Though the rise of remote work has been praised for providing greater work/life balance, many parents are finding that being away from the office can also have serious drawbacks, according to a new study shared exclusively with USA TODAY.
Roughly 4 in 10 parents say that when they work from home, there are times they go days without leaving their house, while 33% say they “feel very isolated,” when working remotely, according to the ninth annual Modern Family Index, conducted by The Harris Poll for Bright Horizons, a global provider of early education, child care and workforce education services.
Their angst comes at a time when employers’ empathy for the challenges of juggling parenting with work is waning, says Bright Horizons CEO Stephen Kramer, leading more moms and dads to again worry about finding accessible, affordable child care while fretting that family responsibilities could derail their climb up the career ladder.
“There should be a real worry about the mental health impact and isolated feelings employees have because of remote work,” Kramer says. “I think ultimately early in the pandemic, employers felt they were providing good support to working parents by offering more flexible schedules, but that’s come at a cost and we’re at a place where providing real support to working parents is even more critical than the flexible work schedules.”
Flexibility matters but some worry about career
To be sure, many parents cherish the flexibility that a remote or hybrid work schedule gives them.
Among working parents, 36% said they felt somewhat more fulfilled at their job than they did three years ago, and 58% of that group said flexible schedules were a factor in that satisfaction.
But 35% of parents who work from home part of the time believe their hybrid schedule is negatively affecting their careers, and 40% would like their managers to advise them on how much time they should be in the office.
Fathers were particularly concerned, with 44% of working dads fearing that if they utilize benefits aimed at work/life balance, it would negatively affect their performance evaluations.
Some may be right to worry. “In the beginning stages of the pandemic and during the most difficult parts … employers were actually quite sympathetic to the challenges of working parents when all the child care centers were closed and schools went remote,” Kramer says. “That has almost completely waned … and the expectation today is that employees will be productive for their employers and at this point they will have figured out how to do their family responsibilities.’’
Loneliness is an ‘epidemic’:How it’s affecting Americans
Juggling jobs and family
Roughly 8 in 10 parents who work remotely at least part of the time juggle jobs with their family responsibilities during the workday, with 47% running their kids to activities and 44% helping their children with their homework.
A quarter of working parents who are doing that double duty hardly ever mention their workday parenting tasks to their supervisors, while 41% say they sometimes believe they need to hide their personal responsibilities from their co-workers.
Such multitasking is necessary as the search for child care – already difficult before the pandemic – became harder during the health crisis and has yet to recover, Kramer said.
“Given the scarcity of child care, there is really concern about access to child care spaces and places,” he says. In addition to worries about the quality of providers, “there is also a real challenge around affordability.”
Essential or front-line workers who often had to be on-site during the pandemic are particularly hard hit, with the Bright Horizons report finding that 44% say it’s hard to juggle their work schedules around child care as compared to 28% of their peers. Only 49% of those workers say their employers have changed or added benefits that better support them, while 57% of their working parent peers say they’ve gotten such additional assistance.
Child care a constant struggle
But while essential workers have more of a struggle, child care and services for older children remain an issue for working parents across the board.
Support for families:Biden takes aim at child care costs, availability with new executive order
“Whether you’re working from home or from the office, the reality is that you can’t be both a productive employee as well as a full-time caregiver,” Kramer says.
Employers are taking heed. Those who offer on-site child care centers are finding “it’s been an incentive for them to get their employees back to the office since those employees who use the center see the worksite not only as a place to work but also as a place to bring their children,” he says.
Backup child care is also becoming increasingly popular, with more than 200 employers that work with Bright Horizons starting to offer that benefit during the pandemic, its largest increase over a two-year period.
JP Morgan Chase’s employees have a mix of schedules, with its most senior staffers back full time, others who can do their jobs with a hybrid schedule on-site at least three days a week, and half their staffers having worked at their locations throughout the pandemic.
The company has 13 on-site child care centers, and since the pandemic has expanded its child care offerings both at corporate locations and near where staffers live.
“The needs of our employees really shifted so we pivoted our strategy,” says Lilly Wyttenbach, head of Global Wellness at JPMorgan Chase.
One key change is enabling employees whose children no longer need child care to access other services. For instance, the company offers subsidized backup child care to employees 20 days a year. Now they can use four of those hours for their children to receive virtual tutoring.
“We unlocked this benefit of backup child care that tends to be for younger children to a greater number of parents,” said Wyttenbach, adding that the benefit is being used by parents who are both hybrid and in the office full time as many children continue to catch up academically after falling behind during the pandemic.
Backup child care has been a lifeline for Neha Mehrotra, 32, a marketing manager for PayPal who is the married mother of two daughters ages six years old and six months.
During a two-week period when neither her parents nor her mother-in-law was available to watch her infant, “backup care stood (in) for us,” she says. Without the in-home provider who was able to help out, the “hybrid work environment becomes very difficult and in-office work becomes impossible. So in that case, this benefit has really helped.”
Unlike some parents, Mehrotra has also found her hybrid schedule, which allows her to go into the office one day a week and work the rest of the time from home, to be ideal.
“I thoroughly enjoy the flexibility of working from home and also having the opportunity to see my colleagues and have some adult time,” says Mehrotra, who lives in San Jose, California. Having a largely remote schedule after the birth of her second daughter is a sharp contrast to the experience she had working full-time in an office after the birth of her first.
“This time around my daughter came post-pandemic and I was in this new hybrid work culture,” she says. “I can see the vast difference in my mental health. I have time for myself. I’ve given my commute hours to yoga and meditation and … at the end of the day, when I’m done, I open the door and I see my kids.”
Mental health services
For others, however, who are struggling emotionally, mental health support is another key benefit workers are seeking and some employers are aiming to offer.
JP Morgan Chase has a new partnership with Spring Health that will provide customized mental health care plans, free coaching and free therapy that can be scheduled at any time to its U.S. employees and their family members.
“The pandemic exacerbated access and affordability issues” for mental health care, says Wyttenbach, adding that the company has offered off-site and onsite clinicians and counseling for years, but is now enabling employees to see therapists who are part of their health plan’s network without paying a deductible.
Such benefits are necessary, Kramer says.
“There are working parents … who say they go for days without going outside their house. That’s clearly not healthy,” he says. “Others are really concerned about their career mobility given their either hybrid or remote schedule … Ultimately, there are things employers need to be doing in order to make that balance more realistic for employees. And providing child support, backup care support and mental health supports are all things they need to do and have started to do coming out of the pandemic.’’
