U.S. parents are at breaking point over child care, survey shows

Over 18 months into the pandemic, U.S. working parents are more worried than ever about securing child care and the impact that inevitable school disruptions will have on their jobs, a survey shows.

About three-quarters of respondents think their children’s school will temporarily shut down or shift back to remote learning at some point this year, according to a survey of 1,000 working parents conducted in August by job posting website Indeed.

If child care and schooling uncertainty continues into 2022, it could lead almost 7 in 10 people to quit their jobs or have their partners leave the workforce, the survey finds.

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Child care and virtual learning have been among key reasons why many Americans who left the workforce at the peak of the COVID-19 crisis still haven’t come back, with women bearing a disproportionate share of these exits.

Now the 2021-2022 year is shaping to be as — if not more —stressful for parents with COVID and its delta variant continuing to spread, the Indeed survey shows.

As child care has become more difficult to find, about half of the respondents said they’d have to help their kids with schoolwork while working themselves or take time off to do so. Women were 57% more likely than men to say they’d have to take time off.

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More than two-thirds of parents said that helping children with virtual learning has a negative impact on their own work performance, with more than half of them saying that it could put their employment in jeopardy, according to the survey.