The pandemic busted all notions of work-life balance, to the benefit of working moms – The Dallas Morning News

Theres a reimagining of work and care coming out of the pandemic, which stands to disproportionately benefit working parents and mothers in particular.

Employers need to pay attention. It used to be cutting edge to provide paid leave and child care benefits, or to provide private spaces and breaks for women to pump. And such policies still remain the exception and not the norm. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, fewer than 1 in 4 parents has any type of formal family leave policy at work following the birth or adoption of a child. Many breastfeeding or pumping rooms are dank, depressing closets.

But now parents are asking for a more fundamental restructure of what work looks like and how to blend work and family life. Specifically, most workers regardless of gender or age are asking for increased flexibility, with parents particularly keen on it. A recent CNBC poll found that half of Americans are considering quitting their jobs, with working parents twice as likely to want to leave their current jobs.

In some ways, the desire for flexibility among working parents (and particularly mothers) is nothing new. Even pre-pandemic, a Gallup study of women and work found that lack of flexible hours and remote work were the main reasons that stay-at-home mothers reported they were not seeking jobs. Interestingly, these concerns significantly outpaced those of child care costs, despite almost the entirety of our national policy conversation focused on the latter.

A tight labor market, record-breaking resignations, and 18 months of normalizing remote work and opening eyes to the juggle of home and family life have only added to the cause.

Increased flexibility could be an upshot of the pandemic that has otherwise fallen heavily on working parents, and mothers in particular. More flexible schedules wherever possible could help women bridge the gap of having young children in the home. Relative to our peers in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the labor force participation of American women lags, which scholars have attributed in large part to lack of family-friendly policies. Given recent Pew polling that shows most dads feel like they spend too little time with their children, men may increasingly take advantage of such options also.

Some have expressed concern that more flexible options could result in mothers being mommy tracked. Certainly, we see fewer women internationally reaching the managerial heights that women do in the U.S., which is probably because of longer periods of leave. But in general, more options for structuring work and family life are likely to be better. And a wider normalization of such policies could help reduce some of the judgement women feel about making use of them. Mothers of young children tend to fear repercussions of asking for flexibility more than fathers of young children or other workers, according to a recent McKinsey and LeanIn study.

Others have expressed concern about company flexibility policies favoring parents over non-parents. But young children are worth differentiated treatment, and people dont stay parents of young children forever. This part of parenting lasts a small number of years relative to a 40-year career and is worthy of short-term investment, and at times, the inconvenience. Its in all of our interest to live in a country where the rising generation is tended to by parents who can be present and involved and ensure that their children receive high-quality early childhood care.

Companies can take action to increase flexibility, and likely the response will vary significantly. According to data from McKinsey & Company, an estimated 20% to 25% of the workforce could work from home three to five days per week without any loss in productivity. The portion of workers who could work from home at least one day a week amounts to 40%.

Employers can allow for more flexible hours, or even more predictable hours for scheduling child care, which often eludes hourly workers. A recent Politico story reports that Etsy groups its meetings into a three-hour block in the middle of the day from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. to give workers more autonomy over their day. This also has the benefit of allowing parents to do school drop-offs and pickups or after-school activities.

In one of the closed sessions of the inaugural Politico Women Rule event (which I was part of), one company described trying out various flexible arrangements in 90-day increments to see what works best.

Some work, in particular for consumer-facing positions, inevitably will not have the same level of flexibility. But as workers shift into occupations with more flexible schedules, we may see more of a wage premium for in-person work. Indeed we are already seeing significant upward wage pressure for frontline positions.

All of which brings us to the future of work. The national conversation about paid leave and child care and family-friendly policies is long overdue, and its good we are having it. The U.S. is the only country in the developed world without a paid parental leave policy, and Americans have caught on. President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden have little in common, yet both have proposed federal paid leave plans.

Our existing patchwork of child care support leaves out the low- and middle-wage workers to whom arguably we should target the majority of our support. Democrats Build Back Better plan is a significant overreach and is likely to increase child care costs further, but we can do a better job directing support to families for whom child care costs arent just an inconvenience or uncomfortably large expense, but a structural barrier to work and financial independence.

Still, in many ways, its all the tip of the iceberg. The pandemic has revealed that the solution set for supporting working parents is much broader and deeper than a benefits sheet or the policy conversation in recent decades. As companies experiment with how to retain and recruit talent in this post-pandemic environment, they may just be unlocking a new future of work and care.

Abby McCloskey is an economist and founder of McCloskey Policy LLC. She has advised multiple presidential campaigns. Website: mccloskeypolicy.com

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The pandemic busted all notions of work-life balance, to the benefit of working moms - The Dallas Morning News