 2021 endorsing the American Families Plan legislation [ 62 ]. The American Families Plan initially proposed 12 weeks of paid family leave for parental, caregiving, and personal medical leave. The economic, physical, and mental health benefits of paid family leave would finally place the country in the same arena as all other developed nations regarding family-friendly benefits.

Mainstream media and grey literature have brought the mental health crisis for working mothers to attention through anecdotal stories accompanied with relevant statistics such as the number of women that have left the workforce as a result of the pandemic [ 63 , 64 ]. However, empirical evidence examining the associations between mental health status of working mothers in the U.S. and provision of employment benefits was lacking. This study fills an important gap to better understand working mothers’ mental health status and associations with critical family-friendly employment benefits approximately one year after the declaration of the global public health emergency. Findings contribute to the body of evidence necessary for employer and government policy efforts to place working mothers in a position to rebound psychologically, socially, and economically in the post-pandemic environment. Findings also serve as evidence demonstrating the fragility of American working mothers’ circumstances and the urgent need for permanent, comprehensive, statutory family-friendly employment benefits, such as flexibility in work schedules and location, paid family leave, and mental health programs as necessities that have been called out in this time of global crisis.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Abbreviations

Analysis of Variance

Black, Indigenous, and People of Color

United States Bureau of Labor Statistics

Families First Coronavirus Response Act

Kessler 6 Psychological Distress Scale

Low Mental Wellbeing

Moderate Mental Illness

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome

Serious Mental Illness

Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale

Universal Child Care Benefit

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Kirwin, M.A., Ettinger, A.K. Working mothers during COVID-19: a cross-sectional study on mental health status and associations with the receipt of employment benefits. BMC Public Health 22 , 435 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-12468-z

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Expert Commentary

What research says about the kids of working moms

We spotlight research on working moms. Overall, the research suggests maternal employment has little impact on kid's behavior and academic achievement over the short term and may have long-term benefits.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

by Denise-Marie Ordway, The Journalist's Resource August 6, 2018

This <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org/economics/working-mother-employment-research/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org">The Journalist's Resource</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-jr-favicon-150x150.png" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

Most American moms work outside the home. Nearly 70 percent of women with children under age 18 were in the labor force in 2015, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

In recent decades, as more mothers take paid positions, families, policymakers and scholars have wondered how the trend may impact children, especially during their early years. Many women, single parents in particular, must work because they either can’t afford to stay at home to raise their kids or the government agencies they rely on for assistance require them to be employed.

Work is also a choice for a lot of women. As more women in the United States complete college degrees — the percentage of women earning bachelor’s degrees skyrocketed between 1967 and 2015  — many have opted to leave their youngsters with a family member or daycare provider while they pursue careers and other professional interests.

Is this trend good or bad? Are kids with working moms different from kids whose moms are unemployed? Do they have more or fewer behavioral problems? Are their academic skills stronger or weaker? Let’s look at what the research says.

The good news: Overall, maternal employment seems to have a limited impact on children’s behavior and academic achievement over the short term. And there appear to be benefits in the long-term. A study published in 2018 finds that daughters raised by working moms are more likely to be employed as adults and have higher incomes.

Below, we’ve gathered a sampling of the academic research published or released on this topic in recent years. If you’re looking for workforce trend data, check out the U.S. Department of Labor’s website , which offers a variety of reports on women at work. A May 2018 report from the Pew Research Center, “7 Facts about U.S. Moms,” provides some useful context.

———–

“When Does Time Matter? Maternal Employment, Children’s Time With Parents, and Child Development” Hsin, Amy; Felfe, Christina. Demography , October 2014. DOI: 10.1007/s13524-014-0334-5.

Do working moms spend less time with their children? And if they do, does that hurt kids’ cognitive development? Amy Hsin from Queens College-City University of New York and Christina Felfe of the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland teamed up to investigate.

The gist of what they found: Mothers who work full-time do spend less time with their children, but they tend to trade quantity of time for better quality time. “On average, maternal work has no effect on time in activities that positively influence children’s development, but it reduces time in types of activities that may be detrimental to children’s development,” Hsin and Felfe explain. Each week, kids whose mothers work full-time spend 3.2 fewer hours engaged in “unstructured activities” — activities that don’t require children and parents to be actively engaged and speaking to one another — compared to kids whose moms are unemployed.

The researchers also find that children with college-educated mothers spend more time on educational activities as well as “structured” activities, which require kids to be actively engaged with their parents. “For example, college-educated mothers and their partners spend 4.9 hours and 2.5 hours per week, respectively, engaged in educational activities with their children; by comparison, mothers with less than [a] high school diploma and their partners spend only 3.3 hours and 1.7 hours per week in educational activities, respectively,” according to the study.

Maternal employment, generally speaking, appears to have a positive effect on children’s cognitive development. “When comparing the effect of maternal employment on child outcomes between stay-at-home mothers and mothers who work full-time, we see that the reduction in unstructured time resulting from full-time employment amounts to an improvement in children’s cognitive development of 0.03 to 0.04 SD [standard deviation],” the authors write. For children under age 6, the improvement is larger.

“Learning from Mum: Cross-National Evidence Linking Maternal Employment and Adult Children’s Outcomes” McGinn, Kathleen L.; Castro, Mayra Ruiz; Lingo, Elizabeth Long. Work, Employment and Society , April 2018. DOI: 10.1177/0950017018760167.

These researchers analyzed data from two surveys conducted across 29 countries to examine how men and women had been influenced by their mother’s work status. The main takeaway: Daughters raised by working mothers are more likely to have jobs as adults — and those who have jobs are more likely to supervise others, work longer hours and earn higher incomes.

There doesn’t appear to be a link between maternal employment and employment for sons, according to the study. However, men whose mothers worked while they were growing up spend about 50 minutes more caring for family members each week than men whose moms didn’t work.

The study, led by Kathleen L. McGinn of Harvard Business School , notes that these outcomes are “due at least in part to employed mothers’ conveyance of egalitarian gender attitudes and life skills for managing employment and domestic responsibilities simultaneously. Family-of-origin social class matters: women’s likelihood of employment rises with maternal employment across the socio-economic spectrum, but higher incomes and supervisory responsibility accrue primarily to women raised by mothers with more education and higher skill jobs.”

“Increasing Maternal Employment Influences Child Overweight/Obesity Among Ethnically Diverse Families” Ettinger, Anna K.; Riley, Anne W.; Price, Carmel E. Journal of Family Issues , July 2018. DOI: 10.1177/0192513X18760968.

This study looks at how maternal employment affects the weight status of Black and Latino children from low-income families in Boston, Chicago and San Antonio. The researchers find that an increase in a mother’s “work intensity” — for example, when a mother transitions from being unemployed to working or switches from part-time to full-time work — increases the odds that her child will be overweight or obese.

Kids whose mothers increased their work schedules during the children’s first few years of life were more likely to have a weight problem. “Children of mothers who increased their employment status during children’s preschool years had over 2.6 times the odds of being overweight/obese at 7 to 11 years of age compared with children of nonworking mothers,” the authors write. They also write that their results “suggest that changing work schedules and increasing work hours over time may be more disruptive to family environments and child weight than maintaining constant levels of employment over time (whether that is not working at all or working full-time).”

The researchers note that within their sample of 602 children, having consistent family routines such as mealtimes and bedtimes were associated with a 61 percent reduction in the odds of being overweight or obese. They also note that youth whose parents live together, whether married or not, tended to have lower odds of being overweight or obese than children living with single mothers.

“The Effect of Maternal Employment on Children’s Academic Performance” Dunifon, Rachel; Hansen, Anne Toft; Nicholson, Sean; Nielsen, Lisbeth Palmhøj. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 19364, August 2013.

Rachel Dunifon , the interim dean of Cornell University’s College of Human Ecology, led this study, which explores whether maternal employment improves children’s academic achievement. Dunifon and her colleagues analyze a data set for 135,000 children who were born in Denmark between 1987 and 1992 and followed through the ninth grade.

A key finding: Danish children whose mothers worked during their childhood had higher grade-point averages at age 15 than children whose mothers did not work. And children whose mothers worked between 10 and 19 hours a week had better grades than kids whose mothers worked full-time or only a few hours per week. “The child of a woman who worked between 10 and 19 hours per week while her child was under the age of four is predicted to have a GPA that is 2.6 percent higher than an otherwise similar child whose mother did not work at all,” the authors write.

The researchers suggest their paper “presents evidence of a positive causal linkage between maternal work hours and the GPA of Danish teens. These associations are strongest when mothers work part-time, and among more advantaged mothers, and are not accounted for by mothers’ earnings.”

“Maternal Work Early in the Lives of Children and Its Distal Associations with Achievement and Behavior Problems: A Meta-Analysis” Lucas-Thompson, Rachel G.; Goldberg, Wendy A.; Prause, JoAnn. Psychological Bulletin , November 2010. DOI: 10.1037/a0020875.

This is an analysis of 69 studies that, over the span of five decades, look at the relationship between maternal employment during children’s early years and children’s behavior and academic performance later in life. Overall, the analysis suggests that early maternal employment is not commonly associated with lower academic performance or behavior problems.

The analysis did, however, find differences when comparing different types of families. Early maternal employment was associated with “positive outcomes (i.e., increased achievement and decreased behavior problems) for majority one-parent samples,” explain the three researchers, Rachel G. Lucas-Thompson , now an assistant professor at Colorado State University, and Wendy A. Goldberg and JoAnn Prause of the University of California, Irvine. Early maternal employment was associated with lower achievement within two-parent families and increased behavior problems among study samples comprised of a mix of one- and two-parent families.

The researchers offer this explanation: “The results of this meta-analysis suggest that early maternal employment in sole-provider families may bolster children’s achievement and buffer against problem behaviors, perhaps because of the added financial security and health benefits that accompany employment, as well as improved food, clothing, and shelter because of increased income and the psychological importance of having a role model for achievement and responsible behavior. In contrast, early maternal employment may be detrimental for the behavior of children in two-parent families if the increases in family income do not offset the challenges introduced by maternal employment during children’s early years of life.”

There were differences based on household income as well. For families receiving welfare, the researchers found a link between maternal employment and increased student achievement. For middle- and upper-class families, maternal employment was associated with lower achievement.

The researchers note that they tried to gauge how child-care quality might influence these results. But there weren’t enough studies to allow for a detailed analysis.

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About The Author

Denise-Marie Ordway

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Working mothers’ breastfeeding experience: a phenomenology qualitative approach

Rita surianee ahmad.

1 Women’s Health Development Unit, School of Medical Sciences, Health Campus, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 16150 Kubang Kerian, Kelantan Malaysia

2 Department of Nursing, MARA Poly-Tech College, 15050 Kota Bharu, Kelantan Malaysia

Zaharah Sulaiman

Nik hazlina nik hussain, norhayati mohd noor.

3 Department of Family Medicine, School of Medical Sciences, Health Campus, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 16150 Kubang Kerian, Kelantan Malaysia

Associated Data

The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are in Malay language and are not publicly available due to confidentiality of the participants, but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Breastfeeding practice is influenced by the mother’s attitude toward and knowledge of breastfeeding. Working mothers face many challenges and need support to maintain breastfeeding. This study aimed to explore working mothers’ breastfeeding experiences and challenges that can influenced their practices.

The qualitative phenomenological approach involving working mothers in Kota Bharu who fulfilled the inclusion criteria and consented to participate in the study were recruited using purposive sampling. Sixteen participants aged 24 to 46 years were interviewed using semi-structured in-depth interviews in the study. All interviews were recorded in digital audio, transcribed verbatim and analyzed using thematic analysis.

Three main themes emerged from the data analysis: perception of breastfeeding, challenges in breastfeeding, and support for breastfeeding. Two subthemes for perceptions were perception towards breastfeeding and towards infant formula. Challenges had two subthemes too which were related to perceived insufficient milk and breastfeeding difficulty. Where else, two subthemes for support were internal support (spouse and family) and external support (friends, employer, and healthcare staff).

Conclusions

Maintaining breastfeeding after return to work is challenging for working mothers and majority of them need support to continue breastfeeding practice. Support from their spouses and families’ influences working mothers’ decision to breastfeed. Employers play a role in providing a support system and facilities in the workplace for mothers to express and store breast milk. Both internal and external support are essential for mothers to overcome challenges in order to achieve success in breastfeeding.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12884-021-04304-4.

According to the latest available national data, the rate of exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months in Malaysia was 47.1%, with Malay ethnic contributing the highest percentage. Similarly, married status and housewives were more commonly able to breastfeed exclusively. In contrast, women with higher education and higher household incomes categories less commonly able to breastfeed exclusively [ 1 ]. This research took place among the Malays who are the largest ethnic population. In Malaysia, full time working mothers are entitled for a three-month maternity leave. However, for contract or part-time workers their maternity leaves are subjected to the employers’ jurisdiction.

Breastfeeding is beneficial to babies’ health. It contributes to newborns’ physical and mental growth and is a natural contraceptive that helps mothers in birth spacing [ 2 ]. Early initiation of breastfeeding that is, within the first hour after birth [ 3 , 4 ] increased breastfeeding success and was found to help in speeding up uterine involution, which reduced the risk of postpartum bleeding [ 5 ]. Colostrum produced soon after birth creates the first antibodies for the baby [ 6 ].

Research has shown that working mothers’ positive attitudes toward breastfeeding were associated with a longer breastfeeding period where the mothers tended to breastfeed exclusively [ 6 – 9 ] and had a higher chance of success in breastfeeding. Positive attitudes toward breastfeeding were favorable to the infant’s health [ 2 , 7 ] and storing expressed milk to be given to the babies when the mothers started working reduced family expenses [ 7 ].

Mothers who chose not to continue exclusive breastfeeding before the infant reached 6 months, were deemed to have negative attitudes toward breastfeeding. Their reasons included feeling too shy to breastfeed, especially in public [ 8 ], thinking their milk was insufficient, finding breastfeeding difficult and inconvenient, and failing to breastfeed after trying [ 9 ]. Some mothers were worried about their weight gain and needed to adopt a certain diet plan to lose weight. Other mothers cited being busy and occupied with household chores as reasons for not breastfeeding [ 9 ]. Therefore, in many cases, mother’s attitudes toward breastfeeding were highly dependent on their knowledge of and experience in breastfeeding. Previous studies have shown that the infants of working mothers with a good knowledge of exclusive breastfeeding received only breast milk without any supplements in the first 6 months [ 7 , 10 ].

Negative attitudes toward breastfeeding existed because the mothers faced many challenges which was obviously noticed when they had to returned to work, such as a lack of support in their workplace; thus, less than 50% were able to exclusively breastfeed once they returned to work [ 9 , 11 , 12 ]. The literature has shown that the practice of exclusive breastfeeding is influenced by the mother’s attitude toward and knowledge of breastfeeding, as well as other challenges associated with the mother. This qualitative study was conducted to explore breastfeeding issues related to challengers and support among working mothers in Kota Bharu, Kelantan.

Research design

The qualitative phenomenological approach was used to explore working mothers’ breastfeeding experiences. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were used because they were appropriate for discussing breastfeeding experiences, which encompassed issues related to employment that were deemed challenging by the working mothers. Working mother included in this study were self-employed as well as salaried job.

Research location and participants

The research participants were recruited from Raja Perempuan Zainab II Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia Hospital and government and private offices in the district of Kota Bharu. The inclusion criteria were perinatal working mothers (employed), including those who had or will have the first experience of breastfeeding who either currently pregnant, had a child, or had an infant less than 6 months’ old (Table  1 ). Research participants were purposely selected.

Participants’ recruitment locations

Data derived from the interviews were used to generate codes, which later contributed to the generation of themes and subthemes. According to Creswell [ 13 ], five to 25 research participants should be purposely recruited in a study until data saturation is achieved. However, Cheng et al. [ 14 ] suggested adding three or four research participants to ensure data saturation with maximum variation. We reached saturation after 12 participants were interviewed but only stopped recruitment at 16 participants. Health care providers helped to select and introduce the participants based on study inclusion criteria before the researcher approached the participants.

Data collection and analysis

Interview guidelines were prepared based on the information obtained from the literature review. The Researcher invited two working mother to participate in pilot interviews to assess the feasibility, clarity, and appropriateness of the interview questions (Additional file 1 ), and improvements were made accordingly. Before the face-to-face interviews were initiated, the research participants were informed about the purpose and requirement of participating in the study, and written consent was obtained as required by the ethics committee. The interviews only took place after the research participants had signed the consent form.

All interviews were conducted by the first author in English or Malay, as requested by the participants. Interviews were held in a room that provided privacy and minimized interference, such as a clinic room or workplace, so as not to affect the session. The interviews were recorded in digital audio using an MP3 recorder (Sony NWZB172F).

The interviews with 16 working mothers began with open-ended general questions, such as “Can you tell me about your breastfeeding experience or experience using formula milk?” and “Can you tell me why you opt for this breastfeeding method?” These were followed by specific questions to explore the issue in depth, such as “Would you mind sharing with me why you prefer this method?” This method was suitable for exploring issues related to breastfeeding knowledge, attitudes, and practices in depth.

Apart from the information conveyed verbally, nonverbal expressions and behaviors were also observed during the interviews. One interview session was conducted for each study participant and lasted for 40 to 60 min. All interview data were transcribed and coded by the first author..Three participants were randomly selected to verify the compatibility of the information in the transcripts with their interpretation during the interviews. Finally, group discussion with the research team was done and the verbatim transcripts were thematically analysed using computer-aided qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS), namely, ATLAS.ti software version 11.

Ethical approval

This study was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM/JEPeM/15040115) and the Medical Review and Ethics Committee of the Ministry of Health Malaysia (NMRR-15-2038-25,781 [IIR]).

Participants’ demographic characteristics

Sixteen working mothers aged 24 to 46 years voluntarily participated in this study. All research participants were Malay Muslims who attained at least a secondary level of education (Table  2 ). Two antenatal and 14 postnatal mothers those with experience and without breastfeeding experience were recruited because these groups had breastfeeding experience or had decided or at least had the desire and intention to breastfeed their babies. Understanding the experiences of working mothers and their choices to breastfeed can explore factors influencing breastfeeding practices among working mother. Most of them were exposed to routine education related to breastfeeding during their visits to antenatal clinics or upon admission to the ward.

Demographic characteristics of research participants

Working mothers’ experiences

From the data, three themes emerged that helped explain the working mothers’ experiences in breastfeeding: perceptions of breastfeeding, challenges in breastfeeding, and support that can influence the practice of breastfeeding. Table  3 presents a summary of the themes that arose from the interview sessions.

Themes and subthemes that arose during the interviews

Theme 1: perceptions

The first theme is about the mothers’ perceptions of breastfeeding and formula milk. Some mothers also expressed their perceptions of their work and spouse that affected breastfeeding. Thus, perceptions were categorized into the following subthemes: perceptions of breastfeeding, perceptions of formula milk, and influence of advertisements.

Subtheme: perceptions towards breastfeeding

Some mothers believed that breast milk was better than formula milk and that they should continue breastfeeding to ensure an adequate and continuous milk supply:

The thing that I understand is that breast milk is better than powdered [formula] milk. The nutrients [in breast milk] are higher than those in powdered milk. We don’t know where powdered milk comes from, but for breast milk, we know it comes naturally from our bodies. (Participant 2)

Subtheme: perceptions towards formula milk

Some mothers deemed formula milk as an alternative to breast milk even though they realized the benefits of breastfeeding. This happened when they were not able to provide breast milk or observe the positive changes when their infants were given breast milk. For instance, Participant 3 said, “What I’ve seen is, my child is thinner than my cousin’s kids; they drink formula milk. The kids would only be chubby when they drink formula milk.” Participant 6 explained, “Because I think we won’t always have milk, we would want to buy other milk to try and see whether it is suitable or not.”

Subtheme: influence of advertisements

In general, advertising seeks to influence consumers to try certain products. Some mothers believed that advertisements could influence them to try formula milk because of its content: “I think some mothers are influenced by the advertisements. In the ads, certain formula milk is portrayed as having specific nutrients, but in fact, breast milk is the best. Maybe some are convinced by the ads” (Participant 1).

Theme 2: challenges in breastfeeding

Challenges in breastfeeding were the main issue that affected breastfeeding. The data revealed various challenges experienced by working mothers when breastfeeding, such as having insufficient milk, pain during breastfeeding, and inverted nipples.

Subtheme: perceived insufficient milk for the baby

The main challenge in breastfeeding for working mothers was feeling that their milk was inadequate once they had returned to work. Their main reason for using formula milk was having insufficient breast milk: “I just managed to breastfeed our third one for forty days. When it came to day 60, I had to start working. By day 65, I no longer produced milk” (Participant 10).

Only one mother stated that her breasts did not produce milk anymore as a result of being away from her baby: “I only managed to see my baby once a week. And my baby didn’t want to breastfeed, so my breasts were drained. I stayed in a college hostel; eventually I no longer produced milk” (Participant 7).

Subtheme: breastfeeding difficulties

The breastfeeding difficult when mother complain she is having difficult to breastfeed their baby because of pain and some breast condition:

Subtheme: pain during breastfeeding

The mothers reported pain while breastfeeding due to engorged breasts: “I have to pump it first. My breasts are engorged; they’re aching” (Participant 9). Other mothers reported pain due to perineal tears: “I feel pain below here [birthing channel] due to the tears [from the episiotomy]. It’s hard to go to the toilet. I feel itchy even when I’m squatting. It hurts to even breastfeed” (Participant 10).

Subtheme: inverted nipples

One mother stated that she had an issue with inverted nipples and tried her best to breastfeed her child:

I have to pump, since I have inverted nipples. So it’s difficult. Often, I pump my breasts. I have to do this because if I try to give [breast] milk, it becomes awkward. After that, when I pump, it [my nipple] will come out for a moment, then it will go back in. It’s just this one [pointing to the left breast] is a bit ok; for this one, if I squeeze it, there’s milk. But the one on this side [pointing to the right breast] is hard [the nipple is badly inverted]. (Participant 5)

Theme 3: breastfeeding support

Support is a crucial aspect of breastfeeding. Some mothers stated that they needed support to breastfeed successfully.

Subtheme: internal support from husband and family

The husband and family play an important role in providing support because they are the closest to the mother. For instance, Participant 4 stated, “My husband urges me to breastfeed. So I went out with him to see a breast pump before purchasing it. So this means he agrees when I want to breastfeed.” Participant 7 shared the following:

My husband will heat the milk up because I bought a complete breast pump set. My husband kind of prefers to take care of his own child because he is self-employed. He has a business. He said it doesn’t matter. When I’m working, he takes care of the baby. When I come back, I take care of the baby and he goes to do his business. So if I keep my milk in the fridge, my husband knows how to feed our child. There is a warmer; I bought it along with the breast pump in a complete set. (Participant 7)

The family plays a role in the care of the baby in the absence of the mother: “After that, when our baby was almost six months old, my husband had to relocate for his job. He went back to live with his mother, so his mother takes care of the baby” (Participant:7).

Perception of partner

Working mothers also believed their spouses played a role in breastfeeding: “In my opinion, he [my husband] wants me to breastfeed because I have heard him admonish his sister for not breastfeeding her child. I just heard my husband say that, so I didn’t talk to him about this” (Participant 4).

Subtheme: external support from friends, employers, and healthcare staff

Support from friends, employers, and healthcare staff indirectly plays a role in enabling working mothers to breastfeed successfully.

Perceptions of one job

Employment issues, such as workplace facilities and working hours, affect the practice of breastfeeding. Having a job with flexible hours and an environment that supports breastfeeding influences the mothers’ perceptions of financial needs from salaries job. The following excerpt shows a mother’s perception of her work: “Yes, it’s hard for the salaried people, but for me [the participant], it’s ok since I work on my own; I can even do business and bring my child along. It’s easy to give breast milk. If I’m working with others, it’s hard to carry my child along.” (Participant 8)

One mother stated that the facilities provided by her employer made it easier for the staff to express and store milk: “We have to make sure we have the time to express the milk, then keep it. There is a fridge in the office. I just need to find the time to do it” (Participant 2).

Most mothers stated that the healthcare staff and their colleagues also encouraged and guided them in breastfeeding: “We were placed in one area [dorm]. Coincidentally, there was another working mother who had just given birth. Her baby was also two months old, like mine. So if we wanted to pump milk at night, we did it together” (Participant 7).

The mothers said that the healthcare staff at the clinic gave them breastfeeding advice, while the staff in the ward helped them to breastfeed their babies: “Because before this, we were trained and we listened to a briefing from the clinic staff on how to breastfeed right after giving birth” (Participant 12).

All working mothers agreed that the spouse, family, friends, and healthcare staff should play their roles in supporting mothers for successful breastfeeding. The mothers hoped that their spouses and families could assist them with housework while they were breastfeeding and take care of the baby while they were working.

This research aimed to explore the breastfeeding experiences of working mothers. Three main themes emerged from the data analysis: perception of breastfeeding, challenges in breastfeeding, and support for breastfeeding. Two subthemes for perceptions were perception towards breastfeeding and towards infant formula. Challenges had two subthemes too which were related to perceived insufficient milk and breastfeeding difficulty. Where else, two subthemes for support were internal support (spouse and family) and external support (friends, employer, and healthcare staff).

Although they mentioned that breast milk was the best for their babies, when it came to work, they believed that the type of job affected the practice of breastfeeding. Some mothers said that employers play a role in providing facilities, such as special rooms, and flexible hours for mothers to express milk when they are working. The findings of this study are similar to those of Febrianingtyas et al., who studied working mothers in Jakarta, Indonesia. They found that working mothers face many issues in breastfeeding, such as inappropriate breastfeeding rooms, the distance from their working spots to the breastfeeding rooms, a lack of facilities, limited time to express milk, and a lack of support from employers [ 15 ].

Currently, at Malaysia perspective, working mothers in the private sector were given maternity leave that could range from 2 weeks to 2 months and government sector allows 3 months of paid leave and can extend up to 6 months’ unpaid leave [ 16 ]. Working mothers in senior and high income receive same breastfeeding support benefit from their employer. There was no difference in breastfeeding support in term of job position.

The main challenge to continuing breastfeeding was having insufficient breast milk, especially when the mothers returned to work. This influenced their decision to continue breastfeeding. Studies have found that insufficient milk, engorged breasts, and pain during breastfeeding are the main challenges to breastfeeding during confinement [ 17 , 18 ].

Formula milk advertisements can influence breastfeeding behavior by highlighting that the additional content in formula milk is deemed to increase the baby’s intelligence, thus affecting the mothers’ confidence in breastfeeding their babies [ 19 ]. However, the Piwoz and Huffman found that some mothers were not affected by the advertisements because they perceived breast milk as better than formula [ 19 ].

Mothers expect more support from those who are close to them, such as their spouses and families. This support includes take care of the baby when the mothers are working. This finding is supported by previous studies that found that the spouse’s positive perception of breastfeeding and positive attitude toward providing support to the mother in breastfeeding influenced the mother’s decision to continue breastfeeding [ 20 ]. This is a major factor influencing the practice of breastfeeding [ 8 , 21 ]. Mothers do not only need verbal support from their spouses and families; the attitudes of the spouses and family members toward helping with housework while the mothers are breastfeeding are also significant, in addition to being understanding about the working mothers’ situation and supporting them in their decision to continue breastfeeding [ 22 , 23 ]. Apart from the breastfeeding experience and parity, support and encouragement from spouses, families, health care provider [ 24 ] and employers affect mother’s emotional well -being in breastfeeding practice [ 25 ].

Employer support was also significant, especially in providing facilities for working mothers to express and store their breast milk [ 2 , 26 ]. Many studies have shown that the practice of breastfeeding declines once the mothers return to work [ 4 , 26 – 29 ]. In Malaysia there is no formal breastfeeding break allocated for mothers during working hours.

This study also showed that most working mothers felt they received great support from healthcare staff, especially during childbirth. Previous studies have shown that support from healthcare staff during confinement has a positive influence on breastfeeding practice [ 30 ].

Strengths and limitations of the study

This study provides new information regarding perception of breastfeeding, challenges in breastfeeding and support for breastfeeding among working mothers in Kelantan. This study used primary data using a qualitative approach that should be considered as a strength of study. However, these study participants were employed mother only. Self-employed mother was included but may have different perception regarding breastfeeding, different challenges in breastfeeding and different support for breastfeeding. It is recommended that, for future studies including comparisons of breastfeeding experiences between mother working with employer and self-employed mothers, as well as including cultural norm breastfeeding practices and their impact on exclusive breastfeeding practice.

Working mothers need support from their spouses, families, friends, employers, and healthcare staff. This finding indicates the need for interventions in the form of simple and user-friendly breastfeeding education programs specifically for working mothers. Working mothers have difficulties to enhance knowledge regarding breastfeeding due to time limitations and work commitments, this mother needs persistent motivation related to breastfeeding. Information on the causes of breastfeeding challenges and how to overcome them is crucial to preventing mothers from thinking that breastfeeding is difficult, especially when they return to work.

Findings from this study provide important information of challenging in breastfeeding and practical support for breastfeeding among working mothers. The data can be help employer in development of new policy and provide breastfeeding support in working area. Employer should be concerned related to flexible work schedules, providing room for breastfeeding and pumping breast milk. Addressing these challenges will help breastfeeding mothers to be productive employee return to work after delivery.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to express her gratitude to Universiti Sains Malaysia for the utmost support in providing research facilities.

Authors’ contributions

All authors have read and approved the manuscript. In addition, the contribution for every author is as follows. RSA collected and analysed the data, interpreted the results and drafted the manuscript. NHNH and HMN validated the results, edited and revised the manuscript. ZS critically validated the data and the results, edited and revised the manuscript.

Authors’ information

Rita Surianee Ahmad (RSA): Bachelor of Nursing Science (Hons) (Open University Malaysia), Master of Nursing (Open University Malaysia).

Zaharah Sulaiman (ZS): Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS), University of Adelaide, Australia, Master in Community Medicine, (M.Comm.Med.), Universiti Sains Malaysia (Malaysia), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia,

Nik Hazlina Nik Hussain (NHNH): M. D. / Medicine, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM); M. Med (O&G) / Obstetrics & Gynaecology, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM),

Norhayati Mohd Noor (NMN): Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (M.B.B.S), Bangalore University (India), Master in Community Medicine, (M.Comm.Med.), Universiti Sains Malaysia (Malaysia), Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D), Universiti Sains Malaysia (Malaysia).

This study has received financing and funding support via the university grant (RU Grant USM: 1001/PPSP/8012225). The funding was used for research activities for this study.

Availability of data and materials

Declarations.

This study has been approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM/JEPeM/15040115). Consents were obtained and participants were fully informed about the written consent before the interviews commenced.

Consent for publication is not applicable for this paper of review.

The authors have no conflict of interest to disclose.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Staying at Home with Your Children is Harder Than Going to Work

There are many social stigmas attached to women (and men) who choose to leave the workforce to become "stay at home mums/dads" or "homemakers." Most people view the ability to stay at home with growing children a luxury. But is it?

Becoming A Stay At Home Mom

A lot of stay at home parents express how difficult looking after kids can be, even though friends and family may challenge this belief. After all, for some people, staying home sounds like a vacation when compared to the daily 9-5 bustle.

So, that leaves us with the burning question, is staying at home with kids easier than going to work?

This is what research has to say…

A study  conducted by AVEENO Baby surveyed new parents with 31% claiming that staying home with kids is much harder than returning to work.

22% say you will never finish a cup of tea again. 33% say you will eat most meals with one hand. 17%: say your back will always hurt. 48 % (only half of all new parents) believe that starting a family is a perfect experience. 

Here's Why You Should Never Get Up To Pee In The Middle Of The Night

 4 key findings (by pew research center) about stay-at-home moms, 1. more moms are staying home.

The share of mothers who do not work outside the home has risen over the past decade. (1)

2. Stay-at-home moms are more likely to be impoverished

34% of stay-at-home mothers are poor, compared with 12% of working mothers. They are also less likely to be white and more likely to be immigrants.  (1)

3. Stay-at-home moms in poverty have doubled since 1970

While more stay-at-home moms are in poverty - those with working husbands generally are better off than those without. However, stay-at-home moms with working husbands are not as well off financially as married mothers who work outside the home.  (1)

4. Home by choice or obligation?

• Married stay-at-home mothers with working husbands are more likely to say caring for family is their primary reason for being home.  (1)
• Single and cohabiting stay-at-home mothers are more likely to say they are ill or disabled, unable to find a job, or enrolled in school  (1)

Overall, a growing share of stay-at-home mothers say they are home because they cannot find a job: 6% in 2012, versus 1% in 2000.  (1)

More Research Findings

1. majority of stay-at-home moms consider going back to work.

Research firm Reach Advisors conducted a study that found 57% of moms think about going back to work someday. (2)

2. Stay-at-Home Moms Report More Depression, Sadness and Anger

A Gallup poll revealed more stay-at-home moms report experiencing sadness or anger in their day than moms who work outside of the home. Of the 60,000 women surveyed: (2)

• 42% of stay-at-home moms felt like they were struggling compared to 36% of working moms.
• The number of stay-at-home moms who smiled or laughed a lot the previous day was 81%, compared to 86% of working moms.
• 50% of SAHMs reported stress in their previous day, and 26% reported sadness.

Every stay-at-home mom must establish a support network, including regular outings with other mom friends to get a much-needed break and prevent mommy burnout.

Despite all of these findings, 60% of Americans say a child is better off with at least one parent at home while only 35% said kids are just as well off with both parents working outside the home.  (1) (2)

With all of society's pressures and common misconceptions about stay at home mums/dads, it seems that parents can't win either way. That's why doing what's best for you and your family is really the only thing that matters.

It isn't about the ‘luxury' of choosing between staying home or working, because as research has shown us, both options come with their own set of challenges and circumstances. It's really about making the decision that's right for you.

The post Staying at Home with Your Children is Harder Than Going to Work appeared first on The Hearty Soul .

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Regions & Countries

Chapter 1: comparing stay-at-home and working mothers.

From their education levels to their birthplaces, the nation’s 10.4 million stay-at-home mothers have distinct differences from the 25.2 million mothers who work outside the home. But there are equally striking differences among different groups of stay-at-home mothers, be they married, single or cohabiting.

In general, married stay-at-home mothers are better off financially than their counterparts who are single or cohabiting. They are more likely to say they are home because they choose to be, not because they could not find a job, or are ill, disabled or enrolled in school. They are better educated and less likely to be in poverty.

Married Mothers with Working Husbands

As is true of stay-at-home mothers overall, those who are married with working husbands are younger than their working counterparts. A higher share has a child age 5 or younger at home. They are more likely to be Hispanic and less likely to be white. Married stay-at-home mothers with working husbands are nearly twice as likely to be foreign born as their working counterparts (38% vs. 20% in 2012), a larger gap than is true for other types of stay-at-home mothers compared with their working counterparts.

Married stay-at-home mothers with working husbands represent the largest group of stay-at-home mothers, 68% in 2012. That share has declined since 1970, when it was 85%. The number of these married stay-at-home mothers, 11.6 million in 1970, was 6.4 million in 2000 and 7.1 million in 2012.

The vast majority of married stay-at-home mothers with a working husband (85% in 2012) say they are not working because they are taking care of their home and family. The share was 96% in 1970. Small shares say they are home because they were ill or disabled (5%), were in school (4%) or could not find a job (3%).

Single Mothers

Most (71% in 2012) are below the poverty level, compared with a quarter (27%) of single working mothers. One-in-five single stay-at-home mothers (20%) received welfare income in 2012, compared with only 4% of single working mothers. About a quarter (23%) received alimony or child support, compared with 30% of working single mothers who did. And 5% reported receiving some income from family or friends.

Single stay-at-home mothers are slightly younger than working single mothers, and are more likely to have at least one child age 5 or younger at home. About a third are white, somewhat less than the 42% of working single women who are, and about a third are black, somewhat more than the 29% of working single mothers who are. A quarter are Hispanic, a similar share as for working single mothers (23%). The share of foreign-born is similar for single stay-at-home mothers and working mothers but is lower than for married stay-at-home mothers.

The share of all stay-at-home mothers who are single rose to 29% in 1993, fell to 18% in 1999 and grew slightly to 20% in 2012. 11 There were 1.1 million single stay-at-home mothers in 1970, 1.5 million in 2000 and 2 million in 2012.

Single stay-at-home mothers include those who have never been married, are divorced, separated or widowed, and who do not have partners living with them. About half (48%) have another adult relative in the household, an indication that someone else may be available to help with child care or financial support.

Less than half of single mothers at home (41% in 2012) say the reason they do not hold a paying job is to take care of home and family. The rest say say they are home because they are ill or disabled (27%), cannot find work (14%), or are in school (13%). The reasons for being home have changed substantially for this group since 1970, when 76% said they were at home in order to care for home and family.

Cohabiting Mothers

Among cohabiting stay-at-home mothers, fully one-in-five (21%) is younger than 25, compared with 15% of working cohabiting mothers. Nearly two-thirds have at least one child age 5 or younger at home, compared with about half of cohabiting working mothers who do.

Cohabiting stay-at-home mothers are somewhat less likely than their working counterparts to be white, and somewhat more likely to be Hispanic. The shares of cohabiting stay-at-home mothers and at-work mothers who are black are identical. One-in-five cohabiting stay-at-home mothers (20%) is foreign born, somewhat higher than for cohabiting working mothers (15%) but lower than for married stay-at-home mothers (38%).

Data for cohabiting mothers have been fully available only since 2006, when they made up 4% of all stay-at-home mothers; their share was 5% in 2012.

About two-thirds of cohabiting stay-at-home mothers (64% in 2012) say they are taking care of home and family. Others say they are not working because they are ill or disabled (17%), going to school (11%) or unable to find work (6%).

Married Mothers with Non-Working Husbands

About three-fourths (74%) are poor, compared with a quarter (24%) of their working counterparts. Among this group, 9% received welfare in 2012, compared with 4% of their working counterparts.

They are somewhat more likely to be Hispanic than comparable working mothers and less likely to be white. The share who are immigrants was 35% in 2012, compared with 31% of their working counterparts.

Married stay-at-home mothers whose husbands are not working made up 7% of all stay-at-home mothers in 2012. Since 1970, their share of stay-at-home mothers has ranged from 5% to 9%. They are younger than comparable working mothers: About four-in-ten (39%) are younger than 35, compared with 29% of married working mothers with non-working husbands. However, they are less likely than other stay-at-home mothers to have children age 5 or younger at home; only 41% did in 2012, about the same as married working mothers with non-working husbands (40%).

Some 57% of married stay-at-home mothers with non-working husbands say they themselves are home in order to take care of home and family. One-in-five (19%) say they are home because they are ill or disabled, and 9% each say it is because they are going to school or could not find a job.

• It is beyond the scope of this report to analyze the reason for these trends, but other researchers have documented a rise in employment of low-income single mothers after passage of the 1996 welfare reform law, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which included stricter work requirements and time limits on cash benefits. ↩

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Young adults in the u.s. are less likely than those in most of europe to live in their parents’ home, a majority of young adults in the u.s. live with their parents for the first time since the great depression, as millennials near 40, they’re approaching family life differently than previous generations, as family structures change in u.s., a growing share of americans say it makes no difference, with billions confined to their homes worldwide, which living arrangements are most common, most popular.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

Research center weighs in on potential environmental impacts from Baltimore bridge collapse

WASHINGTON (Gray DC) - As the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse clean up begins on the Patapsco River in Baltimore, questions about the potential for pollution and other environmental impacts from the collapse are looming.

The University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science said on Tuesday that the immediate effects are likely minimal. However, the research center’s Interim President Bill Dennison said that they are concerned about what could happen when the ship and the collapsed bridge are removed.

“We are looking at air, water and land impacts, particularly concerned about the disturbance of sediments,” said Dennison.

He said that the research center is working with local officials to offer their expertise as the cleanup begins.

Dennison added that fish and wildlife could be impacted by the removal of debris when toxic sediment is stirred up as the debris removal begins, and dredging could also impact them.

“Baltimore has a long history of industrial development and as a result, there are a lot of contaminants in the Baltimore sediments,” said Dennison.

A release from the center also indicated that some animals like dolphins could affected if pile driving occurs when the bridge is rebuilt because they are very sensitive to sound, and could be driven away.

Increased carbon dioxide emissions are also a concern.

“Ships are going to be rerouted and have to go to different ports,” said Dennison. “The trucks that normally use the key bridge, particularly in going through the Beltway, will be diverted and have more miles… so we’re going to end up with more emissions.”

Dennison said several precautions are being taken by the local and federal partners involved in the cleanup. And said that the research center will do as much as they can to assist with minimizing the environmental impacts.

“No red flags at this point. But but we’re not going to stop watching.”

Copyright 2024 Gray DC. All rights reserved.

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