Working moms are done. What we can do about it?

It took less than a week into January for the hope of returning to some kind of consistency to fade for 18 million+ working moms in the United States.

After nearly two years of shouldering the crushing burden of working, educating, and parenting in a pandemic, working moms find themselves once again being asked to prop up communities through the worst COVID surge yet.

“Am I awful for secretly hoping this sore throat is COVID and I can just pull a blanket over my head?”

The latest rise in cases is putting working mothers in a familiar position — stabilizing the family as schools and daycares shutter, keeping the family safe and healthy despite the highly contagious Omicron variant, making difficult decisions despite confusing and constantly changing health guidelines. And doing it all while still being productive and available at work.

Given these continued stressors, it’s no surprise burnout for working moms is widespread, with nearly 42 percent reporting burnout at work according to the Women in the Workplace report by McKinsey & Co., prior to the Omicron surge. Even if work isn’t the primary culprit of the burnout, it’s the only place that mothers can pull back. Many moms don’t feel comfortable asking family to help, for fear of exposing them to the high level of break-through cases. With little to no support at home beyond a partner, it’s not surprising women continue to drop out of the labor force in record numbers despite the wide availability of vaccines

Working mothers of children under 5 hit the hardest

If the childcare and school closures weren’t difficult enough, trying to keep children safe and the community healthy adds another layer of stress and guilt for mothers. The CDC guidelines are impossible to follow, given the lack of at-home tests, the long waits for PCR tests (which working moms can’t accommodate), and the inability to get N95 masks. Working moms already feel pressure and a nagging sense of failure, but the weight of trying to keep their families safe and the only way to do so is impossible is crushing.

For working mothers with children under 5, the discrepancy between guidelines to return to work and guidelines at daycares cause added friction. Because children under 5 can’t get the vaccine, many state health departments haven’t changed their guidelines for quarantine — which means daycare classrooms can be closed down for up to two weeks. Meanwhile, many employers are using the shortened guidelines from the CDC to force employees back to work within five days. For working mothers who can’t work remotely, this mismatch puts families in impossible situations of trying to find temporary childcare — or leaving the workforce altogether.

Careers and ambitions stalled — even for mothers who never left the workforce

Professionally, women are finding the consequences of being the primary caregiver during the pandemic. Companies are returning to the culture of rewarding people who are always on and available, which means fewer promotions for women who had to step back and balance caring for children with work.

Changes that can make a difference

We can’t continually ask working mothers to shoulder the load of the pandemic alone. Companies need to support working mothers through a variety of initiatives, including:

• Flexible and/or part-time schedules. To address changes in childcare, companies should provide the ability for working parents to quickly changes their schedules.
• Structured promotion and compensation structure based on results, not the amount of time spent working or coming into the office. To overcome familiarity and proximity bias, companies need to have detailed and consistent promotion structures built on delivering measurable results — not just who returns emails at 2 a.m.
• Guaranteed parental leave. Even before the pandemic, lack of consistent leave in the US was an inhibiting factor for women staying and excelling in the workforce after having children. Without a vaccine for infants, giving parents guaranteed time to keep their infant safe from infection is crucial for long-term success.
• A management culture rooted in empathy and trust. Instead of embracing the opportunity to find new work models and focus on results, many companies resorted to spying on employees to ensure they were working while at home. Leaving the old culture dominated by associating physical proximity to working is necessary to forging a new relationship with employees.
• Solidifying hybrid and flexible work policies. The whiplash many organizations put their workers through with shifting return to office dates and policies is most challenging for primary caregivers at home who are having to constantly change childcare arrangements. Organizations need to finalize and stick to their hybrid work strategies, which should embrace complete flexibility on where, when and how works gets done.

These policies aren’t just beneficial for working mothers — they benefit all parents. And amid the Great Resignation, every company should examine their policies in making themselves more attractive to keep all their workers.

Working mothers have done enough. It’s our turn to support them and their families.

Alysia Eve is Director of Product Marketing at Citrix and co-host and co-founder of the Women on Work podcast.