Here’s how employers can help stave off parental guilt post-pandemic

Thanks to remote work, parents are spending their entire day working alongside their children, but are they really there with them? 

In the last two years, over three million working parents have left the workforce due to difficulties in affording or accessing affordable and reliable childcare. The result? Nearly 60% of childbearing age employees say they’ve experienced or are experiencing burnout from the stress of balancing both — and it’s taking a toll on the way they see themselves both as employees, and as parents, too. 

“Parental guilt or working mom guilt is this underlying feeling that we’re not doing enough for our children,” says Gina Nebesar, co-founder and chief product officer of family health benefits platform Ovia Health. “This general feeling that we're not giving our kids enough love, attention and support. That we're not good enough parents.” 

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More than half of all working parents say this balancing act is difficult, according to a recent report from Ovia. Among working mothers, 41% report that being a parent has made it harder for them to advance in their career and 20% of fathers say the same. Many feel that in order to advance at work, they have to regress at home.

“The lines between our work selves and our family lives have blurred so much in the last two years,” Nebesar says. “[And it’s led] to this concept of parent presenteeism. Are we really present with our kids, even though we're physically with them more often?” 

Whether it’s spending more quality time with their children, breastfeeding their baby as long as they want to, modeling healthy emotional and physical behaviors like being able to cook a full course meal for dinner instead of serving Mac and Cheese, parents feel like these activities have all been sacrificed in order to fit it all in. 

The idea of wanting to do more for their children has plagued parents for years, and has only been exacerbated during the pandemic. But now, employees feel empowered to ask their employers for help shouldering the burden.  

“[The pandemic] created this bigger call to action to better support parents and upgrade the parent infrastructure,” Nebesar says. “When you consider that most people don't have access to paid parental leave or don't have workplace flexibility or aren’t paid enough to provide them with healthy meals, why should they feel guilty?”

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To fill those gaps, employers should offer more flexibility beyond traditional parental leave, and build a culture that grants them the ability to prioritize their personal life during the workday if they need to — whether that means leaving halfway through the day to pick up their children, or granting them time to do household tasks for their kids when they’re home on the clock.

“This is a stem of a much bigger systematic issue,” Nebesar says. “People are taking a look at their workplaces and assessing what they want after two years of pandemic. Is this a place where I feel supported as a parent and as a person, before an employee?” 

It will also mean giving parents the liberty to decide what kind of work model they want, by not forcing them into fully remote or full in-person options. As parents continue to bring more of their personal lives into their professional ones, the workplace will need to adapt. 

“We’re parents first and I’m inviting you into my home,” Nebesar says. “It's only right that the workplace now invites families and family well-being into the workplace and invites us to celebrate being a parent at work now as well.”