Do LGBTQ People Want to Get Married?; A Lot of Babies Eligible for SSI Aren't Getting It; Gender Gaps in the Creator Economy; Why Parents Homeschool; Maybe Moms Don’t Actually Want to WFH + more.
A couple of thoughts as to possibly why women with small children don’t WFH… 1) It’s possible mothers desire a life/place outside of home so there are clearer boundaries. 2) women who have children usually (I presume but I’m sure you have data to back this up) take a step back in their career and may not have the flexibility earned (which is 2025 needs to be earned not given in most jobs) to be able to wfh
Yeah, I honestly don't understand the whole "WFH for moms is amazing! back to pre-Industrial Revolution times!" Most women I know who technically WFH are also utilizing childcare of *some* kind, so I'm not sure the benefits are always as incredibly large as some make it sound like. I am barely keeping afloat caring for 3--soon to be four--tiny kids and running the household. WFH of any kind would still require a herculean amount of outsourced help. Intellectual laptop work is worlds apart from bringing your kids into some form of manual labor or craftsmanship along with you for the purpose of making money. lol
Agreed. I think the main benefit for WFH for moms is the same as the rest of the general population…saves commute time. I originally dreaded going back to the office but now I couldn’t imagine WFH full time, it’s impossible to connect with people and build up those relationships for when you need to get something done (for the record, I am not a mom)
Yeah, I am housebound a lot with littles as it is! Talking with colleagues was one of my favorite parts of the day when I was in the workforce. My husband also appreciates the face to face time and relationships-professional and personal- he has with coworkers. And yeah... he's mentioned how much better it is to walk over and have a solid conversation, talking professional shop at someone's desk than it is to do so in some digital form.
I definitely wouldn't want to work from home without any childcare! But then I have childcare and definitely wouldn't want to be tethered to an office, unless the office was, like, right next to wherever my kids are during the day. I personally think there are some advantages to working at home just from the perspective of being able to intermix some household stuff with work stuff (throw some laundry in in between meetings or put chicken in the crockpot at noon so it's ready for dinner at five...that sort of thing). But then I also agree a lot of it is just the benefit of not having to commute, which introduces so much of a logistical headache with kids. It's way easier to manage stuff coming up with kids (mid-school day doctor appt, or picking up a sick kid, or attending a 45 minutes school assembly at 9 a.m.) if you aren't working 45 minutes away or whatever. When my kids have a school assembly at 9 a.m. I just go work at the coffee shop two minutes away for the rest of the day and don't actually lose much work time--my husband can't do that bc he has to be in office!
Tbf, I think my perspective on this is definitely shaped by my personality. I always hated working in an office--like I genuinely struggled to be productive when the only thing I was allowed to do was work stuff. I am just more productive when, if I'm struggling with some work task, I can go hang some laundry or whatever just to have a change of pace. But I get that not everyone is like that!
Okay that all makes a lot of sense. When the reasoning is framed in these kinds of ways, it has some practical texture to it beyond a flattened “it’s great for moms! back to Pre-industrial times!” lol Like kind of? But also no in many ways. It’s a great option for these reasons, I can see. But as a way to *fully* integrate children & homemaking, not so much. Which is what I see people selling it as sometimes. Like the women who have entire internet businesses (often built around say, low tech living or homeschool) but are like “oh I would never work on a screen around my kids! I want to show them we are low tech around here!” lol just say you have childcare or tag-team childcare with your very flexible husband, pleaaaase.
Oh yeah 100%. I definitely do not think working from home brings us anywhere close to the preindustrial integration of work and family and I do think people sometimes overstate how revolutionary it is in that respect. I mostly think of it as an awkward but somewhat helpful tool for straddling the separate spheres of domestic life and work life.
Actually the idea of breaking up laptop time with housework or physical things is actually an important thing here. I do this currently around caring for children/my own laptop time. So I can see why it could seem like prison to go back to very regimented hours in office! If I had to save all the household stuff till after they went to bed I would be an overwhelmed basketcase, which is probably what fully-working-outside-the-home parents feel like sometimes!
The data around wanting to wfh is interesting! I have an 11 month old and appreciate being able to wfh as needed but now that I am starting to have kids, wfh is never really an ideal. On Fridays daycare is closed and so I wfh with baby. Those are exhausting days. If she is sick, I wfh. Also, my husband has less flexibility in his job to wfh so (at this moment in time) it is typically me who last-minute works from home and cares for baby at home. I’m not sure how people manage that daily or more frequently than once a week/as needed. It’s a LOT. So in those circumstances I don’t really WANT to wfh. I would rather just be at home with baby and not work or go to the office to work.
Yes, someone said it. hahaha I do not understand the value of WFH for anything other than very part-time work. (We have 3 children 5 and under, so things being very full.... I'm not sure WFH works for anyone other than people with a single baby or something. That's usually who I see loving it. Otherwise, people still have to utilize childcare! Like you, I can't see how people manage! Care work is work, so having kids generally *around* while someone works--especially in front of a screen--just doesn't cut it. lol)
Right! I struggle with the reality that I am staring at a screen most of the time when I could be engaged with her & wondering how that could affect her if it was more frequent. (And I recognize that sometimes financially this is all people can make work!) But also, because I do have childcare the rest of the week, wfh those days I would feel guilty (which is a personal problem). But if I am home, I feel like I should have her with me. I do wonder what the other women with kids who say they don’t prefer to wfh AND have childcare would give as their reasonings. It is way less connecting to work remotely, especially in a team dynamic, so I wonder if that’s part of it. I also wonder if there is something about becoming a mom that tends to change people’s values about in-person connectedness? Is it just simply because they spend so much time with kids and need adult time? Or due to the increase in domestic work that comes with kids that wouldn’t be as present (and therefore not as distracting) for a woman without kids? Idk!
Such good questions! There's a whole iceberg to mine underneath the sometimes flattened concept of "work from home." I'm out of the workforce, but even maintaining a newsletter here in my spare time around caring for our children and household... just has me in awe of working mothers, *especially* if they're home.
Great post! :) Minor correction: Same-sex unions were legalized in Sweden in 1995 (per that study and Wikipedia), but technically, marriages weren't until 2009. The Netherlands was the first to legalize same-sex marriage, in 2001.
Anecdotally: my company is in the middle of implementing an RTO mandate, and resistance to returning is pretty evenly distributed from a gender perspective, which I definitely wasn’t expecting.
Yes, it’s actually very interesting, because there’s a very marked difference both in the substance of why they object and how they articulate the objection. The women mostly point to family reasons or personal health needs. The men are more likely to object on the basis that they are just as (or more) productive at home, and that this is unnecessary micro-management. The women are more likely to seek a formal accommodation; the men are more likely to complain a whole lot but do nothing.
So even an entirely self-driven self-managed field still has a notable gender gap? Do you think this will convince people that the gender gap is mostly circumstances & choice & not some systematic social policy on the part of employers?
ehh I mean I'm not sure it's that definitive. No "employer" biases here but obviously there is audience/client-side bias that could be a factor. I don't think I personally would go so far as to conclude from this study that the gender gap more broadly is due to circumstance and choice rather than systemic social policy! Not sure i think of circumstance, choice, and social policy as discrete phenomena.
Weird! My kid has been on Medicaid for the past 7 years and it has definitely not required this amount of labor on my part. Just an annual renewal and an occasional phone call
My state has an unusual waiver program where they fund an FSA like account and you submit expenses for reimbursement along with a letter of medical necessity. And the payment processor is incompetent. It's been life changing for us, but it's ANNOYING.
A couple of thoughts as to possibly why women with small children don’t WFH… 1) It’s possible mothers desire a life/place outside of home so there are clearer boundaries. 2) women who have children usually (I presume but I’m sure you have data to back this up) take a step back in their career and may not have the flexibility earned (which is 2025 needs to be earned not given in most jobs) to be able to wfh
Yeah, I honestly don't understand the whole "WFH for moms is amazing! back to pre-Industrial Revolution times!" Most women I know who technically WFH are also utilizing childcare of *some* kind, so I'm not sure the benefits are always as incredibly large as some make it sound like. I am barely keeping afloat caring for 3--soon to be four--tiny kids and running the household. WFH of any kind would still require a herculean amount of outsourced help. Intellectual laptop work is worlds apart from bringing your kids into some form of manual labor or craftsmanship along with you for the purpose of making money. lol
Agreed. I think the main benefit for WFH for moms is the same as the rest of the general population…saves commute time. I originally dreaded going back to the office but now I couldn’t imagine WFH full time, it’s impossible to connect with people and build up those relationships for when you need to get something done (for the record, I am not a mom)
Yeah, I am housebound a lot with littles as it is! Talking with colleagues was one of my favorite parts of the day when I was in the workforce. My husband also appreciates the face to face time and relationships-professional and personal- he has with coworkers. And yeah... he's mentioned how much better it is to walk over and have a solid conversation, talking professional shop at someone's desk than it is to do so in some digital form.
I definitely wouldn't want to work from home without any childcare! But then I have childcare and definitely wouldn't want to be tethered to an office, unless the office was, like, right next to wherever my kids are during the day. I personally think there are some advantages to working at home just from the perspective of being able to intermix some household stuff with work stuff (throw some laundry in in between meetings or put chicken in the crockpot at noon so it's ready for dinner at five...that sort of thing). But then I also agree a lot of it is just the benefit of not having to commute, which introduces so much of a logistical headache with kids. It's way easier to manage stuff coming up with kids (mid-school day doctor appt, or picking up a sick kid, or attending a 45 minutes school assembly at 9 a.m.) if you aren't working 45 minutes away or whatever. When my kids have a school assembly at 9 a.m. I just go work at the coffee shop two minutes away for the rest of the day and don't actually lose much work time--my husband can't do that bc he has to be in office!
Tbf, I think my perspective on this is definitely shaped by my personality. I always hated working in an office--like I genuinely struggled to be productive when the only thing I was allowed to do was work stuff. I am just more productive when, if I'm struggling with some work task, I can go hang some laundry or whatever just to have a change of pace. But I get that not everyone is like that!
Okay that all makes a lot of sense. When the reasoning is framed in these kinds of ways, it has some practical texture to it beyond a flattened “it’s great for moms! back to Pre-industrial times!” lol Like kind of? But also no in many ways. It’s a great option for these reasons, I can see. But as a way to *fully* integrate children & homemaking, not so much. Which is what I see people selling it as sometimes. Like the women who have entire internet businesses (often built around say, low tech living or homeschool) but are like “oh I would never work on a screen around my kids! I want to show them we are low tech around here!” lol just say you have childcare or tag-team childcare with your very flexible husband, pleaaaase.
Oh yeah 100%. I definitely do not think working from home brings us anywhere close to the preindustrial integration of work and family and I do think people sometimes overstate how revolutionary it is in that respect. I mostly think of it as an awkward but somewhat helpful tool for straddling the separate spheres of domestic life and work life.
Actually the idea of breaking up laptop time with housework or physical things is actually an important thing here. I do this currently around caring for children/my own laptop time. So I can see why it could seem like prison to go back to very regimented hours in office! If I had to save all the household stuff till after they went to bed I would be an overwhelmed basketcase, which is probably what fully-working-outside-the-home parents feel like sometimes!
The data around wanting to wfh is interesting! I have an 11 month old and appreciate being able to wfh as needed but now that I am starting to have kids, wfh is never really an ideal. On Fridays daycare is closed and so I wfh with baby. Those are exhausting days. If she is sick, I wfh. Also, my husband has less flexibility in his job to wfh so (at this moment in time) it is typically me who last-minute works from home and cares for baby at home. I’m not sure how people manage that daily or more frequently than once a week/as needed. It’s a LOT. So in those circumstances I don’t really WANT to wfh. I would rather just be at home with baby and not work or go to the office to work.
Yes, someone said it. hahaha I do not understand the value of WFH for anything other than very part-time work. (We have 3 children 5 and under, so things being very full.... I'm not sure WFH works for anyone other than people with a single baby or something. That's usually who I see loving it. Otherwise, people still have to utilize childcare! Like you, I can't see how people manage! Care work is work, so having kids generally *around* while someone works--especially in front of a screen--just doesn't cut it. lol)
Right! I struggle with the reality that I am staring at a screen most of the time when I could be engaged with her & wondering how that could affect her if it was more frequent. (And I recognize that sometimes financially this is all people can make work!) But also, because I do have childcare the rest of the week, wfh those days I would feel guilty (which is a personal problem). But if I am home, I feel like I should have her with me. I do wonder what the other women with kids who say they don’t prefer to wfh AND have childcare would give as their reasonings. It is way less connecting to work remotely, especially in a team dynamic, so I wonder if that’s part of it. I also wonder if there is something about becoming a mom that tends to change people’s values about in-person connectedness? Is it just simply because they spend so much time with kids and need adult time? Or due to the increase in domestic work that comes with kids that wouldn’t be as present (and therefore not as distracting) for a woman without kids? Idk!
Such good questions! There's a whole iceberg to mine underneath the sometimes flattened concept of "work from home." I'm out of the workforce, but even maintaining a newsletter here in my spare time around caring for our children and household... just has me in awe of working mothers, *especially* if they're home.
Great post! :) Minor correction: Same-sex unions were legalized in Sweden in 1995 (per that study and Wikipedia), but technically, marriages weren't until 2009. The Netherlands was the first to legalize same-sex marriage, in 2001.
oh thank you for this! I'll update.
Anecdotally: my company is in the middle of implementing an RTO mandate, and resistance to returning is pretty evenly distributed from a gender perspective, which I definitely wasn’t expecting.
Interesting! Have you picked up a gendered aspect to the *reasons* for not wanting to return?
Yes, it’s actually very interesting, because there’s a very marked difference both in the substance of why they object and how they articulate the objection. The women mostly point to family reasons or personal health needs. The men are more likely to object on the basis that they are just as (or more) productive at home, and that this is unnecessary micro-management. The women are more likely to seek a formal accommodation; the men are more likely to complain a whole lot but do nothing.
That is fascinating...
Fantastic round up as always.
Thank you!
So even an entirely self-driven self-managed field still has a notable gender gap? Do you think this will convince people that the gender gap is mostly circumstances & choice & not some systematic social policy on the part of employers?
ehh I mean I'm not sure it's that definitive. No "employer" biases here but obviously there is audience/client-side bias that could be a factor. I don't think I personally would go so far as to conclude from this study that the gender gap more broadly is due to circumstance and choice rather than systemic social policy! Not sure i think of circumstance, choice, and social policy as discrete phenomena.
Weird! My kid has been on Medicaid for the past 7 years and it has definitely not required this amount of labor on my part. Just an annual renewal and an occasional phone call
My state has an unusual waiver program where they fund an FSA like account and you submit expenses for reimbursement along with a letter of medical necessity. And the payment processor is incompetent. It's been life changing for us, but it's ANNOYING.